I used to feel resentment

What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

Note: I write about everything and off-topic things that I thought was interesting or useful to the questions. The text is somewhat long.

I have three first names, but mostly I always keep one as the second name, and it’s my name Johanne that always is included as an important second part with deep personal meaning. I am Norwegian speaking and English can be affected by my native ways of expressions, so this can sound different than it seems to my mind. I’m also autistic and with several quite severe in type mental-health conditions like schizoaffective and strong OCD-like conditions together.

I used to dislike my name Torunn in particular as it is an unusual/rare name for my generation because it was used much more often in 1950s and 1960s Norway so when I was born in early 1990s it was less used. And it didn’t help that my peers/classmates either made fun of my names or just said some form of ‘oh, that’s my exactly my grandmother/aunts name!’. And every bully knows how to use any name as a form of harrassing the victims and in other forms of bullying tendency. However I’ve learned to love my names as I age and experiences show me values of embracing my differences with true compassion, plus my name Torunn has the meaning ‘loved by Thor’ in Norse which fit me well because I have a close relative named Tor.

Johanne has origins from Hebrew meaning ‘God is gracious/mercy of God’ and one of my mothers side great-grandmother name was Johanne. It also is related to my mother liking the song ‘Gimme Hope Jo’anna’ from 1980s about South Africa and related topics. My great-grandmother was of Finnish, Kven and Saami origins mostly and she was a unique personality and learned our languages as an adult woman because the policy of Norwegianization had limited her learning languages from parents who were told only to speak Norwegian language with children.

In my usual conversations with people I know from before I use either Ingvild or Torunn along with Johanne. In speaking with strangers or health-care workers/doctors I need to use all of my names to identify and I particularly remember being asked after I had a tonic clonic epileptic seizure outside in winter they needed to know my true name and I was so confused, but luckily my friend there helped me and I’m really thankful to him and even the fact that this five minutes seizure was outside in public space.

Thank you all for reading ❤