It depends. My cousin is a little bit older than me. Both of us were named for the same deceased relative via different versions of the same name that begin with the same letter as his name. Perfectly fine when my aunt and uncle did this, but when my parents named me, my grandmother said they were trying to kill her because they’d given me her Hebrew name. Note that my cousin’s name given earlier is also the same in Hebrew. Because meaning-making is sometimes stupid. To illustrate, think dead grandpa = Dan, cousin = Debbie, me = Deborah, grandma = Bee, with the 3 of us having the Hebrew name Dvorah (“bee” in English).
I’ll cop to being a little annoyed when my uncle (Mom’s brother) told me one day, “Hey, WE are going to have a Chucklebutt in our line, too!” It turns out that his daughter - my first cousin - was expecting and was going to name her son the same name we gave our son a few years earlier. My annoyance was mitigated by the fact that his branch of the family rarely joined the rest of us at any family gatherings, and I very much doubt his kids would have recognized more than half a dozen of our cousins (there are about 30 of us).
One of my other cousins was VERY put out (may still be, AFAIK) that another cousin named her daughter “Flatuleta Margaret” (first and middle), which is exactly what her third daughter was named, so we have two Flatuleta Margaret Bumbletons in the family. When we discuss that generation, we have to be clear: “Are we talking about Groper’s Flatuleta, or Hirsute’s Flatuleta?”
(I think one of them may actually be “Flatuletta”, but potato potato.)
Thinking about naming babies shook loose another memory. When our Chucklebutt was born, I called my grandmother and told her we were planning to give him my grandfather’s name (her deceased husband) as a middle name. She said, “Oh, no…your grandfather always hated his name. For a first son, Wrinkleshot is best.” For context, Wrinkleshot was my father’s - her firstborn’s - name.
About 10 years later, my cousin did much the same. He called our grandmother to tell him that they’d had a boy, and wanted to give him our grandfather’s name as a middle name. He was told, “Oh, no…your grandfather always hated his name. For a first son, Shotwrinkle is best.” Again for context, Shotwrinkle is HIS father’s - and our grandmother’s second son’s - name. So indirectly, our firstborn sons are named for their respective grandfathers, given by their great grandmother. My cousin and I didn’t know it until several years later, and realized that old lady played us.
In retrospect, though, I’m glad she played us. My grandparents were the immigrant generation to the US, ca. 1910. I was talking to a close family friend who happens to be an immigrant from the same country about what we had planned to name our son, and she said, “Oh, that’s good you didn’t name him Fardengerd. That’s an OLD MAN’S name. That was an old man’s name when your grandfather was young!”
My sisters both have names that were extremely popular when they were born (early 50s), so they both had kids with their names in their classes always. My younger sister once had four other kids with her name in one class. Luckily, it’s a name that’s amenable to multiple different nicks. My name is not rare or unusual, but not terribly common. There was only one girl in my high school class (over 600 kids) with my name. None in my elementary school.
“Seven is MY name!”
Damn, I wish I’d thought of that. I’d have named my son “Clown”.
Or “Bear”.
Stranger
I might not be thrilled if one of my siblings used the same name. But cousins? Couldn’t care less. It very possibly has to do with naming traditions - more than likely the only one in which a Junior is the third son. I have three cousins named Stephanie ( all with the same last name before they were married) , one named Stephen, two uncles and a cousin named Joseph and three cousins and an aunt named Josephine. Can you guess my great-grandparent’s names?
To be fair, I’d be upset with one of my relatives naming a daughter “Flatuleta”, too.
“She has a wife, you know…”
The old story from Reader’s Digest: two girls (let’s make them cousins) with the exact same names got assigned to the same dormitory at college. Anticipating the confusion over mail and such, they came up with the only practical solution: those two girls would be assigned to the same dorm room, and let them figure out whose mail is whose.
This is the best SNL skit about baby names, and the final punchline is one of the best in any SNL skit ever.
Pleased to meet you, Jason. Come have a seat at the table with my friends Jennifer and Scott.
Nice guess, but it’s Michael. Fully 10% of my high school class (at an all-male Catholic high school) had the same name.
I am living proof of that. I’m Patricia (Pat) and my husband is Patrick (Pat). I’ve always called him Patrick, so my family and friends call him that, I’ve always been Pat. On his side of the family they still call him Pat, and I often get called Patricia. That was kind of strange for me as I’ve never been Patricia, but after being married for 29 years I’ve certainly gotten used to it.
I recall years ago when one of our nephews was quite young, my sister-in-law went around the dinner table asking him who everyone was. When he got to my husband he said, Uncle Pat. When he got to me next, he said, the other Pat.
Huh?? Are there cultures where an adult child doesn’t know his father’s name?
I called my father Mark once. Once.
I can relate to the teachers that have said often there will be 4 or 5 kids in a class all with the same name. It’s usually not a problem because they each have their own personalities.
That’s all well and good until the teacher starts calling them Funny Alex, Quiet Alex, Tall Alex, and Dumb Alex!
So do the kids with different names. Personalities have nothing to do with why it causes problems. If I call on Grace to answer a question, who answers?
Sorta whoosh there.
A non-trivial number of Americans are born every year with uncertain or wholly unknown paternity. Single motherhood is a thing.
Sometimes the baby daddy is fully known and fully involved. Sometimes not at all. And every combo in between. Kid still needs a name.
Yeah, but that’s not really a culture. It’s people from all different cultues. And being a single parent, even if the other parent is uninvolved is not the same as not knowing his name.