What’s in a Name?

If my name was Olivia, I’d go by Liv.
Or maybe Oliv.
But my name isn’t Olivia…
Neither is my “name”.
My “name” is Cedar.

Let’s experiment with this.
Let’s reduce it,
shrink it,
see how small it can get and what it can become until it disappears.

Let’s start!

Ceda

That’s almost kind of cute. “See-dah”? “Say-da”?
Saves the mouth a little bit of tension at the end now.
Efficient.

Ced

That’s not as nice.
How would you pronounce this one? What impressions would it give?
This one seems more confusing, somehow; yet I think we’re on the right track.

Ce

There could be a hundred different pronunciations of that, really.
It all depends on where you’re from and how your homeland uses that alphabet.
And if it doesn’t use that alphabet, well… I guess it doesn’t matter. This is an English language experiment, after all.
(I was never able to collect enough discipline to gain fluency in any other.)

C

Now we’re talking.
Or not, really. There’s not much left to say at this point.
It’s just a letter, “See”.
(Ironically, I think “See” is actually rather blind.)
Stripped to a mere initial, the name becomes little
more than a ghostly whisper of its former self,
until we’re left with its finest form,
one I think we can all appreciate: