Who chose your birth name ?
Both My Parents Chose My Name
I usually tell people I was named after my grandmothers and some dirty jokes. That's true, but there is an explanation.
I have an odd name, not because the name itself is odd, but because I have two middle names. My middle names are from my grandmothers, Katheline and Fern. Oddly enough, Katheline was always known as Gladys. Thank God I was given Kathleen.
My father was in love with all things Irish, including some old jokes with the characters Pat and Mike. He insisted he had to have a Pat and a Mike.
So, I ended up being Patricia Kathleen Fern. Not great, but not too bad, either! My only complaint is that it's exactly one letter too long to fit on a California driver's license. And forms invariably assume that you only have one middle name, so I've had to do some creative editing to get it all into some data bases.