How do you think your children feel about their names? And how would you feel if they decided to change their names?
I’m curious if the uniqueness of the name affects how parents feel about name rejection. Do parents who give their kids unique names take it more personally when the kid says they don’t like it?
Do children have an obligation to their parents to hold on to a name they don’t like?
If a teenager is a “junior” and he decides to assert his individual identity by going by his middle name, should he anticipate hurt feelings from his father?
I have an unusual and horrible name. Honestly, I am certain I have been passed over for job interviews and otherwise treated unfairly because of it, and even as a preschooler I despised it. Complaining about it constantly to my parents was not very nice, but somehow I never could bring myself to change it as that seemed even worse. I’m sure they would have preferred that I just change it and shut up, but I wanted them to choose a new and better one, which they would not do.
I gave my child a very ordinary name. Unfortunately, it turned out to be more ordinary than I thought and was a top ten name that year. That annoys me a little, but she loves her name and always seemed to enjoy that there were two or three kids with her same name in every class, so it all worked out for her at least. I purposely chose a name with many likely nicknames, so at least it has options.
No kids, but I had the opposite experience from AnaMen’s daughter. My name was exceedingly popular in my year, and I hated sharing it. Plus it alliterated with my last name. I loathed it and ditched it when I was an adult for my middle name, which is the family’s historical misspelling of a less common name. My parents weren’t thrilled, partly because they named me after someone they don’t like, but they got used to it eventually.
My kids have unusual first names. They seem to be fine with it. One has a name that’s in the baby name books, but very rarely used, the other one is one-of-a-kind as far as we can tell.
My sons all have well-known English names with standard shortened nicknames. So far, two still use their full name, and one uses the shortened name in school.
My daughter, Qatherine, hates her name.
(I don’t have a daughter, but we had the name Katherine picked out if our oldest was a girl. We joked that when people asked if it was spelled with a K or a C, we’d say it was spelled with a Q.)
One of my brothers is, in full, an Eduardo Manuel. Eduardo because Mom insisted in giving him her father’s name, against family tradition (on both sides) and despite the Grandfather from Hell not being exactly the kind of person anybody would want her children to take after; Manuel (Emmanuel, Jesus) because while Dad didn’t know the extent of his father-in-law’s evil, he did know he could barely stand the asshole and wanted a “counterbalance”.
Bro rejects the Manuel, and always has. Our younger brother and I have been known to use the full Eduardo Manuel to get him to Pay Attention Damnit when he’s ignoring us and we have something urgent: it pisses him off but yeah, he does drop whatever he was doing.
Youngest once told me “if it was me, I would have been telling people ‘call me Manolo’ for ages… what the fuck was Mom thinking?”
She’s only three and a half, but she is attached to her name. For now.
To tell the truth, her middle name is much cooler, and we secretly hope she will switch to it when she gets older. That will be entirely her own idea, of course…
I have never got a straight answer on this one, though believe me I’ve asked! I think the guy is perfectly nice. I think he and my dad were childhood friends due to proximity, which held up until I was born, but were ultimately too similar in their self-centered-ness.
Girl 2.0 and I were discussing this the other day. She likes her name, and I agree - it’s a pretty name, without being out there.
All of my kids have reasonably normal names, and their names are almost all in honor of a friend or family member:
William Russell (for his two paternal great-grandfathers)
Erin Elizabeth (Erin after my best friend, Elizabeth is a family name - me, my mom, her grandmother, right on back.)
Zachary Robert (Zachary because his dad liked it, but I wouldn’t let him spell it creatively; Robert for my brother and grandfather.)
Alana Nancy (Nancy was both of her grandmothers’ given names, and my mother was named for her grandmother; I needed a first name to “go” with Nancy, and my brother’s middle name is Alan, so…)
Lily Katherine (for my grandmother, although I changed the spelling from Lillie; and Katherine for my husband’s grandmother - not with a Q!)
and Michelle Tracy, named for my late sister and my husband’s brother, who was named after his great-uncle.
Plenty of nicknames possible, no weird sets of initials, and I don’t know of too many weird associations with any of those names. As it turns out, Alana became a little more popular a couple of years after my girl was born; Zachary was kind of a trendy name when Boy 2.0 came along; and Lily turned out to be a popular name 4 years ago. Even so, none of the names are so wildly popular that there are 4 in each classroom. Folks will certainly insist on misspelling a few of those names, but - in my experience - there are people out there who would misspell their names if they were “Bob” or “Tom.”
And the kids who have expressed an opinion to me like their names - until I use first/middle/last because they are gonna be in very deep shit if they don’t pay attention right. now.
