Kids made fun of my unusual name growing up. It shaped my personality, and I’ve embraced it.

The author (not pictured) used to have nicknames made up because of her unusual name.

I came as a total surprise to pretty much everybody. My mother, who was going on 40, was told she was going through early menopause, which explained the weight gain, the depression, the exhaustion, the mood swings, and the general feeling that something was not as it should be.

She was well into her second trimester when the doctors said, realized they misinterpreted the symptoms, and she and my father were sent home reeling with the implications of having a newborn coming when they were looking forward to an empty nest as their two teenagers were preparing to leave home.

My mother must have been too overwhelmed to enter into the battle over names. If it’s a boy, she said, I’d like to name him David. And that was her last word on the topic.

My dad wanted a common name, but my sister disagreed

Nobody was much concerned about boy names. But my father and my 16-year-old sister had very strong opinions about girl names. My father wanted simple. Names that didn’t put on airs by having too many letters or sounding too “high class.” Mary, Jane, or Ann would do nicely. Common names that implied a well-behaved, manageable, low-maintenance kind of girl.

My sister was having none of it. She didn’t want her little sister to have to be a “one of many” in every social setting or to feel like a “plain Jane” or Ann or Mary.

This battle went on until my sister saw a newspaper article about a woman named Dixie Diane. It caught her fancy and, maybe due to the limited number of letters or because he had known a “Dixie” in his youth and found her to be an acceptable role model, Dad agreed.

A truce was said, my mother sighed in relief, and when I was finally born, my birth certificate read Dixie Diane.

My relationship with my name changed during school

For the first five years, life with a name like Dixie was very much like life with a name like Mary, Jane, or Ann. And then school happened.

In the company of my peers a name like Dixie meant being teased, even tormented, with nowhere to hide. If the teacher called on “Dixie,” it could only be me. If anyone yelled “Dixie,” I could be almost certain they meant me. If they yelled “Dixie Cup,” there was still a higher-than-average chance they meant me. “Dixie Dynamite” was 100% likely to be me. And if you heard “Hey Dix,” followed by insane giggles, it was a safe bet they were pointing at me.

I particularly resented the “dynamite” as I didn’t consider myself all that volatile. And not having yet been introduced to slang for male anatomical parts, I was baffled by the insane giggles. As it turns out, Dixie is the feminine diminutive of Richard, and the nickname sounds the same, but it’s just not as amusing when applied to a male as it is when you’re referencing an easily embarrassed girl with a tendency to violently blushing.

Once, in my teens, the name was more of an asset. In a sea of Jennifers, Michelles, Lisas, and Kimberlys there was only one other Dixie in all of my high school and we weren’t even in the same grade.

I’ve embraced my unusual name

Kids weren’t the only ones to think my name was an invitation to innuendo and amusement. I once called home from college person-to-person, and the ATT operator started singing, “I wish I were in Dixie, away, away …” Yeah, it wasn’t in his job description and probably not legally defensible, but this was the 1980s.

Not all song references were kind, such as”The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down,” for instance, or “Dixie Chicken.” But the melancholy lines of “Baby Blue” by Badfinger made up for it.

After I married and acquired the name Gillaspie, there were the inevitable references to the late, great Dizzy Gillespie. Which made my name both complimentary and memorable.

I have to wonder if I would have developed a milder personality if Dad had his way and I’d ended up a Mary, Jane, or Ann. I doubt it, I rather think Dixie suited the person I was meant to be.

All in all, when we ask “what’s in a name,” I believe it comes down to what you put into it. There have been plenty of unforgettable Marys, Janes, and Anns. My choice is to simply be the best version of Dixie I know how to be.