G is For...

Gail.
Or Gayle.

It's always been a well known fact in my family that my mom picked out my first name and my dad picked out my middle name. While I do not hate my middle name, I have never really been a huge fan of it. I mean, Gail, really? But since my dad picked it out, I never wanted to say anything negative about it for fear of hurting his feelings. And then I learned why he picked it.

My dad, like any red-blooded American male, is a big fan of sports and TV shows that endlessly discuss sports [i.e. SportsCenter]. My dad was catching up on replays of games he had already watched that week [i.e. watching SportsCenter] one afternoon when my mom was nagging about picking a middle name. Having given little thought to the matter, he quickly picked the name of one of the sportscasters. At the time when my mom was pregnant, there weren't a lot of women in the sports reporting business, but there was Gayle Gardner, the first female sportscaster ever on SportsCenter.

So Gayle it was, but my dad was kind enough to change the spelling to Gail, which I am very much appreciative of. And thus I was dubbed Emily Gail. I suppose I can't be too upset though, because without Ms. Gardner, I might have ended up Emily Tim, and that would have just been silly.

So what's the story behind your name? Are you named after anyone in particular? Share, share!