My first name is Susan so I always got the Suzie, Soos, etc. My maiden name was Wheatcroft which led to a youth of torment about every breakfast cereal on the market. Wheaties, Wheat-field, Weetabix… then I got married… moved out of the wheat field and into the barn yard by becoming a Lamb of all things… and life goes on with all the baba jokes…
We are, each of us angels with only one wing;
and we can only fly by
embracing one another
Brando: you hit on it; my father blessed me with a very quaint, old-fashioned name that made my life a living, breathing hell during childhood.
My mom wanted to name me Ellen, which I think is one of the loveliest names there is. Ellen–it sounds as graceful as moonlight on water…
But no, instead I get saddled with…never mind. Suffice to say it is practically DRIPS lavendar and old lace and nobody can pronounce it right. Actually, I was named for my mother’s best friend, a gracious, stately woman who carried off the name a lot better than I do.
So all through youth I was this too-tall, shy oddball w/ the geeky name.
Maybe by time I’m 70 or so, I’ll grow into it.
Just call me Veb,
Veb
I couldn’t STAND being named Nora until I was well into my teens. I thought I was the only one in the world (probably WAS the only one in the suburbs), and no kid likes to be different, at least not all the time. Besides, I couldn’t get the other kids to stop calling me Nora Nora from Bora Bora. (I suppose there are worse nicknames, but I’m touchy, OK?)
I started to warm up to it after we read A Doll’s House in tenth grade English and my mom told me she’d seen a performance right before I was born, hence my name. (Thank heavens it wasn’t Hedda Gabler.) One of my favorite teachers in high school was also a Nora, which helped. Still not the name I would have chosen for myself, but I’ve gotten used to it.
And yes, I probably will give my kids slightly unusual names, because most of the people I like have unusual names and I think names do have an influence on personality. Having to stand out from the crowd is probably good for a kid, even if it doesn’t feel that way at the time…
Let every student of nature take this as a rule – that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion.
Well, my first name is Barry but i dont even know what that would conjure up in most peoples minds here out west (hell i dont even know what it conjures up in peoples minds where the name is common).
My mom named me after my pediatrician. Not very interesting though. I never was called any nicknames in school. There wasn’t anything really mean you could rhyme my name with so I never got any bad teasing for my name. The only thing my friends would call me sometimes was ‘blueberry’ but that was rare and just in joking.
‘The beginning calls for courage; the end demands care’
My given name is Steve. What’s that recall to you?
I don’t have much of an opinion on it. It’s not too common, not too weird. But after hearing my whole life it just sorta sounds silly. But I figure it’s the same phenomenon as repeating any word enough.
my first name is Shannon. another one of those early 70’s names. and can be male or female, which i am rather thankful for. Irish in origin though i am not one bit Irish.
My parents each chose a name for me before my birth(or so this is the story i’ve been told)
My mother chose Shannon(JFK’s dog or something like that,great, i’m named after a dog) My father chose Starr, well, all I can say is, if dad had his way, he’d probably have 2 exotic dancer daughters rather than one(her name is Valerie, btw) …and believe me if i could i would, i’m just too chicken shit.
But in order to give my dad his props, I had a purple star tattooed in the center of my upper right arm a couple years ago. When people ask about it, I tell them that very story.
so you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts. what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? Tori Amos
I’ve never had a problem with Tom. It would not have worked if I had needed a unique name in school: small college, 39 graduating classmates, 7 Toms (of course there were 16 guys named John). High school was slightly larger but the ratio was about the same.
Names ending in “ie/y”: My mom knew a lady in the late 50’s who hated the common practice of adding that suffix to every name, so she named her sons Kevin and Keith. As soon as they were old enough to have friends drop by, she had to grit her teeth through 10 years or more of “Can Kevvie come out? Is Keithy home?”
I think that if you had lived on Long Island you’d have slit your throat. (The AOL/SDMB had a whiny Long Island Shane.)
Tom~
Hello, everyone, my name is… Christienne.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a lovely name, but… It’s a bit too “homecoming queen” for me, you know? It’s a good name for the most popular girl in school who all the girls want to be friends with and all the guys want to do. And that was never me, by a long shot. Plus, it was more than two syllables, making it a bit unwieldy to use on the playground in grade school, so I got stuck with Chrissy. Rhymes with “prissy”. Ugh. Plus, I already had two cousins named Chrissy, one on each side of my family. Grrrrr.
