BKAs (Better Known As)

[Cross posted w/ www.niobiabryant.com]

Okay, everyone knows I have an usual birth name. Niobia. Growing up I hated it because people never could pronounce it and it was always “What kind of name is that?” In fact there were many first days of school where teachers would call me Naomi, Narobi, Nibiabah–all kind of crazy things. I would ignore them or force them to pronounce my name right. Seriously. Respect mine, you know?

My decision to write urban fiction under the psuedonym Meesha Mink was to make sure my readers could seperate my romance books from my urban fiction books. It wasn’t because I still hated my name or anything.

In time I came to love it, especially when my Mama pointed out that people with unique names go on to big things (at that time Oprah and Arsenio were the examples.) After that I became proud and I refused to allow people to call me anything but Niobia. Not Ni. Not N. Just Niobia.

It’s a pretty simple name actually. NI-O-BI-A pronounced Nye-Oh-Bee-Ah.

So the whole odd first name thing made me wonder who else might be feeling me on this. Check out these celebrities with some interesting birth names. More 2 come all week long:

wyclef