As soon as you tell people you're pregnant, they want to know the due date. Once you announce the due date, they are eagerly waiting for confirmation on if it's a boy or girl. Then everyone wants to know what you're going to name him or her. It's a natural progression. I'm sure once we come up with a name for our son, everyone will want to know which university he'll be attending. All this speculation and judgment has me thinking that a lot can get wrapped up in a person's name. In many ways it's one of the first things someone knows about you from the moment you say hello. And whether it's fair or not, if you tell me your name is De-BOR-ah, I'm going to make some quick assumptions about you.

My cousin has bright red hair and is named Sinderella Marie (yes, with an S). When she was a little girl my grandmother asked her what her name was and when she told her Grandma said, "that's nice honey, what's your real name?". As an adult, she makes a point to hide anything with her legal name on it, preferring to just go by Sindy.

As more people create "handles" for themselves (from blog titles to MMORPG characters to SCA personas), the name on one's drivers license is not nearly as relevant.

So for our next Living Out Loud project, I want you to tell us all about your name(s). How do you introduce yourself to others? What do most people call you? Do you like the name your parents gave you? Do you even go by that name? Are there names you have that only an elite few are allowed to use? What kind of power does your name give you?

Think of all those fairy tales where speaking someone's name had magical qualities. What magical qualities are in your name?

The specifics for this project are:

• Tell us about your name using the previous paragraphs as guidelines but interpreting it as you will. As always, the spirit of this project is to share something about yourself and not simply your name, rank and serial number.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org. There were some entries I had to hunt for last month and I'd hate to leave anyone out.

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, August 2nd (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

You all did a great job last month and I eagerly await what you create for this month's assignment. Take this opportunity to really introduce yourself to everyone.