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.
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Tags: city living
Caitlin, you just made me think of another thing. I currently work with a Sean and a Shawn. So they are referred to as Sean and… Phonetic Shawn. Hee.
As for first name/middle name combos, my aunt’s kind of cracks me up. Her name’s Jacqueline, and since that was such a mouthful, my grandparents wanted to give her a nice, short middle name: Lynn. Which is fine and dandy until you say the whole thing out loud: Jacka-lin-lin. Family legend has it that it was years before they realized it sounded like that…
And I would like to chime in on the childhood pain caused by lack of personalized doodads. Always Sue and sometimes Susan (less often, weirdly) but never Susie. (My full name is Susanne, for the record. That was my parents being creative.) Last year, my friend Marianne, who suffered from the same misfortune, and I were at the Coit Tower in San Francisco, and lo and behold, there were kechains in the gift shop with BOTH of our names spelled properly. So moved were we that we… took a picture of them. C’mon, they were $4.99 apiece. Total ripoff.
I think my folks did a good job with my brother: Greg(ory). Easy to pronounce, easy to spell, yet has never been terribly common. They were aiming for the same thing with me, the difference being that he could always find doodads with his name on them!
Another Danielle here. I didn’t meet another one till college, and of course, we lived three doors down from each other. Luckily, she was a “Dani” and if anyone outside of my bloodline calls me Dani, they get a ride on the Size 6 Express (tm Sars, thanks!) I was almost “Anne” but my mom, hopped up on painkillers for labor pains back in 1977 heard Elton John’s “Daniel” on the radio, and there ya go. So I can attest my name to Demerol and a song about a man. Fantastic.
The college nickname phenomenon was out of control with my friends. We had a DATABASE that we TYPED OUT of all the nicknames we gave people. Most of them were incredibly cruel (but witty!) To be fair, we went to college in Boston, so chances were that any and every guy we knew was named Sean, Mike or Kevin. I swear, you yell “Kevin!” in a bar in Boston, and 400 dudes say “What?”
I got my name because it was a biblical thing. It’s been kinda funny because it’s really not a common name, although some folks do seem to think it’s a variation of Elizabeth.
Because it’s been so rare it always startles me when I hear it on tv or something. In the last few years, I have noticed it becoming a more popular name though. I was working at McD’s with my lovely name tag and within ten minutes found out that there were three more ‘Bethany’s’ in the store as customers. It was creepy weird!
I’m the second Tori on the thread, but not really ’cause I’m not a Victoria like the first one, I’m just Tori. I always think it’s weird when people ask me (which they frequently do) if I’m a Victoria, although I guess it makes sense. I just always think of Vickie/Vicky as being the common nickname for Victoria, not Tori. I’ve never had a friend or acquantaince with my name, and like many others here, hated it when I was a kid but now am glad that my name is unique. I have seen a trend of Toris among young girls lately, though, but I was born in 1978 so not too many at all in my age group.
I can’t even express how many people call me “Tori Amos” or “Tori Spelling.” I’ve never really understood why; people don’t call Heathers “Heather Locklear” or Jennifers “Jennifer Lopez.” Why do I always get this? I guess it’s because it’s not a common name so people associate it with the only other Toris they know. I don’t mind Tori Amos, cause she’s talented if a little loopy (as am I) but Tori Spelling grates. Also: you’re not clever, people. I’ve heard it a hundred times.
Coincidentally, one of the names I hate is Vicky (obligatory no offense acknowledgement).
I have three girl names picked out and I haven’t seen any of them on this thread yet, which makes me happy. And they’re not “creatively” spelled or outlandish, either (good to know there are others out there who despise this trend as much as I do). But like others I’m superstitious and won’t reveal them, except to say that my middle name (which is after Vivien Leigh and which I quite like) is one of the middle names.
“I’m curious, where do you all live? I’m wondering if the Lah/Lo thing is regional. I grew up in Maryland, where I was Lah-ra.”
This may be regional. I live in Oregon (have my whole life) and every Laura I’ve ever met prounounced it “Lora.” Incidentally, I have also met people who both pronounce and spell it “Lora.”
I would spell Lah-ra “Lara” (as in Dr. Zhivago), but the only Lara I ever knew pronounced it LAIR-ah.
I love Shioban, by the way. I can only pronounce it because a former co-worker had a daughter by that name, but I love the look and sound. :)
I’ve only ever met two girls named Kristi – and they were both my roommates at the same time. I nearly changed my name to fit in.
