Sarameg: that I heard this am that Texas has the highest number of employed people without health insurance

I can confirm this. It's a big deal, not that the Lege is doing anything about it.

Gud: I discovered that when you go by your middle name, that it's very anticlimatic when people discover your middle name.

As a fellow goes-by-middle-namer, I can also confirm this.

OT: HUGE congratulations to Little Man Isaac, Burrell, and the Burrell-family folks! Isaac was on our short list, too, 'cause it's a freakin' awesome name.

Kjeld, which is -- Swedish, I think?

Almost always Danish or Norwegian.

The world generalizes to MY experience

Ooh. Look. New tagline.

My family's very big on family names. Annoyingly, the name my dad adopted at 18 sounds a lot like my mother's family nick, so it can get confusing on the phone. My mother has her given first name, used by many friends and all colleagues. Colleagues also hyphenate her maiden and married names. Old friends and family call her by the nick. Perfectly clear.

My dad's nickname is Brother Moore. Simply because his older brother Leston goes by Brother Les.

I used to be unsure of how to spell my mother's (very unsecret) maiden name, so half the time I used my maternal grandmother's maiden name instead.

Not efficient.

should there be name talk in a thread with no name? Won't it grow up all twisted?

One thing I loved about being in TX was mothers' ability to say their childrens' names as multiple syllables no matter what. A friend had children Zach, Will, and Matt all of which were 2-3 syllables.

A friend of mine down here (actually she's in DC now) was telling me that when she was in elementary school and learning about syllables, the teacher had them clap the syllable in their names. The teacher had her in tears telling her that Kim was only one syllable KIM and not the two syllable KEE-Yum that she though it was

Local school principal Mr. Apple named his twin daughters Candy and Taffy--no, for real.

Friend since grade school wanted to name a daughter Joyce, called Joy. Married a guy named Sorrow. Named babygirl Jane, called Jennie.

DH comes from a Slavic country where middle names are considered effete, or sommat. The USArmy gave him NMI as a middle name.

G'morning. For another four minutes here.

have food! am getting better.

40 invitations out and off my desk. info for Bd member #1 getting done 10 pages complete - 4 more to do.

Middle names. Is it weird to stop using a middle name if you've got one? At one point around college or so I decided I was too confused as to whether I was supposed to give my middle name or not, so I would just stop using it. After all, my name is unique, so it wouldn't make a difference in distinguishing me. But then when I got to the practice of law I found out everyone uses their middle initial professionally. And recently I've become "part of the story" in a case and someone asked me what it was to talk about me in a brief. Now I feel weird asking them not to use it.

I changed my profile address. I don't know why I'm annoucing that. Also, I don't know how to get Firefox to work with the gmail RSS feed.

Is it weird to stop using a middle name if you've got one?

I use mine because a) I really like it and b) my name is really terribly common. For the longest time as a kid, I didn't like it (or care) so I didn't use it. Though my mom did if I was in trouble.