Four Names

I officially think that my mom was on drugs when she decided what she wanted my name to be. My entire name is Sandi Florena Arlene Nowosielski. As I type that, I really enjoy that spell check is telling me that all of them are spelled wrong. But I've learned to live with it, that and the fact that I still have to spell my name slightly out loud when I write it, or else I’ll get confused. It's not that I’m stupid, but just image having to learn how to write all that when you were in kindergarten. It has taken a toll on my brain.

I spent a long time trying to find the origins and meanings of my names. I didn’t come up with as much as I wanted, but what I did find was interesting. Sandi comes from a Scandinavian personal name. Since that’s all I found for my original spelling, I looked up the traditional Sandy spelling. I found that it was a popular name in the 1950's. It was also a form of the name Alexandra, which in Greek was a Mycenaean epithet of the goddess Hera, and an alternate name of Cassandra. For my first middle name I found that Florena came from Flora, which was a Roman Mythological name. Flora, meaning “flower”, was the Roman goddess of flowers and spring (it is also the brand name of German body care products, nice right?). It was even harder for me to find information on my second middle name, Arlene. It is of Irish decent and means “promise”; it too was popular in the 50's. My last name was the biggest challenge. All I found was that it was originally of Polish origin and that there is a famous artist by the name of Jerzy Nowosielski. So that’s basically it. I guess it’s due to the fact that my name is pretty strange. But at least I can say I have skin care products named after me…or maybe I’ll just keep that to myself.