I’m used to the spelling now and couldn’t imagine it any other way, but mostly I loathe ‘unique’ spellings. You’re condemning your children to a lifetime of misspellings, people.
For the problems with Gaelic names roll: I have a friend (a Deirdre, no dreee, and what is that anyhow?) whose older sister’s name is Aoife (Eee-fah). I can only imagine what people pull with that.
Unisex names: my father’s name is Dana. He still gets the occasional call or mail for Mrs/Ms Dana _____.
All but one of my uncles have D names. Both sides included. It would make sense if there was a naming trend, but I’m talking the in-laws too. Don, Dave, Dan, Dale, Darrin, Dennis. My grandma is Doreen (I kind of like her name too).
My niece, Ann Margaret Lastname’s ex-husband married Margaret Ann Lastname after they divorced. And they have the same birthday. I know it’s a small world, but that’s just too weird.
I know two Siobhans, actually. I think it is a great name–though I will admit I had to be told how to pronounce it when I met the first one in high school.
I have lived in, have family in, and/or have visited with regularity pretty much every state on the east coast as well as Louisiana, Washington State, Arizona, and California , and I have never heard “Laura” pronounced as anything but “Lora”. I’m not saying it ISN’T, of course, but I definitely think that’s the most common, tv-english way to pronounce it. If someone told me their name was “Lah-rah”, I would assume they spelled it “Lara”.
Another Susan here, but I go by Sue or my middle name, which is “Jeneen” (never seen that spelling anywhere). I was the only Susan I knew throughout all of my years of schooling, save for one Susan in junior high. I’m nearly 22 now, and I can only attribute my name to being named after a woman born in the proper era. I ended up naming my daughter Eva Frances because you never, ever see it. Old-fashioned names are now the unique ones, which is kind of nice.
Heh, my old college roommate’s name IS Lara, pronounced “Lah-rah” and we always used “Like from Dr. Zhivago” to help people get it right.
I didn’t know any other Joslyns until HS, and even then they spelled it Jocelyn, which I suppose it technically corret, though I prefer the spelling my parents went with. Sure it’s a constant battle in both spelling and pronunciation (why my friends from Florida call me Joz-lyn is beyond my understanding) but I’m used to it.
I’ve been reading this thread on and off for days and have loved it. My full name (Jacqueline) was apparently the 50th most popular name the year I was born (1968), but I never had another Jackie in a class (K through graduate school). But in the neighborhood we now live in, there are three of us in two small blocks. Crazy. And, oddly, as an adult, I’m always working with/making friends with women named Jill–as in Jack and Jill.
As for getting screwed by your name in a song, I think I have Sars and Daniel beat… My twin sister is named Diane. Now, obviously, back in the late sixties, my parents could have no idea of the pain we would suffer in junior high when John Cougar came out with “Jack and Diane.” But if I had a nickel for every time someone thought they were being clever about that song, I wouldn’t have had to spend the nineties paying off my student loans!
The funny thing is, both Diane and I married guys named Jeff (I was dating mine first, for the record). We’ve gotten around the “my Jeff, your Jeff” thing by me calling her hubby by his last name and her referring to mine as “Doc” (for his profession).
When I named both of my kids, I made sure to check the SS website, because I didn’t want anything in the top 100. Thought I had it cracked with my son–Owen was 130 in 2001, but in 2002 when he was born it checked in at 98. Last year it was up to 53. I blame Owen Wilson for this. Oh well, at least my son will be ahead of the crowd of Owens following behind him. My daughter is Harper–that one isn’t even in the top 200, so she should be safe. Although the Freakanomics guys say it will be a top 10 boy name by 2015. Opps. Doesn’t matter, though, I love it and “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a great book.
For Leigh above whose husband loves Richard for a boy to honor family members, why not use it as a middle name? My husband was set on using his father’s first name (very unusual here, FiL is from Estonia), so we picked it for our son’s middle name. My father-in-law was very pleased to have a namesake, but also glad we hadn’t saddled the poor kid with something that would be considered weird in the U.S.
