May 18th is the feast day of Saint Eric, and therefore the closest thing to a namesday that I have, since there is no Saint Erika.
I was never very interested in St. Eric himself; I just liked it when my parents made me a cake for my namesday when I was a kid. Austrian heritage is good. You can get a personal cake two days of the year.
I've always liked my name, though it always has annoyed me when people spell it wrong. It's very strange, but I actually get "Erika" misspelled more often than "Hammerschmidt." I guess it's just that when people don't know how to spell "Hammerschmidt," they ask, but when they don't know how to spell "Erika," they guess. There are three common spellings of "Erika." There are no common spellings of "Hammerschmidt," since it's not a common name at all.
Another strange thing: when I studied in Mexico and Spain, nobody ever misspelled my name. This is strange because the usual misspelling I get around here is a replacement of the "K" with a "C," which is exactly what one would expect in a Spanish-speaking country, seeing that the Spanish language barely ever uses the letter "K" in any word, and always uses a "C" instead. But they didn't actually make that mistake, ever. I guess it's the same issue as with "Hammerschmidt"... the name "Erika" was so unfamiliar to them that they always asked when they didn't know how to spell it.
And it turns out neither "Erika" nor "Hammerschmidt" is really that bad, relatively speaking. When I decided to marry John Ricker, I thought about taking his name, since it seemed like an easier name to spell and pronounce than "Hammerschmidt." But after knowing him a while, I started to notice that "Ricker" actually got misspelled and mispronounced way, way more often than "Hammerschmidt." Seriously. I've seen him get called Richter, Riker, Stricker, Bicker... I've never figured out what is the deal with that.
So I kept "Hammerschmidt." "Erika Ricker" would sound silly anyway.
Anyway, in honor of my namesday, here is a song from the poetry page on my website:
Oh, beautiful for E and R,
for I and K and A,
Oh, beautiful for all of these,
Especially the K!
I'm Erika, I'm Erika,
God shed his grace on me,
But not on those who write my name
And spell it with a C!
