When people give weird and exotic unique names to kids, there’s a raft of dismissal and complaints about the stupidity of their choices; at least one new thread about it appears on the SDMB every year.
And yet if you give them traditional common names, you get threads like this one.
You just can’t win.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about the three Mary Andersons (although I only know two of them). Every place I’ve worked as an adult has also had a Barbara Carlson.
The Marys aren’t so bad because some of them are Mary Ann or Mary Beth or Mary Jo whereas Linda is always just Linda.
Bah humbug.
If you share your name with every other person you meet, you can cultivate a cool and unique nickname to set yourself apart, and yet still have a nice, normal legal name to use in court, on your business cards or during your marriage vows. Versatile!
However, if you start out with the name Precious Rambunctious Jones, all you can do is tell people to call you Mike and hope they never find out…
Haha! My daughter’s fourth grade class has not only two Kaylas, but also a Kaylyn (I don’t know, nor do I care, if I spelled that correctly).
And this manager of two carwashes.
Hail and well-met,
Steve
(only my Mom and wife call me “Steven”…makes me feel like a little kid!)
Does this mean that the backlash against this will be a resurgence in the Beatrice’s, Mavis’, Gertrude’s, Louise’s, Bonitas, etc?
I’m a casualty of the epidemic, born 1980.
There were three of us in my class in elementary school. It sucked.
I agree that some originality is a good idea, but please please spell the name as it’s meant to be spelled. Otherwise your kid will always be correcting people. No, that’s Franq. With a “Q”. Or he’ll give up and just change it to something normal when he’s older.
I saw a Xzavier last week. Um, you know the “z” sound is already in there without having to add the actual “Z”, right?
Is Yamajeste original enough? I just came across that name, talking to an elementary school teacher.
And yes, that is pronounced “Ya Majesty.”
Just a data point: the three most popular names in my 7th grade classes this year are Sadie, Connor, and Sam. I have 3 of each. I guess those names are rising in popularity, and while it’s always annoying to see the same names crop up, they are better than having 3 each of Taylor/Tyler/Mackenzie/Mykayla/Kaitlyn. The more traditional names are coming back into style.
Somehow, in years past society was able to cope with a bunch of people sharing the same name. If you look in a census from, say, 1870, half the women are Elizabeth, Mary, or Julia. The only areas where there was any creativity at all with names was in the South. You’d see the occasional Zylphia or Zenobia.
My great-grandmother and her seven sisters all had the first name Mary. (This was a family that took its Catholicism seriously.) They went by their middle names.
At one of my jobs we had four guys named Chris and three named Rob. We just starting addressing them by their last names and they were fine with that.
I have a pretty unique name (but not odd) and it’s definitely unusual to find more than one of me in a crowd of say, 1,000 people. It’s nice. I like it.
I find all variations of Cheryl to be very common around here. Two ladies I knew from church had babies within a couple of days of each other, and without them knowing the other’s naming plans, both little boys were named Benson. We had a lot of laughs about that one.
I’m really starting to enjoy the sound of some of the “older” names like Henry and George. I’d like to see a few more of those around. Lord knows you can only have so many Brandons, Aidans and Joshuas before the names reach critical mass.
My son’s soccer team (11 year olds) has 3 Liams.
Liam???
I can verify the truth of this, because I have had a number of people insist that they cannot possibly spell/pronounce my name correctly because they have a niece/cousin’s baby/friend’s baby named Kayla. It’s just too difficult to remember that my name is different when there are so many baby Kaylas in the world!
I’m no longer annoyed when people call me Kayla - it was either that or be annoyed 90% of the time - but please don’t tell me my name is too difficult to remember. It’s four freaking letters, pronounced exactly like it’s spelled. Figure it out.
ETA: BTW, I’m thirty, so there were no baby Kaylas around at all when I was born. My parents are peeved about this fad.
That’s why I say go about 50 names down the popular name list (and check the names with Twickster’s site first). I have no problem with people giving their children traditional names; the only problem I have with unusual, exotic names is that they can be a burden on the child bearing them (and are usually pretentious twaddle, too). The biggest problem I have is with people who are so sheeped up that they have to give their child the same name as every other little girl born that year. My God, people, do something outside of the herd for once in your life! Give it a try; it probably won’t hurt much.
Daughter’s name is Stephanie…not very original (#9 at time of her birth), but wife insisted as she thought it cutely resembled my name (Steve/Steph). At least we didn’t go with a cutesy spelling.
My apologies to any “Seths” out there, but she wanted to name our son that and it has always struck me as a preppy fratboy name. I got my way this time, and we named him “Drake” (#239 at time).
My name’s Robert and I rarely run into others despite it being in the top ten from 1888 to 1989. It’s now #47 and though I’m sure there’re more than I’m remembering, but in my office of hundreds, I’m only aware of one other. He, of course, works in my sister department and our faxes are often given to the wrong one.
Tell me about it. Parents, please think twice if you’re going to give your kid a name from a language other than the dominant one of wherever you’re living. Do you really want your kid to have to pronounce/spell out their name to every. single. person. they. meet. their. entire. life? It quickly becomes a huge pain in the ass.
And you can never find a hairbrush with their name on it either 
My naming pet peeve is when parents give their kids common names but intentionally fuck up the spelling. How many ways are there to spell Caitlin? Hundreds, apparently.
I, for one, have no problem with people naming their kids Apple, Moxie, or Phineas. I’d rather live in a culture with a handful of Griseldas, Hannibals, etc. than a plethora of Michaels, Johns, Sarahs, and Rachels.
I think so (though I really doubt Gertrude will make a comeback.)
My daughter’s name is an “old” name like that…one you’re more likely to see in the obituaries than an elementary school classroom. I picked it from a baby-name book, but I’m sure most people assume she’s named after a great-grandmother.