Midtown Humanity On Parade, Vol. 2
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on May 29, 2007 – 5:48 PM333 Comments
Little girl: Hi Mom, so guess what, at school today, after lunch? Dylan? Got a nosebleed.
Mom: Which Dylan?
What I love about that exchange: 1) to a child, a classmate’s nosebleed is above-the-fold, 48-point-type, no-time-for-pleasantries breaking news; 2) the child in question has more than one “Dylan” in her class. What I love even more is how these two aspects become one, because from now on, the Dylan who got the nosebleed is…the Dylan who got the nosebleed. If Dylan invites this little girl to a pool party, her mother will no longer ask “Which Dylan?” or “Dylan R. or Dylan J.?”, but rather, “Dylan who got the nosebleed?”
I have now typed “Dylan” so many times that it looks misspelled.
Share!
Tags: city living
My name is pronounced Elise, in spite of it more closely resembling Alice.
So I am in the unusual-spelling-of-a-not-terribly-uncommon-name camp.
We come with a whole different set of challenges.
Are we assuming that the popping up of all these Dylans is a 90210 spawned phenomena? Because that cracks me up… more so due to the fact that I have been (jokingly) been insisting on naming my first born Dylan regardless of gender specifically because my new last name would be McCoy which is just close enough to McKay to crack my ass up but not exact so I can claim to have named said child after Bob Dylan… will my child be made fun of in school? I think not, because young kids will never have heard of 90210 but I think it may make some teachers smile.
a) my mother had a very common name for Catholic girls in the late 1940s with a very common nickname she hated, so she wanted a simple name for me that didn’t lend itself to nicknames as much. Thus, Karen – in 1972, when it was in the top 10 of names given to girls.
b) which I got first hand proof of in 4th grade. 28 students, 4 Karens. To this day, I remember the last name of the other three Karens, after all, it was how we were all referred to.
c) if you’re into names and the back and forth, for pure fun you can’t beat the baby name wizard: http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html
Type in a first name, see its popularity since 1880 to 2006! (I also enjoy the blog. And no affiliation here, it’s just one of the blogs I really enjoy reading!)
Shotrock — I’m Jennifer – my sister is a Gillian with a hard G. I always thought she got saddled with the Jillian pronounciation because of my J, and the fact that my dad is Jeff. You know, because some families like the names to be all matchy-matchy. Like the Gems. Ha.
So, yeah, when it came to naming my daughter – I wanted to avoid the MOST popular name ever…but avoid the pronounciation nightmare too. So, we settled on Grace, which is flying up the charts. You just can’t win.
Well, I’ve often run into other Tiffanys. And I live in a region where my last name is common, too. And my middle name? Marie. Yeah, 4 of my 5 cousins and probably half of my female friends have that…A new one for me? There are two other Tiffany Marie W… in the patron database at the library where I work. Yeah.
When I was in college, we had a ton of Nicoles, Jims, Andys and Pats. Which resulted in amusing nicknames (Porno Pat, Metal Pat, Crazy Nickie, Psycho Nicole, etc.)
My current name requiring nicknames or whatever? Richard.
My mom named me Marisa (with one S) in the 70s after Marisa Pavan and Marisa Berenson, actresses that most people I know haven’t heard of. I never knew another Marisa until Tomei starred in My Cousin Vinny. In college, there were two others, both spelled with two S’s. Then Barbie’s little sister had a friend Marisa (who I bought immediately – I could NEVER find my spelling on any of those little name plates/pens/signs/etc. that I always wanted as a child). The craziest thing so far was when I started a new job last year, there was another girl on my team named Marisa, born only 2 weeks after me! The team had to come up with nicknames for us to differentiate which had never happened to either of us in our lives. We had many interesting discussions about Life as a Marisa.
Growing up, my friends were Katie, Katie, Karen, Cathy, Amy, Amy, Christine, Kristen, Keri, Karrie, Jamie, etc. I always wanted a “cute, easy†name. As an adult, I enjoy being named something that stands out a bit. Although it has become popular recently and I often get startled in stores when I hear moms yelling out to their pint size Marisas.
