i used to hate my name. i used to wonder why anyone would call their child victoria. vicky or vic for short. i used to think that my parents hated me for giving me that name. until i was in high school and my mother explained to me how i got my name.
there is a sibling ahead of me. his name starts with an "E". in my mother's family, they liked to name their children with the same initial letter. therefore when my mother was pregnant with me, she had planned to name me "Editha" (shivers! although at the time, i liked it. eww!). after i was born, she unfortunately or fortunately forgot what my name was going to be. my father had suggested "vicenta" (shivers! again) after his mother. but mother said i might not like it when i grow up (hells, yeah!) so they made a compromise. victoria. after the queen, since i had this very stern and serious looking face that not even my mother could love. after that, almost everyone else in the tribe had a daughter named 'victoria' and i so hated the name. so my mother decided to change the spelling of my nickname to something more unusual just so my 'vikki' would be different from vicky or vickey (which to me sounded like a doohickey). of course, vikki sounded so girlish, and there is nothing girlish about a girl chasing the stupid bullies in school or beating up my big brother. in fact i was such a tomboy, my friends called me vic or victor. the sisters after me all have 'v' names.
when i was seven, in my forays into the neighbouring cemetery, i saw this beautiful name in brass and in elegant script on a tall marble cross marking a very beautiful tomb. the name: cynthia v. summerfield. from then on, i wanted to be cynthia v. summerfield (but not dead). the name so intrigued me from the beginning so that when i started to write, i used the pseudonym 'c. v. summerfield'. (you see, where i came from, the people had such a distorted colonial mentality that anything american or foreign is better. because of the foreign-sounding name my manuscripts got read, but once they noted the address which was not in an affluent area, promptly got rejected.) also, the v was so apt for my 'victoria' which by then i had come to love. when i lived in europe and in oman, victoria sounded very elegant and classy when spoken, especially by the british. they utter it almost with reverence, i felt like asking them to kneel before me and i'd touch their shoulders with a sword. there is just something regal about the name, don't you think so?
this is a capture of my stitched signature from one of my old cross stitch projects (which i posted on march 11, 2011 see if this works: http://365project.org/summerfield/365/2011-03-11 ). this is how i sign my books (the few anthologies my stories got featured in) and (lately) my photographs.
Dear Editha aren't you fortunate your parents named you Victoria ,I was to be named William after my grandfather and then a cousin born a few months ahead of me got named William so I got named Howard,I always thought I lost out in the naming department but strangely enough I got called Billy at school a popular nickname for William's..And for the first time in all my commenting on your pics I can say Great pic ...Victoria
I am viewing this this AM at school before kids come in......I always wondered about your name! When addressing you as "summerfield" I'd think, I wonder what her first name is, is this her first name, haha. I think "queen names" rock. Maybe that is because my names are Mary and Elizabeth, maybe? :0) I loved that my name was unique in my little town/school. But then, I started getting feedback by high school that this was a "southern double name" and felt very "country cousin." I wanted to be Beth. I had a friend named Beth and she was/is very quiet and calm....very "together." I was always getting called Mary, so back then, I did not like that name. Anyhoo...When I got married, I was going to legally change my name to "Beth Dailey" but did not bother....everyone calls me MB anyway. Because I, too, am a tomboy who grew up with boys. I am so glad you shared about your name. Nice to know!
I wonder if anyone loves their name? I’ve always felt my name, Lisa, is short and ordinary although my mom says when I was born there were no Lisa’s around. I always wanted a longer name with a nickname. It’s funny, though, my maiden name is Bell so many people called (and still do) me “Lisabell”. Now my name is part of my identity, and I can’t imagine being named something different. And for what it’s worth, I think Victoria is a classy, elegant name.
my other names are catherine and elizabeth so i get the queen names thing! lol. of course i knew your name from your email and so now will use it! lovely needlepoint, very cool story vikki!
Lovely name and story. My father named me Janice and I never liked it . I wanted a normal name, I didnt know any other Janice's. My mom said since she named my brother my dad got to name me. She would have chosed Karen. When I was divorced and needed a new start I not only took back my maiden name, I also changed my first name to Jann. I like it better. It fits me.
