Garance Marie Irene, alias Akane, Toutoune or ~Ruth

The official name my parents gave me at birth, Garance (sound clip 1, sound clip 2), is a little white flower (rubia peregrina) from the root of which a bright red dye used to be extracted. This flower also gave its name to a color, namely the specific kind of red which is obtained from it.

I like my name because it's unusual and because it sounds nice in French, but it has the slight drawback that most people have never heard it before. I regularly get letters addressed to a "Mr. Garance", since people cannot tell which is my first and which is my last name, and do not even know that "Garance" is a woman's name. Moreover, French-speaking people are just about the only ones who can pronounce it correctly, although my German friends at college do an acceptable job of it too.

However, I also like my middle-name, Marie-Irene, very much, because carrying Our Lady's name puts me under her special protection, and Irene is a martyr saint who's name means peace (from the Ancient Greek ειρηνη). Lots of English-speaking friends actually call me that way, although some find it too long and just use Irene.

Then again, there are a few Japanese friends who call me Akane, which is the literal translation of Garance. For the Japanese, Akane is the color of a bright red sunset. I like that name a lot too, especially because having a real Japanese name allows me to write it with a Japanese kanji (chinese character), instead of using a phonetic transcription in katakana, which wouldn't be quite so nice-looking:

My family also have the privilege of calling me Toutoune, and my brother that of saying Bébé to me (although he's my younger brother!). Don't ask where Toutoune comes from though, because we're not really sure ourselves.

And finally, I also sometimes sign my name as ~Ruth (read: "not Ruth"), because my name's not Ruth, unlike the majority of people I used to hang around with at university ("Punk Ruth" and "Swiss Ruth") ;-)