Katrina Janel Winchell: The Story Behind My Name

My full name is Katrina Janel Winchell. I also go by Kat; sometimes I am known as BanShee. There is absolutely no interesting story behind my name, but the telling of what story there is may be interesting in itself. The story of my nicknames might be the better story, though. It is up to you to decide how interesting. In 1979 most girls were being named Jennifer, Melissa, Amanda, Jessica, and Amy. My mother named me Katrina. She has told me a couple different versions of how she gave me my first name. Once she told me that she made it up, although that is certainly not true because there have been plenty of people named Katrina before me. Maybe she had read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in school and had Katrina Van Tassel stuck in her head. The most recent story she has told me is that she doesn 't know. She doesn 't remember how she came up with it at all. Janel, however, was a name she liked. She was aquaintances with a girl named Janel and she decided it would make a good middle name when she had me. My name only came into American popularity in 1945, showing up as number one-hundred and twenty six of the most popular names of the 1970 's;

I can not remember a single time in my life that I didn 't like my name. I have tried on different, exotic sounding names playing dress-up; I have played the person of other names during make believe, but I have always loved my name. It had several syllables to it and just always sounded pretty when it was said out loud, even better, it looked so beautiful written out, especially after I learned to write in cursive. Katrina is the German form of the name Katherine, although I have also read that it is Scandinavian and African. It is supposed to mean pure, but that part of my name just never fit me. Nothing about me is "pure" as far as I can tell. I am not even just one race. Even so, it has always fit me for some reason. I sounds regal when said out loud and my personality has always been strong enough to carry the weight