My names were 'new' names when I was born.
I was actually named after an aunt -- Lavinia Winifred -- but my parents changed it to Wendie Louise. I've suffered ever since. Believe it or not my parents were influenced by the story of Peter Pan, but probably thought the 'IE' part of the name might make it closer to Winifred.
All it did for me was to make sure that NOBODY could spell it. Wendy, Wendel, Wendi, Wende. I've had all of these show up. (It was especially fun for my 'friends' to call me Wendel the whole weekend we were at a conference together and THAT was how my nametag was printed out.)
I've had people accuse me of faking/ lying about being a published writer. They claimed they had looked me up on Amazon dot com. They (not noticing the spelling of my online name) addressed their message to Wendy in their accusation. Which made me laugh. They couldn't even READ the name on the header of the message they sent to me?
I answered with two words, "Spelling Counts!"