This Laura business fascinates me, and I have to jump in and say that as far as I ever knew, Laura, Lara, and Lora are three different names with distinct pronunciations. I’ve heard people pronounce “Laura” as both “Lara” and “Lora,” too, but I always figured this name had all kinds of regional dialect attached to it, like Don/Dawn or Alan/Ellen. (I’m from southeast PA, where Don rhymes with Ron, Dawn rhymes with fawn, and Laura, Lara, and Lora are all pronounced phonetically.)
Jackie: Thanks for the suggestion, but I’ve tried it. Every time I suggest it as a middle name, he switches it.
me: “Soandso Richard?” him: “Richard Soandso?” me: “ARGH!”
Ironically, we were in agreement on Owen for years, until I noticed its precipitous climb in popularity and sadly (sadly!) had to reconsider. I’m afraid our other favorite boy name is headed in the same direction. It’s in the mid-nineties already, and climbing.
Fortunately my girl choices appear to be fairly safe. One cracked the top 200 in the 1910s and hasn’t been seen since (yet fits all the criteria for pronounceable, spellable, pretty, and not unheard-of at all), and the other has never even made the top 1000. That one has a few pronunciation issues, but also has meaning to us, so we might do it anyway. I have a couple of years yet to think about it ;)
Sorry, one more comment because it just happened for the 9343297th time: If one more person responds to an email signed “Leigh” with “Dear Lee,” I am going to seriously lose it. I can deal with people who have only *heard* my name assuming the wrong spelling (in fact, I always just automatically spell it when asked what my name is by someone writing it down). I can even deal with the occasional “Lay” (though…really? It’s not THAT uncommon a name.) But to misspell someone’s name that is written down RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU is just plain lazy and rude. Thanks for proving just how much you don’t care.
(Best salutation I ever received on a letter: “Dear People,” Hee!)
Deirdre and Karin, I feel your pain. My first name doesn’t seem that difficult, at least to me … but I cannot count the number of times I get called “Mary” even though my name is one word, and I use my middle initial for nearly everything, mostly to emphasize that my name is MaryAnne. Even in email, when I’ve signed the whole thing, I get responses that start “Thanks, Mary.” Sigh.
However, my last name is so unusual and hard to spell that my siblings and I all had to learn to write and spell it before starting school so we could help the teachers. At least we were never “the one with the nosebleed” – just the use of the last name was a unique identifier for our friends’ parents. But then out of college I had a high-profile job in a small community and a couple with a similar sounding last name that was spelled differently decided to name their adopted daughter MaryAnne because it sounded good with that name … and the kid and I had the same doctor, so they always mixed up our charts and would try to re-immunize me or look puzzled as to why I was in for diaper rash.
And speaking of unusual names, my sister chose Devianne (nickname Devi) for her first daughter and we all loved it, not realizing we’d spend the rest of the kid’s life saying “No, not Debbie, Devi-with-a-V” and flashing the peace sign automatically. So she went with the overused Ashlee for her second child.
Jack and Diane … that is rough.
I used to work in an office that a man named Tom McCann called frequently. After I’d worked there a few years, I asked him how often people said, “Like the shoe store?” after he gave his name. His kind, yet weary, answer was, “Every single day of my life.”
And Leigh, Karin, Deirdre, and MaryAnne: I feel your pain! I can’t tell you how many times people respond to my email (as in, they’ve got my name right in front of them) with various permutations (Elana, Alena, Alana, Ralph, etc.). My last name is long and Greek, so I just immediately begin spelling it for people when they need it.
Does anyone else have this problem? When I was a kid and I got into trouble, my mom would trot out “Jacqueline”, or if I was really bad, my full name – “Jacqueline Lee.” YIKES. To this day, if someone calls me Jacqueline, I think I’m in trouble. I had a boss who insisted on calling me Jacqueline and EVERY time, I thought I was in the shit. Turns out, he just really liked Jacqueline. Drove me crazy, though.
Oddly enough, I’m the only Mary that I know under the age of 60.
Today, I saw a name in the paper that made me very sad: Presleigh.
It just looks really ugly and ungainly in print, and all I can think about is Elvis. The poor girl.
Something of a late-comer here, but I love this sort of thing, so I couldn’t resist.