My biggest pet peeve is that people always have issues with the spelling and pronunciation – Marrisa, Marissa, Marrissa, Martha, Marcia, Marsia, you name it. Couple that with my unique maiden name that ALSO started with an M and you can imagine the crucifying my name took from strangers and over the phone. Some people I have worked with for years (mostly older gentlemen) even call me Melissa! The worst though, was my eighth grade English teacher. She used to call roll and call me “Marina†and then remark how pretty that name was. When I corrected her, and said it was actually Marisa, her response was, “Oh.†This happened at least once a week.
First of all, I LOVE this sort of thing. The writers of the Slate piece linked above also wrote Freakonomics, and there’s a chapter in the book that’s basically an extended version of that article. Fascinatig stuff.
I never had another Susie (or Sue or Susan) in my entire school career. My main problem was and is getting people to spell it correctly. If I’ve sent you an email with Susie in the header, in the email address, in the signature block, and I’ve signed it, why would you write back “Dear Suzy”? WHY?
I also went to summer camp for ten years, where no one ever bothered to learn anyone’s last name, so people were defined by the activities they did. We had quite the overflow of Matts and Dans (one of whom actually owned the camp) so you got Drama Matt and Volleyball Dan, that sort of thing. In my last year, when I was a counselor, we suddenly had another counselor named Susie, and the camp populace as a whole tried to give me an adjective. Man, was that a slap in the face! Ten years at a camp should earn you an adjectiveless existence!
As for nicknames, pretty much within seconds of meeting me, people like to call me Sooz, which doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But Sue totally gets my hackles up. I can’t explain why. And recently, people seem to like calling me SusieMorgan (my first and last), all one word. it does have a nice flow to it.
And finally, one of my best friends in high school was named Galadriel (everyone called her Gala) and her older brother was Sam. But they were named in the late seventies, so it seems less lame, since LotR wasn’t such a pop culture force then. (Hey, anyone remember in the Baby-Sitters Club books how one of the families they sat for had a pet hamster named Frodo? I bet there are billions of hamsters named Frodo out there nowadays…)
Count me among the many Jennifers born in 1971. I went by Jenny through most of school, although now it drives me nuts.
I’ve always considered myself lucky that I wasn’t born 10 days later — my parents told me that if I’d been born on Halloween, they would’ve named me Hazel. Sure, “Jennifer” is common, but being called “Witch Hazel” throughout my childhood probably would not have turned me into a well-adjusted adult.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is the oft-confusing practice of giving your child a place name. My best friend’s name is Austin, and we went to college in Texas. (Austin, Texas being the state capital, as well as a major hipster destination.) The number of times I have uttered the phrase “going to Austin,” “he’s in Austin,” etc, and been greeted with a confused stare is uncountable by now. Parents, just say no. (Rather hilariously, Austin’s evil ex-boyfriend is currently an electrical engineer working in, you guessed it, Austin.) Names like Houston, Austin, Dallas (what is it with Texas cities?), Brooklyn, Dakota, and the like, are all fine… as long as you don’t go anywhere near the region in question.
And I just remembered the best “uncomfortable child name” moment ever — I was having lunch at a friend’s house, and there was some piece of artwork on the wall with the names of all the kids in their daughter’s first grade class. Well, down at the bottom is the name “Aryan.” It took me ten minutes to work out a way to ask about it politely, without cracking up in the middle of the question.
I have the unusual name, my husband is a Chris, and his last name is very common. It’s kind of fun searching his name in any kind of database, because you can turn up between 20-100 names that match his. It also made going by Chris [first initial of last name] impossible, so his teachers always had to get creative. I’ve joked once or twice that he should go by Christopher rather than Chris, because “Chris” can also be a girl’s name (a friend we know, Christine, goes by “Chris”), and he fails to be amused by it. =P
Comparing the stories of how we were named… His name came out of his dad’s desire to have a kid with a common, uncomplicated first name (being that his own was a rare one passed along his family for generations, and he hated it). It didn’t seem such a good idea later on, for the above listed reasons. My name was actually a way not to give me a common name, after my dad’s mom, whom my mom didn’t really get along with, so the name itself was sort of a compromise of sorts (which came in handy when half my cousins turned out to be named after that grandma).
We’re not at the point of kids yet, but we’ve already decided the way to go is with a somewhat unusual name and letting the name come as a shock to friends and family (as in “I had no idea you liked that name”). Most times I’ve been polled about names I liked (Sophia, Lily, Naomi) within the past 5 years or so, it ended up naming that person’s new kid or being passed along to an expecting relative of theirs, so I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut when asked, or tossing out safe ones (“How about Elizabeth? Or Eric, if it’s a boy?”).
