The relationships between the understandings children develop while learning the written form of their own names and those developed while learning other words were examined in a study. Twelve children, aged three, four, and five, were selected. The study involved three tasks which examined the subjects' expertise with letters, numbers, and the written form of their own names, the understandings they held relative to their own names, and with regard to two other words. Results indicated that children did not treat their own names as unique words in terms of letter order and word size. This study calls into question the view that learning the written form of one's own name is a unique case of written language learning. It would appear that when children are able to write their own names in standard form they may also be able to exhibit very sophisticated understandings about words in our written language system. (Eleven references and six figures are appended.) (Author/SKC)