# Why do people not have more unique names than they do? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 26, 2018, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615 "2018-07-26T13:26:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/81 "2018-08-01T18:02:12Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Rhymes with Ryan, but drop the R and add a Y at the beginning, so Yi -yan. So the Y sound in the word ‘you’ or ‘yelp’. followed by a long i and then the ‘yen’ sound. Some Welsh accents replace the long i with a long a. Like that, Yi-yan, though with much less emphasis on the second ‘y’ sound than the first; Yi- ən is also pretty close. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/82 "2018-08-02T00:58:50Z")
One has to sympathize with the Celts, though. They have had to endure enough English influence. Is it their problem that a bunch of the latter don’t know how to pronounce Dubhchobhlaigh, Caoilfhionn, or Dòmhnall? ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/83 "2018-08-02T03:17:57Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > When I worked in a high school, there was a girl there named “Princess.” You could see the teachers squirm every time they said her name. There’s not even really a good way to abbreviate it. She was kind of stuck going by “Princess.” Traditional Sikh name. But they don’t use that part of the name to identify individuals! Any more than one of my teachers would have used my given name to identify me. There were too many of us, including my two best friends (Melbourne K, and Melbourne R). ---
**Author:** ![scareyfaerie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scareyfaerie/32/3135_2.png) [@scareyfaerie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scareyfaerie)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/84 "2018-08-02T14:46:44Z")
One of our lecturers used to joke that every class in the subject she taught had a couple of really outstanding students and a couple of total spanners. You would naturally remember their names because they were exceptionally good or exceptionally poor students. The rest? “Oh, they’re just Charlotte, Emily and Louise” was her reply. ---
**Author:** ![bowlweevils](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e5b9ba/32.png) [@bowlweevils](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bowlweevils)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2018, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615/85 "2018-08-04T03:34:02Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Germany is where English borrowed the “ch” to stand for the glottal fricative English, German, and other Germanic languages got their velar fricatives (they are not glottal fricatives) from their common ancestor language Germanic. These languages also got the digraph “ch” from the same place as German, from the Romans. English “ch” was a velar fricative in the past, as was “gh”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-not-have-more-unique-names-than-they-do/818615.md?page=4)