I was christened Katharine, and my father was obviously a huge Katharine Hepburn fan. Now this is one of the many names that have a million spelling variations, depending on where you are but mostly depending on the whim and mood of your parent/s at the time of naming you.
I ended up learning to write my name as Katherine, the way I was taught by my teachers, and why my parents made no objection to that, I don't know. (I figured that was the commonest way to spell it.) And because nicknames were a part of life, I ended up being called Kat or Kathy (which didn't really sit well with me because it sounded so sweet and girly, all things I'm not). In junior high when universities and colleges started strictly requiring birth certificates for admission, I finally saw that I wasn't a common Katherine, I was an elegant, unique Katharine. (Apologies to all the lovely Katherines I know.) So I switched-I had to program my handwriting, had to explain to people, had a new nickname.
And then I came to Canada where the correct pronunciation of my name was Kath-rin, instead of Ka-te-rin which we did back home. And so people assumed my name was spelled Kathryn and when they find out that it's not, they got embarassed and apologized profusely! Kathryn is my mother-in-law, and she's appropriately nicknamed Kathy. My friends from home call me Kata and when they started calling me that, it was some sort of an honor because there was a prominent broadcaster with the same name. But try asking Canadians to call you Kata; you'd probably end up being Kah-tah. So I stayed a Katharine. New friends will initially write my name down as Kathryn. I don't mind. What's in a name after all.
