(at least he wasn’t named Richard)
Oh, yes, Chasity, Chassity, Chasidy, etc.
One of the finalists in the recently completed Project Runway season was named Chasity. Her name was mispronounced a lot, as would be expected.
Oops. Ninja’d.
Around here, certainly. I mean, I live in a very diverse area. Large populations of Indians, Filipinos, Chinese, etc. Half the kids in my son’s 6th grade class have what would once be considered strange names. The kids themselves take no special notice of them.
Half the kids in my son’s class have names like Jam’ai. In that sense they are like their peers. It’s not such a big deal anymore.
I agree that’s not what he’s talking about. I just don’t agree that any of the names he’s suggesting are “blank slates” with no connotations.
I once had a student whose name was Chadsity. Pronounced as spelled.
As someone who has to learn fifty to eighty new names every semester, I am firmly in the “for God’s sake, name your kids something normal and boring and spell it conventionally” camp. I used to think you should also pick something that sounds OK when you put “Supreme Court Justice…” in front of it, but then I found out there was an actual Supreme Court Justice named Bushrod, which seems, um, inadvisable.
This can easily be construed, in the US, as “use white Western European names”.
My name is Norwegian. Jonathan Norwegian.
Ha! I reworded the post to try and head off that particular joke. Didn’t work.
People forget that your first name is only half your name, at most: you’re not just “Firstname”, you’re “Firstname Lastname”. The first name doesn’t have to be unique if the last name is unique, or if the combination of the two is unique.
That’s why, to me, the best names are made by mixing a unique name and an ordinary name. “Luke Skywalker” - normal first name, unique last name - terrific. “Indiana Jones” - unique first name, normal last name - also terrific. “Luke Jones” - dull as dishwater. “Indiana Skywalker” - overkill.
My parents literally misspelled my first name. They claimed the nurse or whoever offered to correct it before finalizing the certificate at which point they opted to keep it, so I’m stuck with it. Apart from the misspelling it’s a very common first name and its diminutive form (which I often go by) is spelled normally.
It’s been misspelled from time to time on important documents and it’s always a hassle to fix. It’s misspelled on one of the certificates I got for graduating high school (not my diploma) but I was so done with high school I couldn’t even be bothered.
They don’t forget - it’s just that the reality is that only first names are used in a lot of situations. In my High School, fully 10% of the boys had my first name.
In my place of work, there were at one time five people with my first name, out of about probably 25 men. It’s just plain unnecessarily irritating when every time someone says “Princhester” you have to say “which Princhester?” “Oh, sorry I mean Princhester G”.
It just isn’t necessary. It’s parental laziness.
Indeed, it does definitely make sense to pick a less-common first name if your surname is common. There was a girl I was at school with who had a locally common surname, plus a very common first name with no real short version. In her previous school had been one of three girls with the same first name/last name combo in the class. They wound up being called ‘big’, ‘little’ and ‘other [name]’ by everyone, including teachers.
I doubt it’s any better for a kid’s self-esteem to be constantly mixed up with other kids- and risk epithets even less flattering to distinguish them- than it is to have to spell their name out all the time.
You mean, like Dweezil?
I mean, you’re speaking a Western European language, aren’t you?
Yes, i just realized that the first name on my birth certificate is very common. I’ve always used the name i use now (it’s what my parents called me, and what i told people to call me in school) but it wasn’t my legal first until i changed my name upon getting married.
I had trouble with the bank confusing me with other customers of the same name. I was once in a tent at camp with 6 girls, 4 of whom used a version of my legal first name.
I like having a name that’s mine. I strongly endorse giving your kid a name that won’t be shared with too many classmates, ESPECIALLY if their last name is common.
Good luck with that.
(I believe they are fucking with all of us)
My name in Starbucks is “double espresso”
Let them misspel that;)
My freshman year in college, I lived in a wing of St. Thomas Hall with 16(?) double rooms (one of which was a single because the RA was there). We had 8 people named Tom. It did make the first week easy, since if you saw some and were unsure as to their name you could take a shot at Tom and have pretty good odds. We also had three Joe’s and at least two Mike’s (whose last names were similar enough that when the RA was doing the first floor meeting and calling roll one assumed he was mis-pronouncing his name and tromped over my room-mate’s introduction.
I just say “Sam” because it’s not too common, short, and easy to spell. I loved the name Yahtzee, but I might be asked for the spelling. In the future, I’m calling myself Bingo.