Meiycaireon OK, but he likes Myke

FAYETTEVILLE - Arkansas linebacker Myke Tavarres’ mother wanted him to have a unique name, so she dubbed him Meiycaireon Solondrio.

He stood out all right, but the name had trouble sticking.

“As a kid, I hated it,” Tavarres said. “It was too long to spell and people couldn’t say it.”

His mother went along with him shortening the long name to “Mike,” but she still kept pushing for him to be different.

“I went by ‘Mike’ for the longest time, but my mom was like, ‘Look, you’re too unique, you’re too different to be just Mike. You had such a special name, why change that?’

“I was like, ‘You’re right, but I like Mike.’ So we decided to switch it up and spell it Myke, and it’s stuck ever since.”

Tavarres figured “Myke” came into existence when he was 7 or 8 years old, and it marked the the final evolution of his naming process.

Earlier in his life, Tavarres even went by a name not even connected to Meiycaireon: Tony.

“I went by Tony because I couldn’t spell my name,” he said. “Tony was my favorite Power Ranger. It was way back when.”