Description: What’s in a name?
When I was a child, I did not like
my name. I wanted an original name like
my friends who had names like Jennifer. Why
was I so unfortunate? I had this name that everyone
misspelled and everyone mispronounced. The would spell it
Brianna instead of Briana and say it like ‘Bree An Uh’ instead
Of ‘Bree – on _ uh’. On top of that, my last name was Dziekan.
No one could pronounce it. IF someone was able to say it correctly
I knew that they were Polish! It’s pronounced Zee-Can, not Dee Zee kian.
So all of my life, I dealt with correcting teachers. It actually became a game
in school. I bet that all my teachers would pronounce both of my names
incorrectly. Most teachers would just stop when they got to my name and
try to figure out what to say. Normally after they struggled for what seemed
like eternity, I would pipe in say, Briana. And they would say yeah, and then
trying my last name I would just say it for them, as they penned in
the way it sounded.

Years later my name isn’t so bad. I actually like it. It’s unique. It’s me.
I like how it’s NOT spelled the way most are spelled and not said the way
the others are said. I grew into my name as I got older. I never had
to worry about someone yelling Briana and having to worry if there
was another in the room with me.

My name means ‘the strong’ and I believe that’s true. I believe I’m
strong both physically and mentally. I work out multiple times a week
and have gotten through tough times and difficult decisions.

There are other names that I have gone by. Everyone used to call me
Bree when I was a kid and everyone used to say, ‘Oh, Bree is a type
of cheese.’ I had no clue what they were talking about for the longest
time. I did not know there was a brie cheese! Once I figured
out that there was a cheese named brie, I decided I really liked the
name Briana better and asked people to call me Briana instead. My
mother has also called me Breena in the past.

How did my parents pick my name? My mother wanted to call me Melissa
Noel and when I was younger I wished she did. My dad wanted to call
Me Dianne and my mother said no way. So they went through a
Book of unusual names and found Briana and fell in love. So I
got my name from a book of unusual names. Today’s it’s not
even that unusual!

Now that I’m older, I wouldn’t change the name
I have for anything. It’s me!