I love the name Victoria! Yes, it's very regal . . and, of course, I know that you really are Vikki. But, throughout our comments back and forth, I've come to feel that your writing is so superb and somehow, Summerfield FITS you. (in my mind!) You're so bright and uplifting . . and your spirit and kindness reminds me of Summers and fields . . free-spirited. I'll call you Vikki if you want me to. But, you'll always be my "summerfield" girl. :) P.S. I've always liked my name, Karen. Don't know why it was chosen, but I come from a German and French background.
wonderful narrative to accompany your very creative photo, vikki. it is so interesting to read how people feel about their names. i love mine but have no idea why my parents named me what they did.
If I had an English Accent, I would kneel before you and utter your name with the reverence you are due...............!!! But, I have a southern accent which will probably make your giggle. Love your narrative! I've always been fascinated by names. I grew up with the double name (it's a southern thing, I tell people, with my best drawl) -- which everybody but my family and kin keep trying to shorten (how dare they change my name?!?!?!?!) but I like it. My great-grandmothers were Caroline (which I love) and Susan (again, cool) -- ! I always felt it was a pretty good name -- nobody else had one just like it -- although the way my family says it slurred together, you wouldn't realize it's two names. My oldest nephew couldn't manage to say whatever-it-was-they were calling me slurred together, so he called me "SUE" and thus set the pattern for the rest of the nieces and nephews (all 24 of them) and greats (7 of them). But I digress -- I loved your narrative and it made me smile and smile. Esp. how you were roaming around in the cemetery! Whatever your name -- I love your writings and your photos and your beautiful spirit, my sister!!!
Loved your story and it did catch my attention as I am a Vikki also. My mother had a high school friend named "Nikki". She like the spelling of that name and used the spelling for my name.
Phew, there's some big stories here hey! Thanks for sharing yours though Ms Summer, I like it. And just quietly I nearly got named Samantha, I could be Sam but I prefer Danielle! X
@steeler - dear billy, as always, you are so funny you crack me up. my partner's second name is howard and when i get mad at him i recite all his three names including his last name and that's when he knows he's in trouble. but at the same time i like to say (in the fashion of howard wolowitz's mother) hoooooooooooo-waaaaaaaaaaaaaaard!!!!
@espyetta - yes, queen names rock! and i prefer MB rather than 'beth'. MB means business. rock on, MB. thank you.
@lisjam1 - thank you, lisabell. my bff who lives in san francisco, her nickname is lulu and one of my friends would call her lulu-belle. i have three lisa friends and now i have four. :-)
@sunnygreenwood - yours is the ultimate queen name! good thing i got mine before it's been taken! hahaha! thank you, anne.
@jannkc - thank you, jann. and yes, i like jann a lot better than janice. i've been mulling changing my name, too, for quite sometime, ever since one of my stories was shortlisted for an award under the summerfield name.
@lisjam1 - it is quite fun to know people's names as well as what it might have been, isn't it?
@karenann - thank you, karenann. you flatter me. that's why i always have to come up with something creative so you'd continue to do so. :-) i like your name, it makes me sing 'on top of the world' everytime. it's a catchy song, too!
@catsmeowb - i have a very bright niece named camille. i would tease her and call her camilla which she hates notwithstanding that her boyfriend's name is charlie. thank you, camille.
@cscecil - awwww! thank you so much, CS. as for me i prefer and love to call you CS. i think it has more "umph" to it. and i can imagine hearing that slurred sound of your names. okay, i will not laugh, just giggle!
@vikkigm - well, hello there, my name sake. when i was a teenager, one of my favourite singers was Vikki Carr and i found out that her name actually included "Vicenta". i told my mother i still didn't like that name and "victoria was just fine, thank you very much". thank you, vikki. much appreciated. and thanks for the follow, you just rounded my followers' number to a nice and neat 100. i'll check you out in a bit.
@summerfield Thanks. It is funny....even before the "typing/keyboarding " world of shortening everything, everyone ends up calling me MB. It is so funny. It must suit me. I like it! I used to laugh at how my brother (and probably lots of other people) would say my name....so southern...MairBeth.
@espyetta - thank you, mairbeth. hahaha. if you see my baptismal certificate, my name in there has "maria" before the victoria. and whenever anyone called me 'marivic' it's enough to get me in a bad mood. i had a suitor in high school who was quite inventive - insisted on calling me 'mavic'. yaiks!
