hi my name is

One day at work I was enjoying some goldfish crackers when I realized something, "they spelled my name wrong!” On the bag was a promotion for some healthy living/exersice program for kids with Dwyane Wade as the celeb athlete. You see there?! The way I spelled his name? That's how it was on the bag, and I immediately thought "holy crap they totally screwed that up!” That was until I looked him up online and realized that it was indeed spelled D-W-Y-A-N-E.

I began to think about the pronunciation of the name and tried to figure out how you got “way” in Dwayne from W-Y-A instead of W-A-Y. I’m not part of the grammar police and didn’t bother racking my brain to figure it out. I did however look up the origins of my name (again) and refreshed my memory when I read that the spellings of DWAYNE and DUANE are English/Irish in origin and that they mean dark/black, which is very convenient since I’m black.

Other alternate spellings include: Dawayne, Dewayne, Duwain, Duwayne, Dwain, Dwaine, Dwane. You’ll notice that Mr. Wade’s spelling is not included and leads me to believe it was a spelling error on his birth certificate.

A new tidbit I found out was the spelling DEWAYNE has an American origin. Strangely enough images of Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel came to mind when I read that. Hmmm..

As you can see I spent a lot of time and energy on this instead of doing actual work.

There was a time in my early life where I didn’t like my name and wanted to change it, this was probably brought on by the constant Dwayne Wayne bombardments I received when I was younger. I’ve grown to embrace and enjoy my name as I got older. I came to realize within the past few years that Dwayne is unique and many people I know don’t know any other Dwaynes other than me. My name is also directly responsible for bringing me and girlfriend together (long and strange story).

An interesting history I’ve had with my name so far, and I plan to continue the legacy for years to come.