
‘Yes,’ was the reply, ‘Lightning Source are on the floor above us. We know Lidia well.’
Now Lydia has been my customer service contact with the company since I first started using their services. I have never met her and never spoken to her; our only contact is via email but I have a clear picture of her in my mind, small, slim, young with a pleasant face and fair hair. I have no reason to suppose she is like this except that this is the image that seems to go with her name.
Imagine my surprise when the people from Ingram Spark commented, ‘That makes sense as you live in Spain; Lydia is Spanish.’ But why should I have been surprised? When I think about it, Lydia has a Spanish surname and has often told me she has been to Spain on holiday. But in my mind Lydia was not a Spanish name and so the imaginary image of her that I have constructed over the years is not of a Spanish woman.

When my daughter was born I had difficulty finding a name I liked; I could think of hundreds of boys’ names but not a girl’s name that we could agree on. Then I came across Andrea; it was fairly short, had a nice ring to it and if it was to be shortened it would be to something like Andy. A few months later, I discovered a book on the meanings of forenames and to my horror found that Andrea meant ‘manly’. She was in fact quite a tomboy as a youngster but I put that down more to her having an older brother than the influence of her name.
