It's All in the Name

[graverunner.livejournal.com]

My parents have always liked unique names, which resulted in me having a name which people find just absolutely difficult to spell or pronounce. Despite that, I've never really been teased. I live in Singapore, and you have a whole hodge-podge of different names there because of all the different races. The only thing that comes close to teasing is people telling me how hard it is for them to spell/pronounce my name. XD And I had one teacher who (he was old, but I had no idea if it was due to memory loss or teasing) called me something completely different (Mashumila Vasangka). The whole class laughed, but they were used to it, since the teacher has a habit of constantly changing people's names at will. Eg. Vanessa to Vanissa or Clara to Clarisse and the like. My name went the most major transformation though. :/

Nurshahiylia Erdina
(nur-shah-hee-lee-ya er-dee-na)

Never found anybody with my name before. Even google searched, but it only led me to friends' blogs who had me in their link or were blogging about me. I've had lots of diff. nicknames: Shah, Shahiylia, Lia, Dina, Erdina, Hiylia. But most people go by the 2nd one.

My siblings:

Shaherfi Heidi

Yes. Heidi. He's never been teased for it though, since practically no one knows about that second part to his name. Everyone calls him Herfi. The only ones who tease him about it is, ironically, his own family. XD Not in a mean way though. But my mom has always said that that is why he is rather effete. No idea how/why she decided on that.

Shairil Danil

He goes by Danil. This is, admittedly, quite common for my mom standards. Almost similar to Daniel, only without the 'e'.

Syiraz Asyraf
The doctor at the clinic downstairs commented that his name sounds like a type of wine. Googled a bit and think she must have meant the grape Shiraz, which is used in some wines.

Notice a certain pattern yet? =) My mom apparently likes names that begins with a "sh" sound. In fact, everybody in our family has names that starts with an s, and only my dad has a name that doesn't have the "sh" thingy.

Mom: Shamsina
Dad: Sidin

Which makes the obligatory joke in our family. "We're a whole family of s'es!"
But anyway, decided to post this here because I've always wondered what people outside of Singapore would think about those names. How it sounds like to "foreign" ears so to speak. I've never really thought my name uncommon until I realised that I've never met anyone before who had it.