And to think, I used to complain-- bitterly-- about Caridad being my middle name. At least it's a real, honest-to-goodness saint's name. Unpronounceable if you're not of Spanish background or don't know the language,

Huh? Isn't it pronounced basically like it's spelled?

I love that name, anyway. We had a Charity in my high school class who was Caridad in Spanish class. It was funny because she was actually Cuban but her family used the anglicized version of the name.

We wanted to go with uncommon but not weird names for the kids. I'm pretty happy with the result.

Of course, it also got another author who uses the name all up in arms because she'd been "branding the name."

Okay, what?

(Also, hard to pronounce? Really?)

I think people should consider first name/last name match - if you've got a really out there or hard to pronounce/spell last name, go simpler on the first name. If your last name is Smith, you get more leeway.

All the oddly named people I knew gave their children firmly traditional names. Like all their childhood miseries stemmed from their name and they wouldn't ever inflict them on their own progeny.

I worked with a man named Kim who believed it had been a valuable experience, growing up with a "girl's name," so he gave his kids gender-ambiguous names as well.

I'm imagining that Caridad is hard to pronounce right.

I kind of like Sistine. At least it's pronouncable on first sight.

Of course, it also got another author who uses the name all up in arms because she'd been "branding the name."

WTF.

Oh yeah. At the time, she was also writing for Pocket, albeit, within a different division, and we happened to share the same agent as well. She was Quite Put Out that both the publisher and our mutual agent had said it was okay for me to use Caridad. When my agent pointed out that it was, in fact, my legal middle name, she said it didn't matter, that she'd spent all this time and money establishing herself as Caridad (her real first name), blah, blah, blah, that basically, the house and the agent should have sided with her because She Came First.

Mind you, a lot of these complaints only surfaced after I started winning awards and she'd mistakenly receive congratulatory emails that were meant for me.

To this day, she holds a grudge-- we both happened to be on a panel at RWA National in July and when the librarians to whom we were speaking (along with another author) came in, one of them exclaimed, "Oh my, two authors named Caridad-- is that both your real name?" and she replied, "Well, it's my real first name."

Huh? Isn't it pronounced basically like it's spelled?

It is, but people who aren't familiar with the name or don't know Spanish pronunciations tend to pronounce it Care-ee-dad, whereas in Spanish, it's much softer sounding, more Cah-ree-dahd, with a very slight roll on the "r".

You cannot expect Americans to roll "r"s. Most of their tongues just don't do that. Poor tongues.

Isn't Caridad just Carrie-dodd, with a Spanish inflection?

edit: being in Utah, I guess I have an advantage on Spanish names. In Pennsylvania, Juanita is spelled Wanita.

And there's the ever popular "Mo-jayve Desert" for Mojave

You cannot expect Americans to roll "r"s. Most of their tongues just don't do that. Poor tongues.

Nope. Which is why I very firmly used C. when signing my name and really, it never came up until the publisher decided that Barbara Ferrer wasn't "Latina-sounding enough." (You should've heard the blue streak I cursed when I heard that.) I figured I'd better give them something I had a fighting chance of answering to rather than letting them stick me with something like Carmen Margarita Guadalupe Esperanza de los Santos.

If you think I'm exaggerating, keep in mind they wanted to name Adiós to My Old Life "Light My Fuego."

Publishing marketing types don't get out much, I've discovered.