Mônica Carnesi: Hello, my name is Mônica Carnesi, and I was born in Brazil. And that is why the spelling and pronunciation of my first name is a little different. The little accent that you see on top of the letter O is called a circumflex, and what that does, is it stretches the sound of the vowel O. So if you speak Portuguese, and you see my name, you know it's pronounced Mônica.

When I was born, Mônica was a very popular name. So growing up, I had a lot of friends all named Mônica. So in order to tell each other apart, we had to come up with nicknames. And because I was always on the small side, my nickname was Môniquina, which in Portuguese, means little Mônica.