By any other name

My baby daughter recently told me she has always liked her name. That made me very happy.
She is named for my paternal great grandmother. I chose her name and her sister's very carefully since I have never liked my own.
Their brother's name was chosen for me, essentially, as he is the only male bearing the surname of his father's family left. My husband's aunt stressed to me how important it was to follow a long family tradition in naming a boy baby.
The girls I got to name without restriction other than a couple of directives from their Dad. He wanted them to be named what they are to be called. No nicknames. That was based on his own experience. And he wanted the spelling of their names to be ordinary. It seems his sister could never get a souvenir at Stuckey's because of the unusual spelling of her name.
I could (and did) work with those and have been as happy my children's names as I have been unhappy with my own. Then my mother told me in conversation what she almost named me. The story goes that she went to see the movie "Giant" not long before I was born and fell in love with the name of the Texas ranch the Elizabeth Taylor/Rock Hudson characters lived on.
"Reatta?!" I said. "You were going to name me 'Reatta?'"
Then she rocked my world even further by telling me she thought the middle name "Renee" would've gone perfectly with the name "Reatta."
Forget my former complaints. I now know things could have been a lot worse for me name wise.
My sister's name, by the way, is Karen Kay. I picked that name, too,  when I was three.
It came from a little  book I loved. If my sister has an issue with her name she should consider that the age of her namer. Or ask mother what she had in mind!