One of my university housemates was named Hope and her two sisters were Faith (oldest) and Charity (youngest). They did belong to some Christian denomination that apparently named children after virtues (Prudence, Patience, etc.). Don’t remember which denomination it was. So maybe not a cute theme.
I did meet a family who seemed to have named their three sons after old timey professions. Cooper, Sawyer and Chandler. But when I mentioned how cute that was to the parents, they were confused. They had no idea what the names meant. They just “sounded good and sort of rhymed”. I met them at a living museum where two buildings were named Chandler and Cooper. They thought they were named after people, not because they had candle making and barrel making demonstrations in them. They were just thrilled to have exhibits with their names (boys were maybe 4, 6 and 8)
A friend is from a Chinese family with 4 girls. They all have the same “first” name with different middle names that they go by within the family. I’ve always used her first name which can be confusing when here sisters are around. They each have varying English spellings for their first name which seem to have evolved independently of each other.
I’m not familiar with Chinese naming convention but it appears this is a somewhat common practice.
When I was very young I went to school with a kid named Noah. His brother was named Adam.
Truly Nolen was an eccentric man who founded a very successful pest control company. Their company cars have mouse ears.
Truly is his real name. Among his children (which include typical names like Scott and Michelle) are Really and Sincere Leigh. (The best name, though, is True Spyder Luke)
My wife’s extended family each choose a letter and name their kids with that starting letter. One cousin chose ‘J,’ another ‘K.’ I thought it was a fun theme and was happy to participate. We chose ‘E’
I can confirm that it’s not uncommon. My mom’s Chinese name is How Ping. Her sisters’ names all started with How, but had a different suffix (?).
This isn’t a family story, but a friend’s mom works in a fairly popular Chinese restaurant where most of the wait staff are Chinese immigrants. Their name tags bear Americanized names they’ve chosen for themselves instead of their Chinese names, and as an inside joke, all of them picked names that end in the “-see” sound, so there’s Casey, Chelsea, Kelsey, Macie, et al. What makes it funny is that “see” in Toishanese means ‘shit’.
Japanese are big on numbering their kids. My grandfather’s given name translates to ‘first turtle’, or more accurately, ‘turtle one’. His younger brother? ‘Turtle two’, of course!
It is common and traditional in China to have two character (two syllable) given names, the first of which is the same for all siblings or first cousins (I believe only children of brothers). The second character or syllable is the individual’s given name.
Chinese names are in the order Family Name, Generation Name, Given Name. So the siblings or cousins would be:
Hao Shu Min
Hao Shu Ying
Hao Shu Lin
But their given names would really be Shu Min, Shu Ying and Shu Lin.
When they are dealing with “western” folks they will have the names:
Shu Min Hao
Shu Ying Hao
Shu Lin Hao
And you might think that their first name is the same, but first name and second name is NOT the same thing as the First Name and Middle Name in western (Anglophone?) societies. The whole thing is the given name. And if you asked their mother what the kid’s names are she would say xiao Min, xiao Ying and xiao Lin, where xiao means “little”. The kids could be 50 years old, to their parents generation they are still ALWAYS called “little” Given Name.
Reminds me of the Brothers Wong, who at one point worked on the animation for the White Walkers in the Game of Thrones TV series. Wong Xie He and Wong Xie Bao each produced several treatments for their vision of the creatures, but HBO rejected them all, and eventually went with a different animation studio.
Because two Wongs don’t make a Wight.
Thank you. I’ll be here all week. Be sure to tip your server.
I knew twin girls that were named Kelly and Kristen. I thought for the longest and for no good reason that Kristen was spelled with a C and was short for Christina (I was primarily friends with sister Kelly). When I learned otherwise, it was a moment of ‘oh, yeah- of course’.