Modest? You bet I’m modest! I am the queen of modesty!
OK, if everyone else is coming out … My real name is Brida. And that’s “BREE-da,” not Br-EYE-DA or BRITT-a. Or Brenda, or Frida, or Rita or Nina or Maria (as one hapless soul insisted on calling me.) I cannot imagine why what seems to me a very simple name should be the cause of so much difficulty, but almost no one gets it right the first (or second or third) time.
Catrandom, whose family calls her “Bird.”
I legally changed my name a few minutes after turning 18. It was as common as water, first and last, and I wanted something more interesting. I used a Jimmy Buffet song as inspiration and have never regretted it. The only time things got interesting was explaining to my daughter, on a visit to (far away) family, why everyone called my by another name (they just stuck with the old one!).
I don’t know if either name “made me”, but I sure felt like I made myself into what I wanted to be after the change. Before, with the blah name, I felt rather overlooked. I also felt very much like I was telling everyone that “this is who I am” instead of them telling me who/what I was with that oh so common name.
Now, after being divorced for many years, I’m tired of my ex-husband’s last name and I want to change it, I just haven’t found the perfect last name yet.
I like my name and I don’t get too many jokes about it. The only time anyone jokes about it, it always has to do with Gilligan’s Island. That doesn’t bother me. I think it’s a cute girlish name and I always was a “girly-girl”. I loved wearing dresses and ribbons in my hair when I was a little girl. To this day I hate wearing sweatshirts and stuff like that.
MaryAnn
Sometimes life is so great you just gotta muss up your hair and quack like a duck!
My first name is John. Yes, it is a synonym for the toilet. Yes, it stinks when your best friend is named Jacob (Johnnnnn Jacob Jinglemeyer Smith, his name is my name toooooo. . .)
Yes, I had problems in school. I don’t know how many Johns there were in my graduating class. And yes, I was subjected to a lot of teasing, but that was mostly the fault of my last name (ten letters long and Dutch).
My family has a thing for old-fashioned names. My father’s name is Alfred, his brother’s name is Jim, and their father’s name was Rodney. On my mother’s side of the family, we have Otis and Bill (yes, they are farmers).
– Sylence
“The problem with reality is the lack of background music.” – Anon
Christina, here.
I’ve no earthly idea why my mother named me that, considering she’s only ever called me “Christina” when she was pissed at me.
Chrissi as a child. Yes, with an “I”.
We had to move to Colorado so I could meet a whole slew of new people before I could get people to call me “Chris.”
“Chris” has served me well. It’s a pretty all-purpose name. Works well for a girl, can be professional, “sporty”, fun, short-sweet-and-to-the-point.
If I’d been darkhaired when I was born, my mom would’ve named me Nichole. (Thank GAWD I was blonde.) If I’d been a twin, I’d have either been Brittany or Brianna. (Thank GAWD for being a single birth.)
“ChrisCTP-…the sweetheart of the SDMB…” --Diane
Chris’ Homepage: Domestic Bliss
Kelli rhymes with smelly.
Live with that.
And my last name is Warman(pronounced Warmen. So I got “Hey look its kelli Warms-men!” all through junior high.
Ok guys…“B” stands for Brian, Yes, like satan, but NOT SATAN!!! And MY briands initials spell B.E.D.
insert row of insanely smiling faces here
Eeek! This is kinda long.
There’s some book about this - it lists names and what 100 people said their first impressions were of people with those names… Interesting.
Shirley Ujest wrote:
I have a very good friend named Heather. She’s gorgeous, with long, naturally curly blond hair and blue eyes. She escaped becoming a bitch on wheels because she had to wear glasses all the way through high school and had an unflattering haircut (fro). She’s one of the nicest people I have ever known.
So I don’t think it’s the name that makes the person.
TheNerd wrote:
My brother’s name is Steve. I love that name. I know it’s common, but I think it’s great. Every Steve I’ve known has been a funny, nice guy, with varying degrees of enthusiasm for life.
My name is Rasha. It’s Arabic and means “young gazelle”. My parents had a wild hair. Their names are Bob and Cheryl.
Does any doper know a Rasha? I’ve only met one in real life and she was a German shepherd.