I was born Erin and tried to change to my middle name from the minute I could talk about it, but nobody listens to a toddler. So I grew up Erin until I was 10, at which point we moved states, and I was able to change to my middle name by simply introducing myself that way. I then legally changed at 25 when I got married and was doing paperwork anyway. (It’s freaky when only telemarketers and your doctor call you by your childhood name. It had to go.)
Erin’s a fine name, but not only was my best friend growing up also named Erin (“Erins! Dinner!”) as well as two other girls I knew (one of whom freaked out and insisted we were lying when my friend and I first met her and introduced ourselves “…no you’re not. I’M Erin!”) I just never felt like an Erin.
This is why I’m giving my kids livable first AND middle names, and letting things shake out as they may.
(My husband has the best name ever. Never met another Porter. On those name-popularity-tracking sites, we see that it had a brief surge juuuust barely into the top 100 in the 1910’s, and has been free for unique usage ever since. We’re hoping to achieve the same for our kids, but it’s hard to predict these things! I think we can all see from the number and kind of responses to this post that people have strong feelings about their names, almost no matter what you do! Too popular, too weird…sigh.)
Also re: Dylan/90210 craze, Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee’s kids are named Brandon and Dylan (born in 1996 and 1997). So there you go.
Name trauma! Fun. I never went to school with another Tracy, but at one point I was in a class with two Staceys, a Lacey, two Caseys, and a J.C. I coped by not responding to anything.
My brother had it worse: Stephen Michael. My dad is Steve, but there were lots of other Mikes at school. So he was Steve at school and Mike at home. Very strange when his friends would come over and ask if Steve was around.
My daughter is a Cassidy, and we’ve never had anyone mess that up. Her kindergarten class is full of unusual names. Spring and Blue are my favorites, with Tallulabell a close second.
Heh, reading this thread has reminded me of a line from “Hercules” (the Disney one, not Kevin Sorbo), where Pain says to Hades, “Maybe this is a different Hercules. It’s a very popular name right now” and Panic adds, “Yeah, like a few years ago when every other boy was named Jason, and the girls were all named Brittany.”
In my family we have a lot of double names, too. I have an Uncle Robert, a cousin Robert (called Blobbert by most), and Uncle Bobby who keeps trying to get us to call him Robert (fat chance) and a cousin Bobby. Then there’s my cousin Robert Michael, called Michael so as not to mix him up with my other cousin, Mike. Then my grandpa is Raymond Paul the First, I have an Uncle Ray, and a cousin Paul. Two cousin Matthews, two girl cousin Rileys (born only a month apart) and two John Davids and Jonathan. Did I mention this is all on ONE side of my very tight-knit, always-hanging-out-with-each-other family? It is. My sisters and I lucked out, mostly, although my poor little sister, Gillian (the French spelling of Jillian), has been called “Gilligan” almost her whole life by people too lazy to read her whole name.
All this being my justification for naming my children weird names (when I have them), so nobody else steals it (the Rileys’ moms had a bit of a fight over that one).
My ex was Dave II. He outgrew his dad by like half a foot. Ergo, there was “Big Little Dave” and “Little Big Dave.” Just try figuring that one out.
I find it amusing that in the comic strip Narbonic(.com), there’s a Dave Conspiracy. Evidently the cartoonist knew a lot of Dave’s in college.
I was one of seven Jennifer’s in a class one time- we had 14 in my HS graduating class, so that was HALF of ’em. I love the working world, where I only had to be Jennifer Which One? for about a year, then the other Jennifer left. Happily, I tend to work with people vastly above my age range, so there’s a paucity of Jennifer’s that there never was in school. We had someone applying here named Jennifer awhile back and I was desperately hoping she wouldn’t be hired because she would have been sitting right by me and I really didn’t want to hear Jennifer Which One? every two minutes. Happily, she wasn’t hired. We did have a problem for awhile where 3 out of 4 people in my section had rhyming names (two of the names were the male/female variant of each other, pronounced the same), that was bad enough.
At one place, we had a guy who went by C. because all of the Chris/topher variants were taken by the time he got there. The Davids all had to go by last name.
