Your name. It’s something you hear right from the moment you are born. You learn to answer to it. You learn to say it. You learn to write it. You learn to either love it or hate it. Apparently, if you’re my daughter, you also learn you can change it! Yeah, that’s right. I think my daughter is driving a one person petition to change her name. I don’t know why because I think she has a beautiful name. If we named her something ugly or stupid then maybe I could see her reasoning.

So, She goes around telling people her name is “Mina” (Mean-a). Her name doesn’t start with an “M” nor does it rhyme or sound anything like “Mina”. Still, she is “Mina”. She does it in the house. She does it in front of family. And now she’s starting to do it in public. This, folks, was my worst fear come true. At her cousin’s birthday party over the weekend, one of the worker’s at the little play gym went around the circle asking the kids their names. Since she can’t say her real name yet, I expected my husband to answer for her. But, before he could open his mouth she blurted out “I’m Mina.” I laughed. What else could I do? She knows her name is not Mina because I correct 100 times a day. Still, she’s Mina. Even when I yell at her she says, “No, I’m Mina.” So, then I yell at Mina too!

It’s all silly now, but I’m really afraid she’s going to call herself Mina when she goes to pre-school in the fall. The teacher is going to look on her list and realize she doesn’t have a Mina! She’ll make friends and they’ll call her Mina. She’s going to have split personalities. Ahh!!!

Everyone asks me where she got the name from. There is a show she watches and the lady’s name is “Nina”. So, I’m thinking she’s getting it from there. That is truly the only thing I can think of. I need to call Nina and tell her to change her name!

So what’s a mom to do in the “Mina time”? I guess I’ll keep correcting her and hope this is just one of those annoying phases!