Day one
“Your middle name, and how you feel about it.”
My middle name is Sala.
My relationship with my middle name has been one of love and hate.
Throughout my childhood and adolescence I hated it. I thought it was weird and ugly,
and couldn’t understand why my parents would choose that out of ALL the names available.
When I reached my teens, I learnt that it had been the name of my great-grandmother
on my father’s side. I learnt some more about the history of the family, and gained
an appreciation for being made a part of that. It began to seem special that I carried the name of someone so important to my grandmother, who was so important to me.
And so came the love aspect.
I started out liking the name because of what came along with it. Then, in time,
I began to really love the name itself. I learnt that it meant ‘room’ in Spanish,
I realised that I liked the letters it contained, and I enjoyed the way it rolled off the tongue.
It was soft and gentle, yet precise.
Eventually I attached it to my first name, Pia, to create my business name, piasala,
completely adopting it and bringing it into my everyday.
So there you go. My middle name is Sala and I’m proud to tell you all.
