What's in a Name?

by Tania Gardère MacLeod

“Tania” - where did it come from and what does it mean

Growing up I knew no one named Tania or Tanya. And certainly not pronounced like a sun tan ya… only Ton-ya… even those were few and far between when I was younger.

Even today, no-one pronounces my name correctly. It’s like a big running joke in our family and my girls all look at me once I give my name to someone because they know they are going to call me TONya

. We test this in the drive through all the time… it’s gotten to the point that I just give the name of one of my girls so I don’t have to hear some one repeat my name back incorrectly. (Literally after I just said it was TAN-ya)

I could never find any preprinted stickers or pencils or those cool little license plates we all had on our bikes - NOTHING with my name on it. My mom did order personalized pencils with my name on them from Lilian Vernon, which I loved and a boy in my 5th grade class Marvin would steal them all the time!

But I loved my name and still do, because my brother named me! After his kindergarten girlfriend!

And my brother was the best big brother a little girl could have ever wanted. Even though he was 5 and a half years older than me, he was always good to me!

And later I did research to find out the name Tania has Russian origins and means “fairy queen”. It comes from the Russian word Tan, which means “queen”. And you know my closest and dearest friends and family call me Tan?! (Ok queen.

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