My friend and I were both dating Johns at the same time in high school. They spelled it differently, but there was definite “yours vs. mine” confusion.
At the small school where I used to teach, there were three girls named Shayla, each a different ethnicity. And all three were the biggest brats, too.
In my current job, I come across many odd names and I just think to myself, why would their parents do that to them? Offhand, there’s Robert Bobb, Hans Han, etc. It would be one thing if it was a woman who got married, but these are men whose parents named them this.
But my favorite of all time (and I am not making this up) is Basil Bazoo. I bet he never gets confused with anyone else.
Wow, only the 2nd Ann, and even we spell it differently.
I thought my name was soooo dull (Ann Marie), but I have never been to school or work, or even run into another Ann. And now I like it.
I’m pregant with my 1st, and it’s too soon to tell if it’s a boy or girl. The girl’s name is fine – Evelyn Maeve. We’ve both loved that name for years, so no hesitation there. Even if it is/gets crazy popular, we are decided.
But if it’s a boy…. Husband loves Finnegan (Finn). And everyone I’ve told it to likes it as well. I like it. But… I have a worry that it might be a little “Madison”-y. It’s a top name in Ireland, but it’s low on the radar here. For now. So my latest googles say. Then again, if we don’t go with Finn, I have no idea what we’ll do. Boys names are a pain.
Ha! My name is Erin Elizabeth, too. I hated my name. Hated it! No one could spell it and no one else had that name. (We lived in a small town at the time.) And briefly some girl at school called me “Erin Space” because of the Air and Space Smithsonian museum. So droll.
Now I am constantly “not” flinching or “not” looking when I hear my name Every Where I Go.
I love the names Sophronsia, which I am sure would be considered child abuse, and Fiona. I also love, love Greek names. They don’t seem to have any problem naming their kids after the long dead or the mythological — Helena, Athena, Sophocles, Apollo.
Another Susan (not Sue, thank you very much) checking in. I’m 38 and there are six other Susans at my church, all in the 30-50 age range. It also seemed like half the girls I knew growing up had the middle name Marie.
I love the SSA web site (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/) and we used it to make sure our girls wouldn’t have to use their last initials all the time. Our older girl is Cheryl, named after my best friend, and it dropped off the charts in 1998. Our younger girl is Audrey (anybody remember the Britcom To the Manor Born?), and that name has been gaining steadily for 15 years and is now #68. Uh-oh!
I’ve never had too much trouble with Elizabeth – the only other one in my class (until high school) went by Liz, so we never had any problems.
My big problem is with Kiss. I think whenever a band puts out a song named after a person, all persons with that name are doomed to be sung that song, ad naseum, until the end of time. Note to men who think they’re being romantic: Beth by Kiss may be a ballad, but….”Me and and the boys will playing all night.” NOT. ROMANTIC.
I was the only Diana I knew growing up, not even any similar names like Diane or Dianna. My folks picked the easiest spelling, I guess. Didn’t have the money to afford a middle name (just kidding) so I have gone through life trying to explain THAT. And my last name is also only 5 letters, so I have 10 letters total in my whole name. I was a ‘military wife’ for many years, and their computer systems can’t deal with no middle initial or name, so on my military ID and medical records I was “Diana NMN”!
Parents figured I’d take my husband’s name when I got married, and then I could take my last name as a middle name. Worked on the first marriage, but the second one I was no way going through all that paperwork again!
But with “Diana” being the easiest spelling, I have always had to answer to Dian/Diane because folks are lazy. And trying to get them to spell it correctly is hard – why do they always try to make it more difficult than it is. For many years, I was able to say ‘spelled like Princess Diana’ and they’d get it right, but I have felt bad for obvious reasons for many years now and don’t use that direction anymore.
Finally, and very weirdly, I know only one other person whose name is “Diana” but she pronounces it “Dyna”!
I narrowly avoided being named Elizabeth, which was lucky because there were three of them in the first grade. I didn’t meet another Lacey until late high school, and we never shared a class. (Don’t get me started on misspellings, though. Some of them are quite creative, but dangit, people, if I send you an e-mail with my name at the bottom, it shouldn’t be that hard to get it right when you reply.) People do seem to have a problem calling me by the right name — I’ve been Lucy, Stacy, Tracy, Lindsey, Lizzie… I started telling people it’s the one that describes fancy underwear.
