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Looking for a Love this holiday? There are 14 in the valley By JoNel Aleccia Let me call you "sweet," Carol Heart. Or how about "darling," Karen Darling? Perhaps it's best to stick with "loverboy" when greeting Walt Love. After all, it doesn't really matter. The Hearts, the Darlings and the Loves of this world are used to lame attempts at sentimentality this time of year. Ditto for the Valentines, the Roses and the Trueloves. Local folks who sport Valentine-related names say they're accustomed to Feb. 14 jokes and gentle gibes aimed by everyone from store clerks to restaurant reservation takers. "I do get it fairly often, mostly from young men who are checkers in grocery stores," says Karen Darling of Ashland. "They'll say, `Why, thank you, darling Karen.' It's sort of a license to flirt." The former Karen Holley is among a dozen Darlings listed in the Medford telephone book. She joins 14 Loves, a half-dozen Valentines and more than 40 Roses. There are also some 30 Harts in the book, but only one Heart. That would be Aloha Heart, an Applegate woman whose official phone listing reads "Carol." "I was living in Hawaii; I was totally following my spirit path," says Heart. "I left Hawaii and I never heard `aloha' any more. I decided I am Aloha. I get to say it and hear it." Technically, the "Heart" wasn't hers, either. The former Carol Ann Cataldo chose a new last name while sitting on an avalanche crest in Alaska. "I know that Aloha Heart is me; it's my commitment to live by that vibration," says Heart, a rapid-eye therapy practitioner. Nancy Rose of Ashland also chose her own romance-related name. After a divorce, the former Nancy Smith Roessler knew she didn't want to use her maiden or married names. "I found myself writing `Rose' instead of `Roessler' and I thought, `Oh, that's my name,' " says Rose, a licensed massage technician and hospice volunteer. "Roses are truly ,love, both outwardly and inwardly." Most folks with mushy monikers acquired them either by birth or marriage, leaving them to cope with the fallout. "My poor boys," says Mae Valentine, a White City grandmother of five. "When they were going through school, they had a terrible time on Valentine's Day. They got razzed. It bothered them a lot." By contrast, Joan Valentine's boys like their name -- almost as much as their mother does. The Medford woman chose to retain it even after she married a Benjamin -- on Valentine's Day 1988. "It was a fun name. It still is," she says. "When I married Mr. Valentine, we lived next door to the Harts. We made the reservations for the Valentines and the Harts and the people just died!" Mona Love of Sams Valley says she gets comments year-round about the romantic name she acquired when she married Walt Love 13 years ago. But that's fine, with the former Mona Mirijunio, who says the sentiment has followed the signature. "I don't know how to explain it; with the Love, it is so much nicer," she says. That notion is seconded by the former Lisa Blaeuer, who happily traded her maiden name for Stephen Truelove's. The pair met through an exchange of letters sparked by Lisa's mom. "When my mother found out his name was Truelove, she couldn't believe it," says the Ashland musician wed in 1984. "But he really is my true love." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA