My name was supposed to be Heidi Eliza. I don’t know what was the inspiration for the first name, but the second name was the union of my parents’ names. But then my dad, who is superstitious when it comes to numerology, discovered that such a name combined with my middle and last name would not result to a good number. And so he crossed out the second name and changed the common spelling of the first name just so my name would be numerically lucky.
Numerically lucky it may be, but it caused me plenty of non-numerical problems. I’ve always hated my name and wished my dad had not been so superstitious and made me keep my second name instead. And as if the name wasn’t bad enough (to me, at least), there was the matter of the spelling. I have yet to meet the person who can spell my name right the first time I say it. The most common spelling is HEIDI (after the classic) and next in line are HAIDEE or HAYDEE. It used to irk me when my name got misspelled, so I’d correct each one who spelled it wrong, but after awhile I just gave up. Spell it whatever you want!
How I wish that was the end of my name woes, but there’s more. Common question at first day roll call: “Hey-di…Hay-di…how do you pronounce this?” In my kindergarten years I told my teacher it was pronounced the way my parents pronounced it (and therefore the right way)…”Hay-di.” But in senior prep I had a classmate nicknamed I.D. (his initials) and my meddling teacher got tired of the common mix up due to our nicknames sounding alike, so she mandated that from then on, my name was to be pronounced as “Hey-di.” Meek child that I was, I agreed, and the pronunciation stuck for all the 16 years that I stayed in that school that I never left (the loyalty award medal they gave me is not enough reward). Long after I.D. and I were no longer classmates and even when I was old enough to impose the proper way to say my name, I couldn’t anymore, because old friends who continued to be my classmated had gotten used to calling me “Heyds.” Finally, even my own parents went with the flow and introduced me as “Hey-di” to their new acquaintances. It was only when I entered the workforce that I was finally known as “Hay-di,” when no more old friends could confuse the new people I introduced myself to. So it’s easy to tell by the way a person calls me, how he knows me. Relatives and officemates call me “Hay-di” while school friends and acquaintances call me “Hey-di.” Now that I’m interacting with people who call me both in one setting, everyone ends up confused, especially me. It’s time to right the wrong committed for a couple of decades. From now on, I answer only to HAY-DI!
