What's in a name?

Lindsey has two syllables. Just two, and it's fairly simple to pronounce. And yet, I find that people rarely call me Lindsey.

Don't get me wrong, I love nicknames. I've known people with neat nicknames all my life, and I've always been jealous. My nicknames aren't neat or clever, just... lazy.

For instance, most of the men in my life call me Hays. For that matter, most of my sorority sisters do too. For the girls, it was a way to differentiate between the three Lindsey's in our pledge class; for the boys, I think it sprang from my unerring ability to be one of the guys. And that's not always on purpose. The coaches at my high school always referred to me as Hays as well, and I think that had to do with my dad's coaching status... somehow his status in the athletic world made me sporty by proxy-- in reality, I'm far from sporty. Sometimes I think about just introducing myself as Hays just to skip the go-between step to the inevitable, but then I figure someone will eventually ask, "What's your last name, Hays?" and then a messy explanation would ensue.

Grown men call me Miss Hays most of the time. That's not a nickname, I guess, but it's not what I'm used to either. I guess they feel like the gentlemen thing to do is to acknowledge me with a, "Miss Hays," and a tip of their invisible hat. It's an antiquated and nice gesture, but it still feels odd to me. And the gentility of it makes me respond in a Southern belle accent that is uncommon in my usual vernacular. A growing population is calling me Miss Hays as a result of my increasing presence in the school system. It's funny when my student's pass my mom and my usual pew in church and say a quick, "Hi, Miss Hays," because my mom waves and then whispers, "Do I know that child?" It's kind of a strange place to be in life when I'm explaining to my mother that I'm Miss Hays, not her.

The typical nickname for Lindsey's is Linds, and for some reason it's the least commonly used nickname in my life. In fact, I probably refer to myself as Linds more than anyone else. That seems odd to read at first, that I refer to myself in third person, but let's not pretend we're not all guilty of talking to ourselves. For the most part, I don't respond to myself, and that's a good sign, I think.

My mom calls me Lindsey Lou in what I think of as "maternal moments"-- you know, those times when Mom becomes Mommy, like when you're sick or heartbroken. Or in times when we're feeling most familial, like sitting around the living room at my grandmother's house for Christmas. It's kind of rare and special to me, and even though I hated it as a child-- something about Lou being a boy's name bothered me-- I've loved it for a while now. In fact, you could just call me Lou now and it wouldn't bother me in the least.

When I was a recruitment counselor at Auburn, I was required to change my name on Facebook so that potential sorority recruitees couldn't look me up and find out what sorority I was in. So I had to change my name to "LC Hays." Unfortunately, the popular reality show of the time was Laguna Beach, starring LC, or Lauren Conrad. I'm sure many people thought I was just trying to jump on that bandwagon, but that's just not true. But alas, LC caught on in some of the circles I mingle about in.

I don't know what got me thinking about this... I think someone called me Miss Hays on Facebook, and I realized how seldom people actually call me Lindsey. So there's that, my thoughts for today.