What is a Roehl-road?

A great blog will never be looked at if it doesn’t have a great title, just like a great book with a boring title will just be tossed aside. For the “What’s in a name?” assignment, I could either tell about my given name, which is incredibly boring, or tell about my blog name, which is more interesting. My parents gave me my given name, but I created my blog name, so I feel a deeper connection to it. Perhaps this is what parents feel when they name their children. My blog is my baby, and it is time to tell the world what its name means to me and why I chose this name. Since my blog is the way I communicate on the web, the name has to reflect everything that I am, without being too long or confusing. I realize that my blog title can be a bit confusing at first, but hopefully that draws readers in. Now that you are (hopefully) intrigued and curious, here is my explanation of what’s in my blog’s name:

My blog’s name is “Roehl-road Xing.” To the untrained eye, you may say, “what on earth is a roll-road, and why is it crossing?” Fun fact: you pronounce Roehl “rail,” not “roll.” In my life, almost everyone has messed up the pronunciation of Roehl (with good reason). Therefore, my blog name is pronounced “rail-road crossing.” I wrote “Xing” instead of “crossing” because that is how it is spelled on signs, which furthers the railroad analogy (plus I love those silly signs you can get for your room that say things like “whale Xing”). As for the Roehl-road part, I am Roehl and my thoughts are the train that chugs down the Roehl track. Perhaps it is a little egotistical to name the train and train track after myself, but after all it is my brain we are dealing with here. Don’t worry; you can board the Roehl train to experience the wonder that is my thought process. Your other option is to stop at the blinking light and wait until the Roehl train has passed. Besides that, the other reason why I named by blog Roehl-road Xing is because there are precious few times in my life that I had the opportunity to make fun of the fact that my name is pronounced “rail.” Wouldn’t you do the same thing?

You may notice that when it comes to talking about my blog name, there are lots of metaphors involved (or maybe just one big metaphor with little ones inside it). Trains and metaphors are both seen in noir films, but it would be a lie to say that’s what I had in mind when I named my blog. It’s name is nothing more or less than a microcosm of my personality, and that’s how it should be. Now you know something about my blog name, and about me too.