My mother wanted to name me Elizabeth Katherine, but then a friend of hers had a baby two days before I was born and named her Elizabeth… So then I was going to be Katherine Elizabeth. But my dad hates giving children family names, and my great-grandmother was Katherine, so that was out. My mother, being one of approximately 47 Marys at her school when she was growing up, didn’t want to name me something really common (at least, in the States), so I ended up with a generic Welsh name instead (my mother’s family is Welsh). I love my name, and I’m very happy I ended up Gwyneth rather than Elizabeth or Katherine, but I have yet to run into anyone over here aside from my immediate family who can pronounce it correctly (“GWIN-eth”, unless you’re in Wales, in which case “gwin-ETH”). Not just on the first try — at all. I mean, you’d think with Gwyneth Paltrow being so well known, it wouldn’t be so very difficult for people… but no. I’m overwhelmingly called “Gweneth”. Most people spell it that way, too, or they reverse the “y” and “e”, or substitute “i” for “y”, or one of the other endless permutations of those three vowels. On the first try, irritating but understandable… one subsequent tries, it’s just rude. It’s not even a variant spelling, although I think a lot of people associate it with the weird-letter craze (what with having a “w” and a “y”).
What irritates me the most is what people assume about why my parents chose it. The most common beliefs are 1) after a character in some Mists-of-Avalon-style novel; 2) because they didn’t know how to spell Gwendolyn (which I get called all the time, that and Guinever); and 3) after Gwyneth Paltrow (WTF, I was born in 1985).
For the first 18 years of my life, I insisted on Gwyneth. (Not that it made a difference, as I got called “Gwen” anyway, but I tried.) But then I got to college and realized that not only was everyone calling me Gwen regardless of how I introduced myself, but STILL everyone I met was incapable of pronouncing that short-I sound. So I just let everyone call me Gwen, and in the end I’ve really grown rather fond of it — like someone else said upthread, I prefer the nickname to hearing my real name mangled constantly. Lately, my friends have been making noises about spelling it “Gwyn”, although still saying it “Gwen”. Oddly enough, I’ve found that if I introduce myself as “Gwyn”, pronounced with the short I, people have no problem with it… but if I then say something like, “but my full name is Gwyneth,” it magically reverts to “Gweneth”. I… don’t know.
This past year, a number of my friends and I decided to live next door to each other… we had: Jessica, Katherine, Laura, Matthew, and Christopher. Julien and I were the odd ones out in that group, name-wise.
(Funny story… Chris’s middle name is Richard, which means that his grandmother always refers to him as “Christophrichard”. He has threatened dire consequences if we ever are tempted to call him this, but it really does kind of roll off the tongue.)
Cyn,
A Korean-American filmmaker named Grace Lee recently released a documentary called “The Grace Lee Project,” in which she talked with other owners of the name to find out whether they fit or ignored the stereotype of, as she says on her Web site, “reserved, dutiful, piano-playing overachievers.” (I don’t know how many other Grace Lees the filmmaker talked to, but 38 Grace Lees are listed in the film’s credits!)
I’m going to keep an eye out for this movie — it sounds like something that’s both funny and thoughtful.
http://www.gracelee.net/index.php
“Which would make my nom d’internet “Mars,” I guess.”
And which you would insist on pronouncing “Mares,” of course.
I can’t believe that only one other Maggie has surfaced. Go Mom! Although I find it telling that we were both named after dogs. Hee. Makes my nickname all the weirder.
Names in songs? “Maggie May.” Rod Stewart needs to be beaten, hard. It doesn’t help that it came out just a few years before I was born, so when I was little I got asked about it frequently. To be fair, my parents said the song was actually on the ‘Con’ list for naming me Maggie. (And to this day there is one person who can call me that and not wind up in a shallow grave with the others who’ve tried.) I wouldn’t mind it so much if they were referencing “Maggie Mae“, but they never are.
There was a girl I went to school with from kindergarten to senior year who always believed my name was Megan. I corrected her a million times and she never EVER got it right. This from a girl name “Krystal”.
Beverly in the house! And as usual I’m the only one. My sister Jennifer hates me, but at least she has all those personalized keychains and coffee mugs to keep her company…
The “Grace Lee Project” reminds me of a documentary I saw a few years ago by Alan Berliner called “The Sweetest Sound.” Basically, Alan Berliner invites a dozen other Alan Berliners over for dinner. There were some differences in spelling, for example Alan, Allen and the French Alain, but everyone was introduced by pretty much the same name. It was funny and interesting.
MaggieCat, I’m frequently called Maggie–I live in a rural community with a lot of retirees who are hard-of-hearing and won’t admit. I could also enunciate more clearly, but I truly hate to shout. A lot of times, if I know I won’t have to interact with that person a lot, I’ll just let it go.
