Rajani LaRocca: Hi, my name is Rajani LaRocca. When I was born, everyone in my father's entire family had boys. So, he's one of three boys, he had two brothers, they each had two boys, and no one believed that I was going to be a girl, so they hadn't thought of any girl names. So, he got his visa to come to the United States about a month before I was born, so he left my mom with her family in India. And when I was born, and I was a girl, nobody knew what to name me because literally, they had never even thought of this possibility.

So, they named me after my father's mother who had passed away years earlier and her name was Ranganayaki, which is a beautiful name. But when they finally managed to get my dad on the phone and tell him, he was like, "That's wonderful, but we can't name her that because no one in the US is going to be able to pronounce that." So, if you think that Rajani is hard, you can just imagine what Ranganayaki would have been like.

The easiest way to remember how to say my name is that it rhymes with fudge because my book is full of baking, so Rajani rhymes with fudge-knee. If you imagine some fudge on your knee, you got my name.

Now, my last name is my husband's last name, Larocca. Now, if you were in Italy, I'm sure you would pronounce it Larocca, but his family is from Brooklyn. They say Larocca, like a rock.