View Message

To the question "what is most important in a name": I am reticent to dislike any name; as people will read this & I do not want to hurt or offend any who may already have that given name. (As a guy with a girl's name - trust me, there are plenty who are uncomfortable with my own name - yet those who love it, really love it, and spare no occasion to repeat reference to it.)

---

I love the literary heritage; here, used by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night - he not only decries his (own) lost son Hamnet - a Tragedy endured by Shakespeare and his wife; He asserts that his love for his son will endure forever as he redefines the meaning behind Ovid's Echo (and Narcissus) with "Holla your name to the reverberate hills, / And make the babbling gossip of the air / Cry out, 'Olivia!' O! you should not rest / Between the elements of air and earth, / But you should pity me!"

---

"Viola. If I did love you in my master's flame,
With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
In your denial I would find no sense;
I would not understand it.
Olivia. Why, what would you?
Viola. Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out, 'Olivia!' O! you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!