@summerfield Oh my...we have had some name trails and Tribulations. I did not even go into how my mom named me one name "MaryBeth" but capitalized the B because she liked it taht way. That is why everyone thought my name was Mary and middle name Beth. So after being asked about it all the time, in high school, I wrote it Marybeth. That kind of made my mom sad. So....in college I changed it back. I was glad for the capital B to be back..it looks balanced in pretty in cursive signature. Then, the joke was on Mom and me, after all those years of saying I had no middle name. Somewhere in all that, maybe when I started college, she dug out my birth cert. and it was written up as "first name-mary" and "middle name-Beth." Not what she intended but that is my legal name. Ugh.
What a story. ~ I named all my kids with J names, all the boys have first names starting with J, my daughter has a middle name with it. ~ All of them seem to like their name, but my Jack sometimes wants to be a john. ~ LOL~
@espyetta - in the old days (or during my time, that is) our parents could not be or probably not allowed to be innovative with our names. unlike these days, e.g. the name 'river' or 'apple' or 'tiger' or 'talulah dancing the hula'. my mother did not know that the parish clerk put down the 'maria' to give me a double name. maria actually was given to girls when they are named after somebody in the family, especially grandmothers, kind of like 'junior' or 'jr.' in boys.
@sanera - jack wants to be a john? i hope jack is still a little boy and not a grown up who wants to be a john! hahaha! john f. kennedy's nickname was 'jack', you can tell him. thank you, sam.
very beautiful.. and interesting story of your name.. =)..I have two names.. and one is very old-ish.. I hated to be called like that.. that is why I named my kids very simple and with only one name.. =)
Victoria sounds very British, very prim and proper, very old school. I think of reliability and refinement when I hear "Victoria". Summerfield is very sunny, very hopeful, very witty, and somehow conjures up images of out-of-focus flowers and sun-drenched bokeh. Both are beautiful names and both fit you in different ways. And I think this shot is pretty and Summerfield-like! 8)
I love the close up of your name in the pic, and the interesting story behind it too :) Aren't names such funny things - in some ways they really define us, and in others we shed them at will :)
Your name is as unique as you are- and so is the story attached to it! And I like the clever way you photographed it- your own unique autograph. As always- it's a delight to read and see!
@inertie - thank you. is inertie your name or is that a contraction of two names? i like the names ines, iris and ingrid. when i have to name a character when writing a story those are my start up names.
@myautofocuslife - thank you, livia. most times, people would call me 'virginia' and i would tell them "look at me, do i look like a virginia to you?" whereupon they'd look at me and would simply shake their heads 'no'. hahaha!
@alia_801 - sometimes, i hear a voice and i associate a name to it; then when the name is revealed i am quite disappointed because most of the times the name does not fit the voice and the person. thank you, alia.
@olivetreeann - thank you, ann. as a teenager, my friends and i had this 'phone pal' thing going on and one of the names i had used was 'leslie'. when i had finally met this boy i've been talking on the phone for quite a while, he told me "you don't look like a leslie so what's your real name?" so i said "esperanza". then he started calling me "emely" so i stopped seeing him. 'emely' ugh!
@summerfield =).. nearly seven years egoI started a blog.. and choose Atalet..= inertia as my blog name.. because I was working and mother of two.. couldn't go out.. visit places as much as I wanted.. (I also had an imaginary companion ..jonathan the seagull who was ablet o go everywhere)..Although Atalet is not a name ,there is a very similar woman name Adalet in my language (which means justice.. ) therefore people were easily adapted to my blog name.. and started to callme that way.. mme atalet.. =).. I enjoyed it very much because mme atalet was a much braver.. l far goer.. sharp talker blog person..=D.. and now believe me..when for example I am searching for a monogram I finf myself looking up at the A's.. my real name is Pinar.. which meansa "source" in my language.. this is the story of my name choosing .. I think I sho now on my profile and update my info =) so you are writing stories..I had to know it..you have such a way with words.. =) I am pleased to have known you.. have a great weekend
@bill_fe - that's not her. that tomb had been there since i was a small child. this is freaking me out. i really didn't want to know about this. but a few years ago, my uncle in california asked me if i had married because he noticed my email was vikkisummerfield. the summerfields in manila were their neighbours. turned out that one william summerfield was the "bill" my father's oldest sister used to talk about because she dated him when she was still young. but bill summerfield sort of ditcher her for an american woman. i think later on she and bill had an affair, albeit briefly.
