Tryg-vi from Trygg - safe
vi - property or sanctuary or temple (well you get the general direction)
so something like Tryggve - safe haven.
That’s funny–I actually know a baby Kyla! She’s my niece, and she’s three years old.
Both of my serious relationships were with Mikes.
It was pretty awkward when I first started dating the second Mike.
There are too many Mikes.
Every softball team in my daughter’s league has at least one Morgan on it. One team had two.
The Italian family across the street from me when I was growing up had two brothers named “Carmine”. Supposedly they were the products of previous marriages by their parents.
Go to a Jewish young professional event sometimes, call “Sarah!” or “Rachel!”, and watch half the women in the room turn their heads. Good times.
In Buffalo, go to a place where there’s a large gathering of women in their 50s – oh, a bingo game or someplace like that, and shout “Joanne!” Same results.
Years ago, when a relationship I was in with a woman named Jennifer ended, the next three women I had dates with were also Jennifers. Coincidence … really!
My personal pet naming peeve is the name Caitlin. I know at least six of them all spelled differently. Enough already. The world does not need another Caitlin/Caitlyn/ Kaitlyn/Kaitlynne/Katelyn. I’ve known parents who gotten annoyed with me for not remembering the particularly idiotic spelling variant they chose.
Still the only Eleanor around-the only one in my grammar, middle and high school, the only one in my nursing class. The only one as an RN at my hospital. (not the only one here, though, at least in terms of user name).
I like traditional names rather than trendy ones. I prefer traditional spellings over “creative” ones. I’m still waiting to see Rhoburte or some such–it will happen, if it hasn’t already.
Tell her hi from me, and get ready for a life of people mispronouncing her name.
But if you name your son something odd, people will call you a mentally ill freak. Look at the crap Sarah Palin gets.
I still think if I have a son, I’m not naming him something ordinary, American, & conventionally masculine.
“Bellerophon” has a ring to it. He could be called “Blair” or “Larry” for short, but when he’s at a job with two Blaire’s & ten Larry’s, he could fall back on the long form.
Do you, does any of their parents, know that Caitlin is traditionally pronounced “Kathleen”?
Traditional names are really, really popular right now, especially for boys – so you can get traditional and trendy all in one name! What a pain.
See, I agree with this for the most part. But one of the tricky things about names is that they get popular because a lot of people like them. So plenty of people may be naming their child “Jacob” because it means something to them, and they like it – not because it’s popular. Me, I’m glad we ended up having a boy, name-wise, (even though we didn’t have a name picked out for him until 5 days before he was born), because I love the name Abigail, and have for years. It’s in the top ten now, though, and I didn’t want to give my child a top-50 name. I’m kinda glad we didn’t have to make that decision (and I hope that the name will drop dramatically in popularity by the time we’re ready to have a second baby!).
Born between 76 and 81, were you?
Heh, my friend Caitlin started going by Cait during freshman year, though it might have just been habit on the part of the rest of us to call her that–there were at least a dozen girls in the dorm that went by Kate/Katie (in a lot of cases it was short for something else, but boy did it get confusing, even if it was easy to remember all their names :D)
I, on the other hand, got a francophone name (which I hear is really popular in Quebec) but grew up on the other side of the tracks so to speak–the local Acadian population is still fairly insular, and since I went to an anglophone school I rarely met a native French speaker aside from my mother’s friends and family. As a result, pretty much everyone stumbled over my name at first (and if you want strange spellings for it, I can just dig out my third grade valentines). The most irritating part was that most of my French teachers initially pronounced it wrong too, though at least in those cases it was only once since they were actually familiar with French phonetics.
I just reviewed my roll sheets, and lo and behold there are very few duplications. I have 2 Ashleys with different spellings and two Brittanys with the same spelling. Otherwise everybody has a unique first name. Much better than 2 years ago, when my debate team had Kristin, Kristen, Kristine and Christina. :smack:
At least when you cried out his name in a moment of passion, it was the right one!
I HATED being the only kid with my name in my class! I desperately wanted to be a Jennifer, or at least a Carrie or a Tracie. Even a Tricia or a Tanya would have been better than being the only one with my name until high school. (Then there were 3 of us, in a school of ~2200). It’s not “Hemajesty” weird or anything, but it wasn’t popular until some number of years after me. (Nicole)
I tried being original but not too original with my son’s name in 1993. Everyone remarked on how unusual it was. Until, of course, his kindergarten class. 5 Kyles, no waiting! :smack:
With my daughter, 12 years later, I said “Fuck it, we’re calling her what we like because we like it and I don’t care if it’s popular or weird or classic or misspelled.” And in the end, we got all four: Caileigh. It’s one of a zillion “Kaylee” variations, so it’s popular, but the spelling is both weird and classic (Irish, that is) and oft’ misspelled by Americans. Oh well. It’s who she is, the name fits, and fuck the rest of all y’all. 
What do you do when a friend of yours names her kid a popular name, but spells it wrong, and probably not on purpose!?
She named her daughter McKenzie but they spell it…McKenize!!! Wouldn’t that be, “Ma Ken eez”, not “Ma Ken Zee”?
I have so much trouble remembering she did this. So if I send a card or something, I have to look it up to get it “wrong”.
BTW, That same friend is the worst speller I know. Her e-mails are very difficult to read. She doesn’t just spell words wrong, she uses correctly spelled words in the wrong spots. I think she might be dyslexic or something, and it went undiagnosed. She is 37. I feel bad for her. I wish she had shared her baby name choice with a few people so they could have helped her with the spelling.
Also, we named our son what we thought was a unique name that hopefully won’t get him beat up. It is Orion.
We live in a tiny town, and know at least 2 possibly 3 others. One is a year younger. We met him on a playground. I have heard other people tell me they know of another Orion, one town away, who is also a year younger. Hmmm…did they read our baby announcement and get the idea? The third is unconfirmed and lives in my old hometown. He is supposedly 2 years older than my son, but we didn’t hear of him until we picked our name.
Now really…how many Orion’s do you know!? This is just odd.
Also, you wouldn’t believe how many people can’t pronounce Orion, and have never heard of the constellation. What we hear people call him the most are,
“Or in”, and “Or ee Un”, by a lot of people. Oh well.
I went to high school with a girl named Lavinia [exotic Italian lastname, withheld]. I’m getting crush on her all over again just thinking about her name.
I went to elementary school and junior high in Queens, NY with a boy named Leslie. The first day of eighth grade, one of the teachers actually said, “Leslie ____. That’s interesting, because Leslie’s usually a girl’s name.” In front of a classroom full of savage NYC children. Fortunately (and predictably), he was as tough as a Boy Named Sue.
In the mid-90s, I worked in a program of about 100 people, and we had three Dales (2 male, 1 female). Not sure of the significance of that.
My name? So common (and already mentioned in this thread) that I might as well have been named, “Hey, You.” (This also makes reading my credit reports exciting adventures.)
ETA: The credit report thing is because my last name is essentially, “Yeah, You.”
My name was always sort of uncommon – it peaked around No. 160 in the '80s – but it really took a dive in popularity in/after 2005. There was this hurricane, you see.
My name is Laura SupercommonLastname. Apparently I’m a semi-famous author, an Indian rights protector, and all sorts of things WAY more interesting than I actually am.
When my daughter was born in 1979 there were no Scarletts, and there are still very few, FTR, Scarlett Johansen is several years younger than my daughter, so THERE Ms. Johansen, I got to it first. 
When my son was born, his name was nowhere in sight, the very NANO-second I got him home from the hospital there were billions.