Mario. Your mind may wander to various places including, the videogame character, the Mexican or Italian decent, or maybe the Mario mustache. Well, since freshman year I’ve taken a Spanish class and since freshman year, I’ve had the name Mario for a reason. A reason my mother would be overjoyed to leave in the past.

Being the first child, my parents could have a hay day with names. There were endless possibilities, and it was their choice. Considering my dad comes from a large Mexican and Italian family that only added to the pool of possible names. All his relatives’ names are ethnic- like Josephine, Poncho, and Moncha. To accent the large, expressive and cultural, dad’s side of the family, is the smaller, traditional European mothers side--with names such as Lisa, Lori and Mike.

I think Mario is the name. That was my dad’s vote--in all seriousness. My mom on the other hand was having different thoughts, quite possibly questioning my dad’s sanity at that point. She could have also been questioning his sanity when he talked to her about naming my brother, the second child, josepi. But in the end, that didn’t work out for my dad.
Yes, it’s true a name is supposed to describe you or represent you in some special way, but in this case it may be too true. You see a one year old boy with a forest of dark curly hair, dark skin, and dark eyes—what comes to mind? Mario would be a logical answer. Now, fast forward to a fifteen year old boy with a head of dark brown hair, dark skin, and dark eyes but add a mustache to the equation. The name Mario would probably be an even more obvious answer now. That picture was me during freshman year…Mario mustache and all.
Although the traditional approach had to be used to choose my real name instead of the name that would reflect my background, I like my real name and also feel it represents who I am in a better sense than Mario. After all, who would take that name seriously? I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a foreign exchange student all the time.