Online, I met the cream of the Rasha crop - my age, married, has a beautiful daughter and is working on her PhD in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Melbourne. What a badass.
In elementary school I was teased mercilessly. This was during the gas crisis when every problem an American had was blamed on Iran. I made the mistake of admitting that I’m named after an Iranian princess (my parents saw her picture in the paper. I was taunted daily with chants of “Iranian! Iranian!” and (don’t ask me why) “Rasha the Russian Hound Dog!”, “Communist!”
Once I hit high school, kids were much kinder. I like my name now, but I will never saddle a child of mine with a name as unusual as mine.
My name has made me a kinder person and taught me to be a stickler about spelling/pronunciation of other’s names.
Most common question I ask: “What?”
Most common question I get: “Are you really hearing impaired?”
Whooo, it looks like alot of name therapy is going on out there courtesy of this thread. 
Metroshane wrote
Ummm, Joan of Arc was a saint. My patron saint infact, you know, the saint the lead the French troops to their only victory in their countries history and the thanks they give her is burning her at the stake. Noah’s wife was Tiffany.( Who would you rather snuggle with for 40 days and 40 nights a Tiffany or a Joan?.. ) Unless you were joking, then WHOOSH.
Pluto wrote
Great, now do I have to see a doctor to get rid of it? Thanks for asking your english prof, btw.
Someone wrote that a woman named her son Cosmo Orion.Isn’t this name a bit redundant? Like naming your kid John Ian, George Jorge?
I could never ever ever name my daughter
( refered to as " The baby to be named later" Hey, I’ve got 18 weeks, what’s the hurry?) anything like Katherine/leen because of the Kate/Katie/Kathy overpopulation that was prevalent in my catholic high school.
As for Eric with a C out there. I love the name Eric/k/ch and it is simple enough that any maroon can spell it. It would have been a contender ( shaking Marlo Brando’s voice from my head) for my son’s name if my husband didn’t have an Uncle Erik, who is a couple of points above a retard, IMHO. To think that my son would have been a namesake to such a simpleton would have been grounds enough for the court to step in.
Have you ever noticed that you can ( or maybe it’s just me) pick out the “trailer park” people by the names alone before they tell you they live at “Tornado Village”. Actually it’s the kids from the lower socio-economic backgrounds that have either the made up names or are named after soap opera characters.(Cricket, Fallon) From higher tax brackets you get the classic or euro names like (Carolyn, Ted, Jan (yan). And our Black Americans and their hit the keyboard with a fist to name a child LaQwerty ( hey, that IS catchy. ) mentality is always interesting. I love reading the baby announcements. Where the hell was I going with this?
Nevermind…
My parents named me Megan, because my dad’s 100% Irish and because they thought it was original. Different. Unique.
But everybody has called me Meg since high school.
Know why?
My last name is Ryan. ARRRG! Take THAT, my trying-to-be-unique parents!!
Sucks to your assmar.
I almost got named Elizabeth Carol - which strikes me as perfectly good name I’d never want to have - but when my mom got out of labor, she hated the name and left my dad with the task of naming me.
So, I got Jennifer. Along with Heather, that was one of the most popular girls’ names of the year. Growing up, I was Jenny until 3rd grade, then Jenn or Jennifer. There were always at least two other Jennifers in my class, and they were always complete brats to me.
Finally, near the end of 8th grade, I was walking to class, heard someone call my name, turned around and said “Yes?” only to come face to face with an Evil Heather who looked me over and sneered “Not you.”
That was the last straw. That summer, I started going by my middle name, Robin, which suits me much better.
So, yes, I think to some extent the name does make the person. I’m a much better Robin than I was a Jennifer.
Sola bona lingua est mortua lingua.
Honest to god…if I hear one more trailer park crack, I am gonna go postal.
I got saddled with Alice (named for a cousin). Not bad, you say?
“Alice doesn’t live here anymore.” “Go ask Alice.” “To the moon, Alice!”
Yep, I’ve heard them all!
The only advantage, such as it is, is that it’s a fairly unusual name these days, so I don’t run into the “Jennifer” problem that phouka describes. Also, pretty nearly everyone can spell it.
A drawback to having a short name is that just about everyone assumes that it’s short for something. Many people, on meeting me for the first time, assume that my name’s really Allison or Alicia or something. Not a big deal, just an annoyance. Does this happen to anyone else?
The Cat In The Hat