Cinda Williams Chima: Hello. My name is Cinda Williams Chima. My first name, Cinda, came from a character in a novel my mother was reading before I was born. In the book, the character is described as rather plain and broad of face, but she was a person who knew what she wanted and my mother liked that about her. Chima is my husband's last name and that's how he pronounces it. The Romanian pronunciation is Chima and some of my in-laws pronounce it that way. I answer to both.