My mother named me after the Falcon Crest TV star Ana-Alicia. She replaced some of the letters and came up with Alisea(Ah-lee-see-ah). It just so happens that Alisea(Ah-lay-zay-ah) is the Spanish version of Alice. And during my entire school life, no one could ever say my name correctly on the first try. I’d have to constantly reminded people how to pronounce it, and even if I did, they’d spell it wrong too! Alisha, Alice, Elissa, Alyssa, Alise, Alicia, I even got Elyiseah once. I’d given up in middle school and told everyone to call me Dani (my middle name is Danielle.)

When my younger brother was in first grade, there was a child in his class named Star Queen Poindexter. Not only was she not very smart, but kids teased her for being ugly (“unqueenlike”).

My fiance Marvin and I are trying to decided on our first born’s name. We really want a girl, especially him. So we looked through the alphabet and saw that the letter “G” was inbetween the first letters of our first names (A-Alisea; M-Marvin), and I love the name Madison. Since we both come from Hispanic-African American descent, we wanted something Spanish for our daughter. We also wanted something biblical and of God. So we came up with Genesis Madison Adriana (or Madi for short). What do you think?

-A