View Message

This is my name, and I am 73. I was told my mother found it in a magazine. (She died when I was nine, so I didn't get her confirmation on that.) When I was born in 1940 not many people in US had heard of this name, and I had to spell it most of the time and repeat it, to correct people who thought I was "Mary" or "Mara" or such (and I had bright red hair so they sometimes switched it to "Tomato"). The name became more popular beginning in the 1970s with the appearance of Tamara Dobson and has now been adopted by many black Americans. It is Russian in origin. I wrote an article about it that was published in Today's Chicago Woman. (And by the way, many people preferred to call me "Tammy" because they found Tamara difficult to remember and pronounce, but I never enjoyed being called "Tammy" simply because it was not my actual name.)

This message was edited 7/15/2014, 6:08 PM