There were 5 Me(a)g(h)ans in my grade all throughout high school and we actually had one class together in grade ten so we all got the first + last name treatment. Of course there were other Meghans in younger grade to come out to about 10-12 in a 900 student high school. I was so happy to go away to a more diverse college where other Meghans were not as likely, although whenever someone calls Meghan in a classroom I still ask “which one?”.
However I adore the sound of my full name: Meghan Theresa Elspeth
so plz don’t steal it, I googled myself and there are a million other Meg(h)an lastname out there already.
What a great thread. I’ve been reading baby name books for fun since I was about 8.
I was named after my great-grandmother and I never met a Bonnie who wasn’t at least 30 years older than me until recently; I had a customer (I’m a waitress), about six years old, who was wildly excited to finally meet another Bonnie. Her mother had ‘Bonnie’ tatooed on her ankle; she said she has always loved the name and was happy it is still so rare.
I don’t like it much (‘-onnie’ just isn’t a great sound, whatever the first letter is), but at least it is fairly uncommon (though not nearly so much as my sister’s name, Blythe, or my cousin’s, Kaiulani – named after the Hawaiin princess). Reading this thread has made me appreciate not being being a Jennifer, Melissa, or Megan – and I could kiss my parents when I think they could have named me Madison, McKayla or Britney. I like classic names (Greek or Latin) and I think the popular names lately are just so silly. Of course there are a lot of names I love that are simply overused, especially recently since there seems to be a trend back towards ‘old-fashioned’ names.. I’ve planned on naming my daughter Vivian for years and years, and now I’m scared the name will make a comeback as soon as I get pregnant!
replying to a ~three year old thread to say:
Regarding the names in some of the early comments that were specifically identified as being things no one uses any more – there are regional name trends just as there are generational trends.
Where I live (West Texas near the Mexico border), Bertha, Thelma, Edith, Suki, Mary, Minerva, Irma/Erma, Edna, Doris, and Phyllis are some of the names I encountered in my job yesterday – and these are all people under 18. (Erma and Edna are twins, but Irma is the preferred spelling around here. There were two Marys and three Marias, two Berthas, and two Thelmas.)
It’s also amusing to me that the “weird spelling” trend is not exclusively a recent thing. One name that crosses my desk frequently is Skiyee, pronounced Sky. When I first saw it, I thought, “That poor baby, doomed to grow up with a name like that” – then looked at the chart and realized the “poor baby” is 84 years old.
Oh, and around here, “Heidi” is popular, but it’s spelled “Haydee.” For some reason, two other very popular names are Betzabe (BET-sza-bay) and Getzemani (get-ZEM-a-nee). Getzemani is obviously a variant of Gethsemane, in the Bible, but I can never pin down Betzabe.
I virtually never meet anyone with my name (although the Spanish version of it is very common), and only once in my life have I met someone who spells it the same way. (I have a Y where most people have an I.) However, there is a very famous female comedienne who spells hers the same way – people assume my mom named me after her, but she didn’t, just worked out that way.
My daughter has an unusual, but actual, name. She was the only one we knew until she reached college, and then there was one other with the same name. The other girl was sort of wild, and when gossip bounced around about her, everyone thought it was my daughter, who found the whole situation very funny.
Now it seems that every third little girl we meet has my daughter’s name. I’m just glad we were ahead of the curve on that!
How am I the only James to post? I have no complaints… neutral, easy to spell, common in the early 80s when I was born but not so common so as to be one of six in every class in school (I was born in 1982, the year of the Ryan and the Sarah).
I was named after my dad (also a James) who goes by Jim, so to keep the confusion level at bay, even though I live two times zones away from him now, I go by Jimmy or James, never Jim. The only people that call me Jim are distant relatives and friends of my parents that assumed I outgrew being called Jimmy at some point since high school. Both of my parents have since claimed that it was the other’s idea to name me after my dad and that they wouldn’t have picked that, my father claiming to have preferred Thomas and my mom claiming to have planned to name me Zachary.
In college we had a clique with a surfeit of Steven/Stephen/Steves, so they were dubbed “Evil Steve”, “Good Steve”, and “Neutral Steve.”
My little sister went to high school with a set of brothers whose last name was Michaelchuck. Their parents named them Michael Michaelchuck and Chuck Michaelchuck. Siiiiigh