What’s in a name?

For twenty-one years, something has haunted me: my name, Maeve Ariana Raphelson. No one in the world seems capable of either spelling or pronouncing any of these three (there is one ‘n’ in Ariana, thank you very much). Long ago, I gave up trying to correct substitute teachers and sometimes my friends felt the need to do so for me. I suppose that is their prerogative. Oh look, I just had to add “Ariana’ to the dictionary on my spell check.
Why this rant? A side effect of having an unusual name is that there are very few cheap gifts with my name on them. You know, when you go to a gift shop and see key chains, shot glasses and license plates and other things with names already printed on them. Whenever I pass such a display, I automatically look to see if they have something that says “Maeve”. They have things like “Makenzie” and “Madison” and even “Mikayla” but no “Maeve”. I have always told myself, “Some day, some glorious day, I will be in Ireland and I will see a cheesy gift shop and there will be something with my name on it”.
I am now the proud owner of a keychain with a leprechaun on it that says “My lucky Irish Leprechaun” on one side and on the other side…”Maeve”. It is protected under patent S 83605. I still can’t believe it. I keep checking it to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating when I bought it, in a rush as the store was closing. Dreams really do come true.

Watch out...it has a patent!