A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose

And I am a Jennifer.

Or am I?

When I was in elementary school [2nd life], I would wait with my friend for her grandma to pick her up afterschool. The grandma was a nice lady, always greeted me with a kind, “Hello, Stephanie!”

“Grandma, this is Jennifer, remember?” Each time my friend said a variation of this! Hahaha!

One time, grandma replied with, “Isn’t that what I said?”

What’s stranger is that I told my mom and she said that they had wanted to name me “Stephanie!” It didn’t happen because then my [first initial. last name] would have made me a possible target for ridicule.

It didn’t take me long to figure out other means of obtaining ridicule.

So Bro got the not-so-common name and I have a popular name. I think it’s weird because character-wise, Bro is the popular one and I’m the not-so-common one, lol. Bro has the Chinese middle name and mine is Japanese; looking back now Dad says that I should have had the Chinese middle name because Bro will automatically carry on a Chinese name already. I wonder what Popo would have named me?

The name Grandma gave me means “graceful, peaceful child.” Um, I’m so not, huh? I still love my name though. Apparently, my middle name is also rather common. In high school, I had two friends [in the same friend group, the same age] with the same middle name.

‘Jennifer’ means something like “white wave” or “fair/smooth one.” Hmmm… got the fair- meaning paleness- part correct!

I took 3 years of Spanish in high school. One class, we had FOUR Jennifers, but it was Spanish class so we had to choose Spanish names anyway. I couldn’t think of anything not already taken so [I think] La Profesora called me ‘Juana’ which is ‘Jean’ or ‘Jane’ in English.



[Image from here. I'm gonna change the image if I can find one of my rose photos. I try to use my own images so I know I have the rights to them! I still wanna look into digital watermarks.]