when we were preparing for our high school reunion in 2008, we had a batchmate whose brother, of all people, had married an alice summerfield who was related to the older bill summerfield. they told me that the wife of that bill summerfield was so jealous of my aunt and both families (the summerfields and my aunt's) were so scandalized by the affair it almost break them apart. my highschool batchmate and her brother thought that i could be a daughter of bill summerfield from my aunt. oh, the scandal. it's amazing how all these things unfold but your link sure does creep me out. i just wished to be c.v. summerfield the writer and summerfield the photographer. i am actually planning to change my name to c. victoria summerfield legally. but looking at all those links now, i think i will just be plain vikki summerfield.
@bill_fe - i knew i wrote a story about that dead woman from something i remembered walking around the village with my mother and i was still a little girl at the time, probably 5 or 6. i thought it was in my blog but i just couldn't find it now. maybe one day, i'll scour my blog and find the story with my suppositions.
@bill_fe - watch for my mad hatters' post tonight. somehow relating to this is a portion of the novel i had started to write since a while back. i am so afraid of continuing to write that novel. so many lives would be affecteds so i am waiting for a lot of them to die then i can have the novel published.
sorry, i didn't bring my tablet today. but thanks for the link and thanks for the interest in my shots. much appreciated, amigo!
some of your story sounded a bit familiar. I think it may have been from last year when you were writing short stories to go with images from the past.
April 8th, 2015
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thank you, billy...er...i mean howard!
@lisjam1 - thank you, lisabell. my bff who lives in san francisco, her nickname is lulu and one of my friends would call her lulu-belle. i have three lisa friends and now i have four. :-)
@jannkc - thank you, jann. and yes, i like jann a lot better than janice. i've been mulling changing my name, too, for quite sometime, ever since one of my stories was shortlisted for an award under the summerfield name.
@karenann - thank you, karenann. you flatter me. that's why i always have to come up with something creative so you'd continue to do so. :-) i like your name, it makes me sing 'on top of the world' everytime. it's a catchy song, too!
@catsmeowb - i have a very bright niece named camille. i would tease her and call her camilla which she hates notwithstanding that her boyfriend's name is charlie. thank you, camille.
@vikkigm - well, hello there, my name sake. when i was a teenager, one of my favourite singers was Vikki Carr and i found out that her name actually included "Vicenta". i told my mother i still didn't like that name and "victoria was just fine, thank you very much". thank you, vikki. much appreciated. and thanks for the follow, you just rounded my followers' number to a nice and neat 100. i'll check you out in a bit.
@espyetta - thank you, mairbeth. hahaha. if you see my baptismal certificate, my name in there has "maria" before the victoria. and whenever anyone called me 'marivic' it's enough to get me in a bad mood. i had a suitor in high school who was quite inventive - insisted on calling me 'mavic'. yaiks!
@myautofocuslife - thank you, livia. most times, people would call me 'virginia' and i would tell them "look at me, do i look like a virginia to you?" whereupon they'd look at me and would simply shake their heads 'no'. hahaha!
@olivetreeann - thank you, ann. as a teenager, my friends and i had this 'phone pal' thing going on and one of the names i had used was 'leslie'. when i had finally met this boy i've been talking on the phone for quite a while, he told me "you don't look like a leslie so what's your real name?" so i said "esperanza". then he started calling me "emely" so i stopped seeing him. 'emely' ugh!
http://records.ancestry.com/cynthia_v_summerfield_records.ashx?pid=185871676
when we were preparing for our high school reunion in 2008, we had a batchmate whose brother, of all people, had married an alice summerfield who was related to the older bill summerfield. they told me that the wife of that bill summerfield was so jealous of my aunt and both families (the summerfields and my aunt's) were so scandalized by the affair it almost break them apart. my highschool batchmate and her brother thought that i could be a daughter of bill summerfield from my aunt. oh, the scandal. it's amazing how all these things unfold but your link sure does creep me out. i just wished to be c.v. summerfield the writer and summerfield the photographer. i am actually planning to change my name to c. victoria summerfield legally. but looking at all those links now, i think i will just be plain vikki summerfield.
sorry, i didn't bring my tablet today. but thanks for the link and thanks for the interest in my shots. much appreciated, amigo!