Could be worse. My cousins ended up with names like Per (pronounced “pear” — Swedish, apparently), Mona Lisa, and Hidi. I also had a friend named Tavia, pronounced like Octavia. I don’t think any of them had to worry about tacking an initial onto their names.
I did have the bad luck of ending up with a last name that’s slang for “erection,” and the worse luck of having people refer to me by my last name for most of my adolescence. Could be worse — I knew a kid named John Thomas Putz. His parents were really weird.
I’m loving all these fascinating stories about people’s names.
I never met another Sharon until a few years ago, I think. Growing up, I was always disappointed with my name, and wanted a more unusual name. I went thru a phase of having my parents call me by the name of the week. That died out pretty quickly, thankfully.
Sharon is a very simple, not too common, but easy name to spell. However, you will not BELIEVE the different spellings I’ve gotten of my name: Sharron, Sheryn, Sherren, Sherryn, Charon, Cherin, etc. Very weird. I don’t know where they come up these spellings, but at least it makes life interesting.
As far as naming children go, my name choices are not too different, but not too common (as far as I can tell). For a girl I love Aurelia Grace, and for a boy Markus Andrew.
As a Danielle, I only ever knew one other (a girl 2 years older than me) for most of my schooling. Of course, my mother gave me this name because “it didn’t have any nicknames.” HUH? Clearly I was Dani until college when I insisted on Danielle. Furthermore, there are FOUR Danielles in my office, so 3 of us go by initials (DCM, DVP, DD and the other one– she’s new)
This isn’t a multiples posting, but just about naming conventions overall. I knew a family with 5 girls (and grew up between the older two), and they named their kids in alpha order. Not so uncommon, of course. Except what they named the last one. And so, for your reading pleasure: Alice, Bryce, Crystal, Deandra and Enuf. YES, that’s right, pronounced just the way we would say “enough.” I guess we all are to know not to expect any others. Unless, of course, there’s a “Finale.” (or so their familly joke went)
Damn it. Vivian’s been my future daughter’s name for years, and I thought it was slipping under the radar. Y’all are breaking my heart! It’s MINE! :)
Amazing topic, wow. Amongst many other reactions to people’s posts, one thought just came to mind – does anyone know if their parents intended to name them something & changed their minds before The Point Of No Return, and have they had any thoughts about that alternative?
Case in point: It’s a bit of a legend in my family that I was supposed to be named Stacey Beth, and a few days into my existence, my parents looked a me, then at each other & said “nope, not a Stacey.” So I became Kimberley (Anne, like 99.9% of Kimberleys), forever doomed to having people pre-judge me based on Rod Stewart’s idiot daughter, or automatically mis-spell my name (there’s an extra E in there, people, and it comes after, not before, the L), or rudely call me Kim when…uch, not there again, must stop.
What is a Stacey supposed to look like, anyway? All the ones I knew ran the range of human pheno- and behavioural types, so I haven’t been able to generalize. Considering that my school/camp/university/professional life has been littered with Stacey/Stacy/Staci/Stacie/Stassis (yes, really), I’m pretty glad I dodged that bullet just to have avoided the clutter, but I wonder if I would have become a significantly different person as a Stacey. And has anyone dodged something they’ve been really thankful to have avoided?
Wow, I never thought I’d be grateful for my name. A red-breasted bird, a medieval mercenary, and Batman’s wimpy sidekick, sure… but at least I was the only one. It wasn’t until I did a year of university in England that I became “Robin-with-an-I” (and that’s mostly because there, Robin is a boy’s name).
Of the old-fashioned names I can think of, I doubt Mildred will be making a come back anytime soon, nor Ethel. But Vivian is lovely.
My husband is named Matthew. He now works in a company w/ 3 floors. He works on the top floor (internet sales), there’s a guy on the basemet (delivery/shipping) and a guy on the middle floor (management) their names for overhead pages? (In no particular order)
Upstairs Matt
Downstairs Matt
and Management Matt (I still laugh when I hear that one!)
I grew up knowing a Pete Petersen, a Jon Johnson and a Nick Nickon. What’s up with that?
