Growing up, I was known as Kathy by my eye doctor. I went to him from age 6 until my early 20s. It wasn�t until I was about 16 that I found the nerve to tell him he was wrong all those years.

I wasn�t upset, really. It was an understandable mistake. Kathy is a far more common nickname for Katherine than is Kay. And as I think about the scared six-year- old I was when I first visited him�a child who assumed that getting glasses meant I was going to eventually go blind�I realize I didn�t have the wherewithal to correct him, a doctor. Adults were always right, right?

Actually, I grew to enjoy being Kathy. It was like an alias. A secret identity. A nom de plume without the plume.

If my mother had had her way, I would have been named Tanya, after a favorite high school teacher. My grandmother objected to this name, though, and I was ultimately named after her older sister, who died just a few years before I was born. The nickname Kay came from her, too, this unknown great aunt who was model pretty but had a short and unhappy life.

An interesting legacy.

Thinking about this makes me wonder what it would be like if we had a chance to name ourselves. I�ve heard of some cultures which give childhood names at birth then bestow more accurate names based on who the person turned out to be. That makes a lot of sense, really. We all know people who just never grew into their names.

To be fair, naming children is hard. Babies don�t have a lot of personality at first. You don�t even know this bundle of flesh and you�re required to give it a name that will fit through various ages and stages. Something that will last a lifetime.

During my pregnancy I purchased the requisite baby name book, but I didn�t really think I�d need it. I was convinced I was having a boy. Woman�s intuition, you know. In which case, the name choice would be very simple. My husband�s family had started a little tradition of naming the first boy after his father and grandfather. So, our son would be named Robert Charles. Easy.

About a month before my due date I started to zero in on girls names--just in case.

After my daughter was born I called my mother from the hospital and said, "So, how do you like the sound of Victoria Elizabeth?" "Well, that sounds good," Mom replied. "That�s good, because she�s been born!"

We could have named her Stephanie. Or Heather. Or Holly. I�m glad we didn�t.

At first we got questions wondering if we would call her Vicky or Tori. I reasoned that Tori would be for when she was a rebellious teenager and into wearing black and sighing at her parents� idiocy for not knowing that Victoria just didn�t suit her.

I suppose no matter what name or nickname you give a child, at some point they will decide they don�t like it. Maybe Michael feels his name is too common. Or perhaps that cute, unique spelling of Jessikah stops being cute when it takes teachers six months before they even get close to spelling it right.

I�ve noticed that men who dislike their names tend to either use their first name as an initial or drop the offending first name altogether. This is rarely an option for women (J.K. Rowling excepted), whose main option is to counter an annoying name with bizarre or cutesy nickname. I once interviewed a well-known, well-respected alumna of my college whose name was Susan but she inexplicably preferred to be known as "Bunnie."

For both sexes, it�s often the childhood shortening of the name that gives the most pause. Of course, Bobby starts to wear thin when you�re 13. But approaching 40 it gains a strange allure. A professional woman named Patricia may get more respect, but at home she�s just Patty.

Writers tend to notice cool names. One of the coolest I�ve run into is D�Artagnan Townes. This grand sounding name does not belong to a movie star. Rather, this your-name-should-be-in-lights person has a humble profession. He is the manager of the Wal-Mart in West Boylston, Massachusetts. At least that�s what my receipt said when I bought things there in October. I filed it away in case I ever write a story involving an aristocratic character with an appropriately aristocratic name.

Have you ever thought about changing your name? What would it be?

On the Bright Side appears every other Thursday in The Post-Star. It is written by a woman from Queensbury who purports to be Kay Hafner, but who wishes her name were J.K. Rowling.