Holly Schindler: Hello. My name is Holly Schindler. I've honestly had more spelling than pronunciation issues with my name, and it all started when I was learning my alphabet and I insisted that because my name was Holl-E, not Holl-Y, it should have ended with an E. I spelled my name HO-L-L-E on everything until I got to kindergarten, where I had a real battle with my teacher and eventually had to give in and start spelling it with Y. To this day, though, my family still addresses cards or letters to me with the H-O-L-L-E spelling.

Also in kindergarten we tackled learning to spell our last names, and mine was really long. Some of the letters, like S, C, H and N, D, L, just didn't seem to make any sense together. I was sitting next to a girl who had a really short last name that was also a word, like day or brown or something, and I convinced her to trade names with me. I'm pretty sure some sort of bribe had to have been involved, but I don't remember what it was now. But if five-years-old me had had her way, I would have gone through life with a different last name. I am proud to say, though, that I have since completely mastered the official spellings of both my first and last names, Holly Schindler.