Beloved Christmas Soup

Written by Aimee for her English class


My name doesn’t have much history; it didn’t come from a grandmother or great grandmother or even a great, great grandmother, my name came from the story Little Women. I guess because I was their third daughter, my parents thought it was appropriate to name me Aimée and spell it different than how it was in the story. Since they were obsessed with French, because they both taught it at the time, they decided to spell it the French way with an accent mark over the first e. The name Aimée, the way it’s spelled, means beloved. My middle name, once again, is a normal name that my parents decided to spell the French way. With two dots over the first e, they chose Noëlle which means Christmas. Campbell of course, is the name of a soup company, so the translation of my full name is Beloved Christmas Soup.

My parents were the ones who chose to give me my name; they decided what to name me before I was even born. They pretty much knew that I was meant to be Aimée Noëlle except for at first there was a little struggle. My dad wanted to name me Constance, and boy am I glad that my mom talked my dad out of that one. Who knows what I would have been called if my mom didn’t talk my dad into Aimée: Connie, Tancey, you can just imagine the horrible possibilities. Just the thought irks me, Constance Campbell…ugh. I was definitely not meant to be a Constance. As my mom told me this, I grew more and more grateful and relieved to have the name Aimée. I don’t think I’ve complained about my name since.

The name Aimée has affected me in a couple of different ways. First of all, it is pretty common among other people at Dixon. The spelling is too. So every time the name ‘Aimee’ is called I look up and realize they are not referring to me. It is really confusing and can sometimes be embarrassing. My name is not hard to pronounce, most people can say my name right, it’s the spelling they have a problem with. Some of my aunts and uncles still don’t know how to spell my name; it’s either Amiee, Amy, or some other odd spelling that I had no idea you could get that from the name ‘Aimee’. Other than that though, I haven’t really had other problems with my name except some nicknames from my family.

If I could pick a different name, I don’t know what I would pick. I definitely would not pick Constance. I think I would pick something more original, a name that not very many people had. I would choose a pretty name that meant something great, a name that had a nice ring to it. It’s hard to think what other name I would choose because I can only see myself as one person, Aimée Noëlle Campbell, or Beloved Christmas Soup.