Well, I’ve made it. Thirty posts in thirty days. I hope you weren’t too bored by the experience. It was harder than I thought it would be, as I was never sure what to write to keep people reading. Finally I just gave up and decided to write what was in my head (even if it made me look insane) and hope that people found it entertaining. Or at least intriguing enough to come back the next day. I’ve gained new readers since I started, and I hope you all stick around, even when I’m not posting daily. I really like this contact with the outside world, so I’m definitely going to keep up with it. Thanks to you guys I have recipe sites up the wazoo (gluten full AND gluten-free, thanks!), full canisters on my counter tops, many many ideas on what to try and make next, 4 new cameras to look into, and a whole mess of blogs I’m addicted to. It sounds cheesy, but when LL tagged me for my first meme, and I got all sorts of new hits to my blog, I got a little overly excited. Truthfully, that feeling hasn’t gone away yet, and I surely hope it doesn’t for a long while. I’m enjoying this, and I hope you are too!
So for my final blog of NaBloPoMo (don’t worry, I’m only taking a couple days to rest my brain and then I’ll be back) I decided to tell y’all a little about my name and how I got it. Aren’t you excited?
Denora is my real name. Not something I made up for online purposes, but the actual name on my birth certificate. It’s pronounced, amazingly enough, exactly like it looks. Deh-nor-ah. For reasons that I’m still unable to understand, people cannot pronounce it (or are too lazy to try). I have been called many MANY different names like Donna, Deborah, Dolores, Darla, Dendra, Deanna, Nora (which I HATE), Laura, and Darlene. Yanno, because Darlene looks AND sounds like Denora. Yeah.
I used to hate that it was unusual, because, aside from it apparently being unpronounceable, I could never get anything that was personalized unless I sent away for it. You never ever see Denora on the key chains or mugs in souvenir shops. My parents, completely sapped of all creativity after naming me, named my younger sister Jennifer. The most popular girl name, according to the Social Security Administration, from 1970 to 1984. That’s just the years it was number 1. That’s not counting the years it was in the top 10. Also according to the SSA: “Denora is not in the top 1000 names for any year of birth in the last 100 years.” Not so coincidently, I’ve never met another Denora. Ever.
So how did I get such a fascinating name? Could it be a wonderful ancestor’s name, passed down over generations complete with legends attached? Could it be in recognition of an unsung hero somewhere in my family history? Nope! My dad and his drunk college buddies made it up. I kid you not. The story goes that dad and his friends were a wee bit intoxicated (read: completely shnockered) and were mocking and meshing people’s names. My name, believe it or not, is a drunken smooshing and slurring together of the names Dorla, Liora, and Lorian.
Dorla + Liora + Lorian = Denora? um, huh?
But that’s the story. A few years later when my mom got pregnant with me and they got married (yes, in that order) Dad suddenly recalled this smooshed together name, and suggested it. Mom loved it, and voila! Here I am. I think if I was a boy I was going to be named Corey, which is ironic as I LOVE that name…for a girl.
So, I’m Denora, and my sister is Jennifer. My dad has 4 younger sisters, the youngest being 8 years behind him. He was allowed to name his youngest sister when she was born. He picked Jennifer. That’s right ladies and gentlemen. My dad has named 3 kids in his life, and 2 of them are named Jennifer. Creativity is apparently not his strong suit. But I now love my name, since no one else has it. I’ve often considered dropping my last name altogether and doing the Cher or Madonna single name thing. Alas, I was too lazy to do so, and have since found that changing your name is a pain in the ass. So I’ll stick with this one.
So there you have it. I am Denora. THE Denora, as I’ve never met another. Of course, should I meet another, I’ll still be THE Denora, since…well, it just sounds cool to me.
Dude, I know why you’re named Denora. It rhymes with “menorah.”
Duh.
[...] use their real name to e-mail me. (For the record, Denora IS my real name, as I’ve explained before.) I was told that I was a “horrible person for trying to trap a man into having a child with [...]
[...] people on the planet, and yet I hardly ever talk about him here (Except to tell you all how he was boozing it up as a college student and that’s why I’m named [...]
Hilo Denora,
My name is Denora also I was googling the name and found your website. I too was borning in 1979. The picture at your heading did you create or does it actually exsist somewhere. Intresting enough in these most recent years I have been finding more people with the name Denora. I to thought there would not be another like mine. The spanish spell it with an H (Denorah). Just wanted to write maybe we should get a Denora site going and invite all the Denora’s around and see how many we come up with.