Family names

You can tell you probably don't have the best name in the world when you work to find out what it means, only to have a person hesitate before they tell you. Except for the fact of my grandfather, I have been ashamed of my family name, Lepesqueur. It's a mouthful, everyone screws it up. I do like being French. But that's about it.

My cousin, Gene and I were of like minds. We both altered the pronunciation of our name so it would sound better. Instead of the hard, consonant sounds of Le-pes-cur we would pronounce our name as Le-pes-cure as in, 'we are good and helpful.' Given my French teacher's hesitation in dissecting my name, I knew it wasn't a good meaning. She summarized my name as either fisherman or sinner. I would tell people that my name meant bad fisherman. My guess is, she give me the nicer version of my name. Maybe the family name means 'cursed' or 'cursed cur people' as in ' dirty yellow dogs.'

A made crystal clear how much he despises the name I've chosen, Yannotti. I did hope, since we're not married, that the baby could carry both our names. He's very territorial about names, unfortunately. But I like a good Italian name. My ex's family aren't the only Yannottis.

The upcoming family structure will be unorthodox but family's family, regardless of last names.