02 September 2009

How I got my name. . .

I am not that creative of a person when it comes to writing stories and such. What I do well, I think, is to remember details from things people tell me. Well, as I get older, the details are getting fuzzier from more recent stories. . . but that is a whole different story.
As a little girl, I distinctly remember my mom relating the story of how I was named Elizabeth. This is the first version that I remember. It goes something like this:
While pregnant with me, my mom and dad go to the temple to do work for people who have passed on. So, you are assigned one individual to act as proxy for. My mom would get the name of an Elizabeth to do a couple times in a row. Before they go the third time, my parents decide that if my mom gets an Elizabeth this time, then if the baby is a girl, she should be named Elizabeth. So, third time, you got it, it was an Elizabeth. After they decided that, she didn't get another Elizabeth for a very long time. Thus I was named Elizabeth, and they claim that I picked it myself. Nice story I thought.
As I approach my preteens, the story changes a little to be that this happened when my mom was pregnant with my brother David. Little less impressive for me, but hey, it works I guess. I did show up just over 11 1/2 months after David. What is a few years in a story.
Well, a few years goes by; I relate the story AGAIN to someone, as I understand it. My mom was there and corrects me again. She insists that it was when she was pregnant with me, not David.
Then I was telling this story to my hubby a couple of weeks ago, as we were sitting around visiting with my parents and. . . . you guessed it, the story changed AGAIN! Now she is fairly certain that it occurred while pregnant with me, but it was every THIRD visit to the temple, she would get an Elizabeth and then you can throw in the temples of Idaho Falls and Manti into the story somehow. She was fairly certain this time it occurred the third time in Manti.
My mom claims she never changed the story. I'm just not that good to come up with all the different versions of it myself.
I guess in the end it does not matter. I was just named after some dead people that I am not related to. There you go. I do like my name, and I would encourage all to name at least one child some form of Elizabeth, because it is so cool. Then again, there are over 75 different forms of Elizabeth, so you have plenty to choose from.

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