I’m a 24-year-old Mary and have only met one other Mary of my generation – The Boyfriend’s little sister, who’s 18. When I visit The Boyfriend’s family, I am “(The Boyfriend)’s Mary” and she is “Mary McGinty.” Or “May-may.”
This thread, while being great fun and nice therapy, is more reinforcement of my long-held belief that you can’t ever pick your own nickname. Someone has to bestow it upon you for it to really stick.
My mother named me Amanda at a time when (she says) no one was naming their daughters “Amanda.” Somehow I ended up in the same class as five other Amandas when I got to middle school, so she must have been lying to me. I can’t even remember how my teachers addressed us. We had two Amanda Bs, two Amanda Cs, and two Amanda Ws, so it couldn’t have been initials. And I know they never called me by my full name. Hmm.
My father’s family has some interesting names. His father’s name was Maurice, which is my father’s and brother’s middle name. I’m just glad no one gave me or my siblings any name belonging to one of my great-grandparents on that side. My grandfather’s parents were Albertina and Narcis; my grandmother’s parents were Severena and Romeo. My mom almost named me Severena, but I gues she figured kindergarten is tough enough.
Almost everyone on my mother’s side of the family is named Barbara, Robert, David, Michael, Jeanne, or Ann. Robert and Barbara were my mother’s parents, and they named one of my uncles and one of my aunts after them. I have an uncle named David who has a son named David. I have an uncle named Michael who had a son named Michael. I also have an uncle named Michael who isn’t even blood-related to this crazy family. He’s married to my aunt Jeanne. My cousin Christina’s middle name is Michael. My mom’s name is Ann, which is my grandmother’s sister’s name. And I have my aunt Barbara’s middle name (Therese).
Funny thing — I’m expecting and have had my heart set on a particular girl’s name for a number of years now. It’s a very traditional but non-American spelling (and I’m not going to say what it is, because I’m greedy about it and superstitious) and though very popular in this other country, it’s not near the top 100 in the US. I was thinking that there’s no way that there could be another little girl in her school, when she gets there, with the same name.
Surprise, surprise — in Googling it, I found that there’s another woman in the same city as me who has just given birth to a daughter and named her the same thing I have planned! They could end up in the same school.
It just goes to show, there’s no safety in attempting to choose a unique name.
“All their sons were named Peter or Paul, and their daughters were all named Marie. By the time I finished meeting them all I thought I was drunk.”
I just checked our university directory. We have 18,000 students plus faculty and staff. There are almost 300 Jennifers, over 200 Jessicas, 160 Sarahs, 65 Saras.
BUT: Only 37 Dianes.
And only 8 Dylans.
Do you think it’s regional as well as generational?
Maybe there are name networks, with nodes and hubs of popularity.
I used to hate the fact that I could never find my name on a coffee mug, keychain or bicycle license plate. Now I just hate Kelsey Grammer. Probably not as much as my paternal grandmother must have hated her parents for naming her Dorcas I bet.
That “Goodfellas” quote reminds me of one branch of my ancestors: they’re all named George, Peter, or Henry. Which makes genealogy difficult at times.
What’s in a name? A lot of embarrassment growing up, that’s what. Now, Ibis is an unusual name, but theoretically not difficult to pronounce at first read, given that it looks exactly like Iris and Isis and rhymes with those names in both Spanish and English: EYE-ris/EYE-sis/ EYE-bis; or EE-dees/EE-cease/EE-bees. But no. No one ever got close to it on the first try, and some NEVER get it – I have gringo friends who pronounce it EYE-bez.
But the worst offender was my grade 1-3 music teacher, who just couldn’t seem to get it right ever, and would mess it up so often that he eventually just started calling me Eebis Ibis Oobis, figuring one of those was right. He was a great teacher otherwise, but man – three years of that shit, thinking it was funny. I was already the freakishly tall girl in gifted classes – as if I didn’t stick out enough, you throw that shit into the mix? HAAAAAAAATE!!! At least there was never another person with my name in class, I guess.
It was also an interesting name to have when I got to U. of Miami, because the ibis is our mascot (I wasn’t named for the bird, but for my mother, and SHE was named for a character in a book, and didn’t know the bird existed until she emigrated from Cuba to Miami.) It was a sort of funny/sad thing whenever I would start a new class and the teacher would have us introduce ourselves – half the students would be like “For real? Like Sebastian?” [the mascot], while the other half didn’t register any surprise because they *didn’t even know* that our mascot was an ibis.
