The Many Names of Jonica Bradley

And how she (allegedly) came by them.

The other day in the middle of drafting: Do You Like Your Name, a story about the sound of my name causing me anxiety, I started to feel anxious. Go, figure. I needed a distraction. I listed all of the names I have been called which don’t cause me to feel anxious. Distraction turned into an outline. Outline turned into the following. Let’s begin with my given names starting with:

Jonica

My dad gave me this name. No, I don’t mean I was named after my dad. And I thank the name gods for that every day! I might’ve been named Winstonica. (No offence to anyone who is named Winstonica. It’s a perfectly good name. Just not for me.) If I was named after anybody, it would be one of Dad’s commanding officers in the army. Her name was Jenneke. Pronounced YEHnehkeh. Dad liked her name, but wanted to “Americanize” it to go with our last name:

Bradley

Family legend states that when our Bradley ancestors first came over from Scotland, they used the spelling

B R A D L E I G H

but changed it to be “more American.” I doubt the veracity of this family legend. The E Y ending of our name was firmly in usage in Scotland, Ireland, and England long before my particular family emigrated to America.