They seem fine with their names. The older one has a name that lends itself easily to a jillion versions, and I kind of figured that she would at least want to go by a different one than we use, but so far she has kept it. The younger one dislikes any nicknames whatsoever and will only answer to her full name or the first half. Anything else elicits a deathglare.
Although it would be extremely difficult for me to remember and use a different name (my best friend in elem. school wanted to be Jennifer, not Jenny, and I couldn’t even remember that, I am terrible at it), I do not know if I would mind all that much. My husband goes by his middle name, which he started in 9th grade after a move, for the excellent reason that his first name is truly terrible. I know a lot of people who go by their middle names. So I’m sympathetic to that, at least.
It’s easier for me if I can respect the name change. My cousin went from [boring whitebread name] to a creatively-spelled ‘exotic’ name. I can sympathize with wanting to get rid of the boring name, but her new name makes me snort every time. She might as well have named herself, say, Starrehawke. But hey, no skin off my nose if it makes her happy.
My three kids have common biblical names and I think they like them. I happened to be a bibliographical sketch of a well-known British writer and she has three kids with the exact same names as my three.
I like my name even though it is invariably on the top ten lists. Rarely #1 but always common. I really dislike “one-off” names.
My daughter always seemed to like her somewhat unusual name until recently, when she decided to change it to a name she considers more gender-neutral.
I tried to choose a combination of a more-common name with a less-common one, so each kid could choose as he or she wished. My 3rd son’s middle name is Fox, and he really digs it. Doesn’t use it much but still likes to tell everyone he is named after the X Files character.
One of my older sons uses Roxanne as part of his screen- and email names, as that’s the name he would’ve had if he were a girl.
My daughter’s name change really affected me more than I’d have predicted. I’ve heard from several other parents since then, and they have all said that they too went through a grieving phase when their kids made a name change. It makes me feel a little better.
My first response was a whole list of “buts”…but it’s such a pretty name. but it was the first gift I ever gave you. but I laid awake every night for 8 months picking the most beautiful name ever created. but but but. It’s tough.
Neither son is crazy about his name even though there’s nothing odd about them and they’re just common enough. That’s their first names.
My oldest son’s middle name is a cheese. When my younger son came along the in-laws wanted his middle name to be either Erastus or Lee. I picked Lee.
He owes me.
I don’t have any kids, but I hate both my first and middle names and have pretty much all my life. The only reason I haven’t changed it is because I haven’t come up with anything I liked enough to change it to, and it seems a bit late now. I go by my initials a lot.
When my son’s father and I were discussing baby names, he presented me with a couple of possibilities and there was one I liked, and one I didn’t. So we named him the one I liked, Wolfgang.
Ha ha, when people ask me if he was named after Mozart, I have to tell them no, he was named after Wolfgang Van Halen.
In addition to that, although we’re not Christian, it turns out that Saint Wolfgang’s Day is on Halloween; which I didn’t know when I named him, but I think is pretty cool.
Although he got some dubious reactions from schoolmates in elementary school in Oakland, he never once came to me and expressed any ambivalence about his name. I am certain that he’s good with it now as a young adult.
It would probably make more sense to ask people if they like their own names. I don’t particularly like my name but I’ve never shared that fact with my parents. They probably think they did a bang up job.
I wonder about this. I am thinking of changing both my first and last names when I (eventually) get married. I don’t know how my dad will feel, though he doesn’t get much say.
I actually have a very beautiful name…in my home country. I am tired of always having the weird foreign name though, and I go by my nick in almost every arena, except for Official Business.
Name changes upon reaching adulthood are a time-honored tradition in my family. Along my own male-line, arguments over what the last name should be have been going on since at least 1850. Yes, that’s an 8. Genealogical documentation is a mess, a total mess. Let me introduce you to John Smith, formerly John Jones. And here’s his son, Richard Jones, formerly Richard Smith. Middle names are sometimes changed when they reference an ancestor that the current person particularly loathes, but otherwise stays the same. First names haven’t been changed as far as I can tell.
My daughter’s first name is a fairly common one, a saint’s name. Though nowhere near the top ten for her generation. Her nickname is all anybody ever uses, though. It’s one you’ve almost certainly heard before, but probably never known a person with it.
She likes to mess with it though, and adds a syllable or changes the accent every couple of years. One year she rejected the nickname and asked to be called by her real first name. Some kids are just constantly re-inventing themselves. She’s never said she disliked it, just gets ready for a change the way some women like to change hair colors.
Her middle name is Siobhan, which is highly unusual in the USA but popular now in Ireland (or so I’m told).