Now, though, everyone loves my name, and thinks it’s unusual and pretty – when I introduce myself in person. On the phone, however, they always think I’m saying “Ivan”.
*Sigh* It just never ends.
I have a stepsister named Tamsand. She goes by Tammy for the most part, but my cousins called her “Tamarind” for a long time. My poor stepsister, the tropical fruit.
I have an aquaintance who named his daughter “Nefarious Freedom” Nefarious Freedom! These are well-educated people, who I would assume know how to use a dictionary. She is 3 or 4 now, and goes by Ari.
Wait, Goodfellas – right? :o)
“All their sons were named Peter or Paul, and their daughters were all named Marie. By the time I finished meeting them all I thought I was drunk.”
My brother once brought a date to a family party, this was about 15 years ago – first he introduced me, “This is my sister Shyra.” A moment later he introduced “My cousin Tyra and her fiance, ___” (Tyra didn’t marry that man, I’ve since forgotten his name.) Soon after, he introduced “My Aunt Shyra.” The young lady asked “Do all the women in your family have the same name?”
When I was born in 1978, my father wanted to name me Jessica, but my mother (who had spent her entire life as Linda R. and Linda Ann) talked him out of it. I’ve met very few people my own age with my name, but lots of people have a grandmother named Margaret. Or so I’ve been told. I had a love/hate relationship with my name when I was in grade school (mostly because people often spell it wrong and all the pretty and popular girls were named Lauren or something else more common) but now I can’t imagine myself named anything else.
I work in a classified program, and I think that the security guys must want to restrict the number of first names for some reason. The other day I had a meeting where the attendees were Mike, Mike, Mike, Paul, Paul, Paul, Mark, Mark, Jack, Jack, Bill, Bill, and Ned.
Beth, word to your issues with Kiss the Band who Made your Name a Song…I missed out on my chance to throttle Duane Allman for “Sweet Melissa”…..the legendary peach truck got there ahead of me. (shakes fist) Gaah!!
“does anyone know if their parents intended to name them something & changed their minds before The Point Of No Return, a”
My father always wanted a Christopher, but when they found out their second (and most likely last) was a girl my dad was pushing hard for Christine/a. My mother however, growing up with a dozen cousins named Christini, Christiane, Christina, etc said no. She wanted Jennifer. I (at the wise old age of 3) suggested Jessica. There were no kids named Jessica. Of course as I mentioned above, that kind of came around to prove me wrong.
Although reading this thread, it would appear that she would have been screwed with any of those three names. :)
In my father’s family, my grandfather and uncle are both Edwards and my father is a David. Somehow I ended up with two cousins named David (out of three). Apparently, my grandmother got angry with my aunt for using the name for my older cousin, as it was supposed to be for my father to use for his son. My father never had any intention of using it, after seeing all the confusion caused by the Edwards. I don’t know what the story is with the second cousin David, but it gets very confusing when all three of them are together. With two, you can use Big David/Little David, but with three we have to resort to last names (one is different).
We had all the typical Michael/Johnathan/Christopher names in elementary and high school, but in college there was an abundance of Dans and Dons. Both students and professors. I was also friends with two Jons, who actually lived together at one time. One had always been called Big Jon, making the other Little Jon by default, much to his dismay.
At one point in his Air Force career, my father’s CO was Colonel Christmas. His daughter’s name? Mary.
And in the tiny mountain town I went to junior high in, there was a family named “Barr” – the daughter’s name was Kandy. I can only imagine the horror she went through in high school…
OMG! I also know two guys named Eric Johnson—- and they are dating!! We call them the Erics Johnson.
Another Sarah checking in here, one of about 7 to 10 in my circle of friends here in a small town. Growing up there was always another one or two in school, and for whatever reason I still hate being called “Sarah C.” as if I’m in kindergarten.
However, I dodged a bullet because my dad’s name is Ozro William the 4th, and my parents threatened to name me that if I was a boy, or Ozarina Willemina if a girl. My grandmother apparently said, however, “We are a family, not a dynasty.” They liked Jesse for a boy as well, but then when thinking of boy names for my (eventual) sisters, they liked Ben. So I’m always glad I didn’t get named Jesse, since apparently its appeal lasted less than a year.