Reasons to change my name:

1. Angela is not a name that is very easy to sing the rhyming name game song with: Angela angela bo bangela really doesn't swing very nicely. Ella ella bo bella sounds much nicer.

2. Angela and Ange both sound hard, and kind of mean. I'm nice.

3. Ella isn't really a name change, as Angela ends in ela, and when you add an extra l it's just a shortened form of my real name. Why should the opening syllable get all the love?

4. Angela sounds kind of like Angina, which sounds kind of like Vagina. Although maybe that should be a point in it's favour, because I should love Vaginas, mine in particular. But heart disease, not so much.

5. As Aspa says, Ella is poetic and musical. And it suits me. It suits the best, warmest, prettiest, funnest me.


Reasons why it might not work, and I might change my mind:

1. Changing my name when I go away to Grad School makes me feel like a character in a bad novel. Next thing you know I'll be wearing pearls and high heels and putting on swipes of blusher that bring out my cheekbones and make my eyes sparkle. Then the school rowing captain or dot com millionaire who is now studying social work will fall in love with me. (although once again, it's not really changing my name. Just upgrading it).

2. It makes me feel like when I was going into grade seven at a new school and decided I wanted to tell everyone that my nickname was Trixie and that was what they had called me at my last school. Why I wanted a hooker name, I'm not sure. Oh wait, yes, I know. Because it sounded like a club kid name, and I watched every Maury Povich that involved club kids and I wanted to live in New York and be one, and I still kind of do.

3. It might be too awkward to say out loud. It's one thing to type all this stuff, and say via email, call me Ella if you don't mind, but it's another to actually start saying it. With my voice. Although, I've never really felt comfortable calling myself Angela or Ange either, so I guess it would just be a different kind of awkward.