I’m guessing you read my first name and you thought Judy the Morgan.

Pretty much everyone that sees Judythe in print the first time does. The spelling has been a blessing and a curse my entire life.

In school, I could always tell when the teacher came to my name when calling roll on the first day. There’d be a pause. Some would shorten to Judy. Others wouldn’t know what to do because my last name was a tongue twister too. A few got the pronunciation correct. Most reverted to the traditional Judith.

It’s definitely a unique spelling and there’s a story behind it. According to family tradition, the name comes from my maternal grandmother Julia and one of her sisters Edythe.

Ju from Julia and dythe from her sister Edythe. Put the two parts together and you get Judythe.

In a family with Irish roots you can never be sure if a story is true or simply a great tale. Either way I’m stuck with Judythe.

Not only did my first name have pronunciation issues, my real last name before marriage and after marriage were both also difficult to spell. I figured my books would never be found if I used my real name.

Knowing all this, I used a pseudonym when I started writing. But not a totally different name.

An author needs to found in the gigantic sea of so many books. I knew readers would remember Judythe. I chose to keep my first name and use hubby dear’s middle name.

On the other hand in the age of search engines, the spelling of my first name can be tricky. Look at these two search results on Amazon.

Judy the Morgan; judythe morgan

Option 1 you only see two of my books not a complete list of all. That’s okay if the person searching knows how to get to my author Amazon page.

OR

Judy the Morgan; judythe morgan

Options 2 you have to read carefully and see that Amazon’s algorithm searched with Judy the Morgan to find zero of my books. You must read below and click to search Judythe Morgan.

It’s perplexing. And, I’m sure, not something my parents took into consideration when naming me.