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I knew of one Virginia and knew one other. Way back around 1970, my sister was engaged to the guy who would become her first husband, but there was a period of time during which they broke up and he started seeing another girl named Virginia. I never saw Virginia, but I remember that period of time when my sister would talk about the Virginia that her ex-fiance was now dating. Of course, according to my sister, Virginia was very ugly and very charmless.

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My sister and her ex eventually got back together and got married, but it left my sister with a lifelong hatred of the name Virginia, and it left me with a mental picture of Virginia as an ugly, charmless, man-stealing hussy.

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Some years later, I knew a Virginia in college. She was always called Ginny. She was a nice enough person, but very overweight, not too physically attractive, and quite masculine.

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So I guess that first Virginia would be about sixty now and the second one about fifty. I've never known a young Virginia. I do think that a nickname is avoidable, because I remember that my sister always called that first Virginia Virginia and not a nickname.

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I have no particular impressions of the parents of a Virginia and I've never seen an alternate spelling. I've never cared for the name, and I usually have a thing for girls' names that start with a V and are long. It's always had a clunky image to me, like a Virginia will be a big, clumsy, horsey girl. And a man-stealing hussy.