Say it with me, people: Sun. In. Shine.

That's how my last name, Sonnenschein, is pronounced. It means sunshine in German.

Sure, if you took German in high school you may disagree with me. You want to make that first S sound like a Z. I know. But my grandfather, whose name it was and who was a German immigrant, pronounced it like a Yankee once he got here, and who am I to disagree with my Pop-Pop?

Sometimes when I tell people my last name they think I'm the child of hippies. I'd like to mention that I have nothing against hippies, but my parents have very little in common with them. Also, I suspect that most hippie names aren't twelve letters long with German spelling.

As a kid, I had a series of nicknames based on my last name. The most creative was Windex, based on a TV jingle at the time with the lyrics "Windex lets the sun shine in."

And I've heard the jokes about "You Are My Sonnenschein" and "You Are The Sonnenschein Of My Life." I have nothing against those songs, nor do I have any problem understanding why people think it's cute to get some word play going. It's just that it gets old smiling at jokes I've heard all my life.

But when your last name means sunshine, I think you have a certain responsibility to look on the bright side (pun intended). I don't know that other Sonnenscheins agree with me, but since Mara is Hebrew for bitter, perhaps I'm looking to my last name a bit more than my brothers Eric (Norse for 'Eternal Ruler') and Craig (Gaelic for 'Rock'), for instance.

It's nice to have a name that honors the star so central to our lives. It's even nicer that sunshine is almost unanimously adored. The few people who don't like sunshine are usually indoors anyway, so it's not like I run into a lot of sunshine haters.

The Beatles may have put it best in their song "Good Day, Sunshine":

'I need to laugh, and when the sun is out, I've got something I can laugh about …'