Knox Box of Miscellany

Dawn Knox – A rearranger of words into something hopefully meaningful…

How Important is Your Name?

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Dawn! Well, that's my name!

Dawn! Well, that’s my name!

How important is you name? I recently heard someone on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day spot, talking about the importance of names, which I found quite thought provoking. This coincided with the showing of the remake of BBC’s Roots, where we see the significance of the protagonist’s name. I watched the original series in the seventies and although I remember very little, the name of the African slave, Kunta Kinte, remained with me since then. He identified so closely with the name he’d been given by his father, that he suffered great hardship rather than accept the name, Toby, which his owner bestowed upon him. (As I type this, Chicken George hasn’t yet appeared in the remake, and I can’t remember anything about him except his name, which shows how memorable an unusual name can be!)

It’s very interesting to see how much significance people place on their names. I’ve never been keen on my name, Dawn. I think it caused me embarrassment when I was young because in those days it was fairly unusual and when people asked my name, they often asked me to repeat it. This was sometimes  followed by a look of incomprehension and then – as now – I hate to be stared at!

Since then, I’ve known several Dawns. In fact, in the school where I worked for several years, there were three of us and one of them worked in the same department as me! We were two Dawns who were similar in height, with similar coloured hair, in the same department and who sat at the same desk!
I don’t really know why, but I still don’t really like the name Dawn (sorry if you’re reading this and Dawn is your name). It has a lovely meaning and I adore the time of day when the sunrises, but I think I simply don’t like the sound of the word. In my teens, I decided I wouldn’t mind being called Nicola, which is my middle name and one of my school friends still calls me Nik, even now. Thankfully, Nik didn’t catch on because it really doesn’t go with my surname – Knox. Nik Knox. Hmm. I’m glad I stuck to Dawn!

So, what’s your name? What’s its significance? Do you like it? And if you don’t, is it the meaning, the sound or something completely different that you aren’t keen on? Let me know!

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