Names are important. My grandson Billy attended Zion Lutheran School in Brighton. It was a wonderful little school. Apparently some of his friends told him they were named after people in the Bible. They showed him where they could find their name in the good Book. One day six-year-old Billy brought the Bible to me.

"Show me where to find my name," he said as he handed it to me. I had to disappoint him, it just wasn't there. I explained to him that he was named after his grandfather.

Did you ever notice that as they are growing up most people just don't like their names? I was no exception, it took me a long time to get to the age that I liked my name. As a child I went by the name of Dotty, but when I was in the 5th grade my grandmother wanted me to be known by my first name, Lorraine. She said that since I had such a beautiful name she felt that I was getting too old to be known by a nickname. So that year in school I registered as Lorraine. Trouble reared its homely face in the form of the neighborhood bully. She started teasing me, "Lorraine, Lorraine, when's it going to rain?" she bellowed. She knew it made me mad so she kept chanting those hated words at me. It didn't take me long to switch back to my other name, Dotty.

When our first baby was born my husband decided she should be named after me and he, like my grandmother, thought Lorraine was a beautiful name. I wasn't too fond of that idea, but I figured if the poor kid didn't like the name she would change it like I did. My mother was babysitting and the little kids couldn't pronounce Lorraine so they nicknamed her "Rainy." That was her nickname for years, but she hated the nickname so she lived with the name Lorraine.

You have to be careful with names. For some reason (unknown to me now) we decided to name all our kids by the same first initial, L. It must have been the fashion in that day because my sister named all her kids with the first letter J. I didn't realize I was creating confusion for myself and others.

A neighbor of ours in Iowa was named Snowflake Sonner. I thought that was a very unusual, but interesting name. His nickname was "Snow." The high school boys said he had a brother named Raindrop. I believed them until I found out they were pulling my leg.

Having a child named after a person is a great honor. Both of my daughters gave their sons the middle name of Earl, after their Dad.

On the other hand it's not always an honor to have something named after you. When I lived with my sister and brother-in-law in Iowa I was happy with the name Dotty. I was touched when Ray named one of his cows Dotty.

But the honor lost some of its thrill when I heard him out in the barnyard yelling at Dotty (the cow that is.) Maybe she was a little like me, stubborn and obstinate because I quite often heard him out there calling her bad names.

That's when I decided I didn't think it was such an honor to have a cow named after me.