Orel Protopopescu: Hello, my name is Orel Protopopescu.

O. Protopopescu: My father, born in Russia named me Orel for the city southwest of Moscow, where the German army's eastward advance was stopped in World War II. It's also the Russian word for eagle, the male eagle pronounced oryol, and not a girl's name at all in Russian. But, luckily nobody at school knew that.

My name back then was Orel Odinas. Odina means son of Odin, a major God in Norse mythology. My double OO initials attracted jokes. A high school math teacher called me O squared and a chemistry teacher called me O2. The symbol for oxygen. When I got married I added Protopopescu. An old Romanian name which means son of a high priest.

So, now I was eagle, son of Odin, son of a high priest. A strange cast of characters that doesn't describe me at all. My father tried to talk my husband, a particle physicist, into shortening Protopopescu to Proton. But, he just laughed.

Our younger daughter was born without benefit of anesthesia because of that name. By the time the nurse got all the Ps and Ts straightened out, the baby had arrived. I put all three names on my first books, and then dropped Odin off, because people were having a hard enough time saying Orel Protopopescu.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have dropped Protopopescu. Now I ask students in my poetry and pose writing workshops to call me Mrs. P, or Orel, or whatever they like. We save a lot of time that way.