[Bookwoman] [bookwoman] Small Island

[Lee Anne Phillips]

On Sunday, July 30, 2006 at 7:41 AM ( 7/30/06 7:41 AM -0700),
llami at proaxis.com (Lee Lawton) wrote:

> Despite the name, 
> Lionel is 
> a she!

She changed it from Margaret Ann Shriver
at the age of 15, and it's an interesting choice.
Although locally "masculine" in its connotation.
Lionel Richie and so on, it's also arguably a 
variant of Lionelle, which is the "feminine" form.

Oddly enough, it could also be considered
a variant of Leanne, which is the feminine 
form of Leo, or Leon. 

The Latin for "lioness" is "lea," or "leana," 
and Lionel, which means "little lion" can
also be spelt "Lionelle," with the same
pronunciation, and the last, especially,
is used interchangably by males and 
females. But both are really available,
since diminutives are traditionally
used for girl babies as well as 
nicknames for little boys, so I can
hazard the guess that "Lionel" felt
sufficiently ambiguous that her act
of rebellion against the patriarchal
society she grew up in, that of North
Carolina, wasn't too terribly jarring,
but was a welcome relief from the
prescribed and proscribed future she 
faced as "Margaret Ann."

She writes, she says, "hopelessly
'serious' fiction because I have a 
ponderous, killjoy nature."

There's a male Lionelle Howard, who played 
the role of Aladdin in the 1923 film,
One Arabian Night, and a Lionelle Lamy,
a French actress who played a minor part 
in the 1980 film, Prune des Bois. 

http://members.shaw.ca/thelastword/05-05/talkkevin.html