Neever Gonna Get It Right

My parents spent a long time picking names for my sister and me. Their main criteria were that they be traditional Gaelic names and that they couldn’t be shortened or ‘butchered.’ I got Niamh (Neeve), and my sister got Orlaith (Or-la). They didn’t want anyone coming up with lame nicknames for us either, so I went through childhood and most of college without a nickname. I hated it. I remember wishing I could be cool and have one. Even girls named Jennifer got shorted to Jenny, and Matthews and Christophers got Matt and Chris. I was Niamh. Always. Well, at least as long as the person talking to me could pronounce my name.

When we first moved to the US, one of the first things my parents did was look for a school for my sister and me. Being the Irish Catholics they are, they went straight to the parish priest, and Orlaith and I ended up at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic School for the better part of a decade. By the end of 8th Grade, I was all set with that and entered the big bad world of Public School.

Before my first day of First Grade, my mom took me to the school to meet my teacher and tell her how to say my name. That was great until my teacher was sick one day and we had a substitute. I’ll never forget Mrs. Christiansen. She was pretty with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a kind face. But when she called on me to read out loud, instead of calling me ‘Neeve,’ she called me ‘Ni-am-ha.’ I was a mute as a child, so I didn’t correct her, but I’m sure I turned bright red and probably stuttered through the first sentence due to this total embarrassment.

A few years later, I was in the lunch-line waiting for my pizza. My classmate’s dad was volunteering lunch duty that day. Instead of just looking up and checking off my name, he decided to say it out loud. Except he called me Ni-am-i (rhymes with Miami). Everyone heard, I turned bright red, and almost dropped my pizza in my rush to get away.

I hated the first day of school in high school because it meant telling eight different people how to say my name. At least by then I had found my voice, though. One teacher had randomly taken a course in Gaelic at Yale one summer, so she knew how to say it. In college my Irish Lit professor knew how to say it (go figure) as did my Shakespeare professor. He even knew the story behind it (future post. maybe.)

By the time I got to college, I was comfortable with my name. I liked having a different name; it meant people remembered me. They may not remember ‘Neeve,’ but they always remembered ‘Ni-am.’ I guess I still didn’t like not having a nickname, though, because one day during lunch, my friend Will told me I was obsessed with nicknames. All I had talked about for 4 days was the fact that I didn’t have a nickname. I quit talking about nicknames until later that weekend. It was Halloween, and everyone got dressed up for the party. I was a ballerina, Orlaith was the construction worker from the Village People, and Will was a dead transvestite hooker. The next morning, the three of us and our friend Mike were talking about the night, and Will called my sister Whore-la due to the fact that she managed to get caught making out with some guy in the corner. Mike piped up, ‘Hey Niamh, how do you feel about that? Your sister got some this weekend and she got a nickname!’ Mike barely finished his sentence when Will said, ‘No, that’s not true. Niamh got a nickname. It’s Neever, ‘cause she’s Neever Gonna Get Any!’

I turned cherry red, and everyone broke into uncontrollable laughter. I was so pleased with my new nickname that I didn’t bother telling the guys that I also made out with a guy dressed up as Ludacris; I just didn’t get caught. Smiggle.

The nickname stuck, even though most people don’t know where it came from. Still, it didn’t help when trying to tell people my real name. During the summer after college, I spent Friday nights out at bars with friends instead of sleeping the 8+ hours I used to sleep to get ready for races. At first it was fun explaining my name to people, but then it got tedious and annoying…So I started telling people my name was Kate. My middle name is Catherine, so Kate was easy to remember. But then Kate got boring, so each night, I’d tell my friends a different alias. The best one was Gertrude. My friends played along, which made it believable. One night, I managed to convince a guy that my name was Gertrude, that my close friends call me Trudy, and that I tell guys my name is Kate because I hate Gertrude. Later, he asked me for my number. I grabbed his phone and started entering it, but realized I had no idea which name I had given him. ‘Hey Michael,’ I said, smiling as sweetly as I could, ‘What’s my name?’ He thought I was testing him to see if he really remembered my name at all, so he said, ‘It’s Gertrude but you go by Kate because you hate it.’ So I drunkenly entered a fake name and my real phone number into his phone.

He called while I was at work on Monday and left a voicemail:
Hey Kate. It’s Michael from Saturday night. Just calling to see how you are. Give me a call when you get a chance.

What was I supposed to do? I knew I had a confession to make, so I called him on my way home.
Niamh: Hey. So I have small, very small, minute confession to make.
Michael: Umm. Okay. What is it?
Niamh: Well, my name isn’t Kate.
Michael: I know. It’s Gertrude. You let your friends call you Trudy.
Niamh: Well, that’s not true either. It’s Niamh. I hate giving my real name at bars because it’s hard to explain when music is blasting.
Michael: It’s what?
Niamh: It’s Niamh. Like ‘Eve’ with an N at the beginning.
Michael: Oh. Niamh. I get it. So why did you not want to give your real name?
Niamh: Well, how many Niamhs have you met? You could be some psycho-stalker for all I know.
Michael: Ha. That’s hilarious. But wait – you gave me your real number! Promise your real name is Niamh?
Niamh: Yes, I promise.

At least he had a good sense of humor about it. I’ve since given up on telling people fake names, but I didn’t realize that there was a chance people might not believe me when I told them my real name. Take the time I met Chuckblog. We met at this year’s indoor Big East Championships, and my sister was also with me. I told him my name, and then Orlaith told him hers, and Chuckblog goes, ‘Wait, you guys are messing with me.’ It took a little convincing from us and Danny that we were indeed telling the truth and not taking advantage of his hung over state.

With all of that said, I’d like to thank Mom and Dad for making sure my life would always be interesting, my friends for playing along whenever I decided to use an alias, Will for my nickname, Orlaith for making out with that guy on Halloween, and Katie for coming up with the witty title to this blog.