I’m one of a billion Jennifers born in the 1980s. I like my name just fine. I am a boring person and having a boring, common name that’s easy to spell and pronounce suits me just fine.
I hate being called Jen, though. Hate it.
I hated mine until I was 10, because people would make fun of it.
The summer I was 10 is the summer we went on vacation to a town which shares my patron saint. I spent those two weeks playing with the cook’s daughter and niece: all three (cook, daughter and niece) shared my name. In that town, nobody would think of making jokes about that name.
That’s when I realized that the problem was not in my name: the problem was that some people have never grown beyond the shit-pee-fart-ass stage.
ETA: Der Trihs, all the names you picked for women are full names; all the names you picked for guys are nicknames. Robert, Edward, Frederick.
I hated my name until I was in my teens, but that’s because everyone had a joke that they just had to let out, sometimes in song! I started to like it more once I spent most of my time around people that had grown the fuck up. It’s an uncommon name (for people, anyway) that frequently gets comments or questions when I meet new people, but no more jokes.
I like my name. It advertises the fact that I am a female born in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
I don’t dislike my name, but I identify much more strongly with my last name, which I think is unusual for a woman. There’s nothing mystic about it: I just like the way it looks and sounds. My favorite nickname is a diminutive of my last name.
It worked out well that I ended up in a profession (teaching) where more people call me by my last name than my first.
I love my unique name, I have never met another one.
male
I hate my name largely because it lends itself well to a nickname and people will call me that within five seconds of meeting me, despite the fact that I have just told them my name. I just can’t get away from it. Hate.
My vote may be a little disenguous. I like my given name; however, I do go by my middle name. I’m not particularly fond of my first name, but it was my parents’ choice to refer to me by my middle name. Maybe if I’d been referred to by my first name my whole life, I’d like it a little better.
I actually really like my given name but I go by a dimunitive, generally. People really get stuck on my given name and they pronounce it so badly I hate it.
I have met other people with my name, but only in India. I have a first cousin who has the same name (granted, I have a LOT of first cousins).
It is.
I like my given first name, not so much my given middle name. The last name is the only part that was automatic.
Hi Roxanne.
I’m Doug, and I love the name. It suits me fine.
Mind you, if someone calls me by the wrong name I don’t bother correcting them. If we never meet again it won’t matter and if we have regular meetings they will work it out sometime. Why embarrass them now?
I kind of like my name. As a kid I felt a little special because my mother chose an alternate spelling (this is before it became trendy and annoying). It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I realized I have a name that ends in “I” just like the girls I always made fun of:smack: I hated my middle name (Pamela) so much that I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud to anyone. I still don’t like it but now I just laugh when my boyfriend mockingly calls me that with his English accent. Somehow that takes the cringe factor away.
I actually don’t know a lot of women who hate their name. However I would say that girl’s names are more prone to be “trendy” and boys names are more prone to be “classic.” Although popularity of certain names for boys waxes and wanes, it tend to stick to things like David, Jason, Christopher, biblical or historical names that have been popular pretty much forever to varying degrees. Girls names seem more likely to be made up or follow a celebrity naming trend.
So you end up with 5 Chelseas in a 5th grade class, they are going to end up hating that, because it is so entirely annoying. “Chelsea, I mean, Chelsea S., no, not you Chelsea S., the other one…”
My name is somewhat old fashioned and biblical – only once in my childhood did I meet another girl with my name, and we considered it a great novelty. But a lot of my friends had this problem and began hating their names.
“Hate” is too strong a word, but I’d prefer a different name. I just haven’t really thought of one that goes with me. My middle name is definitely not an improvement!
I don’t hate my name, but I don’t particularly like it either. I guess I’m pretty much indifferent. That said, though the name on my birth certificate is the full name, my parents never intended to call me anything but one of the nicknames for it, and not the most common and shortest version either. Fortunately, even my full name isn’t terribly common, and few go by the version I do, but it’s still well known, so I generally just go by my first name; even professionally, it seems like few people know my last name even. And, really, I never could go by anything else because it really does fit my personality.
The part that really bugs me though, is that because it’s particularly an uncommon nickname, I almost inevitably get compared to one of a handful of random celebrities that go by it. Particularly annoying was that a fairly major pop culture icon came onto the scene when I started high school that quickly had a famous catch phrase associated with him. It seemed like everyone that they were really clever when they made that association. Hell, I still hear it half the time when I meet someone new. Seriously, you don’t think I’ve heard that a thousand times by now? That’s at least one thing that people with common names really don’t have to deal with, there’s so many people named Chris or Mike or Tom or whatever that no one will make those sorts of associations.
Particularly toward the question of the OP, I only recall one girl in my entire life who even tried to go by something other than her first name, but it was a nickname she came up with herself and I never actually heard anyone call her by it because, well, nicknames you make for yourself never stick. I even knew a few who hated their names but still went by them. OTOH, I’ve known plenty of guys who went by their middle name, last name, or got some other random nickname.
I’m very happy with my name. Although it’s common amongst people my age, it’s classic and pretty timeless - it has so many diminutives that you could really call yourself one of about 8 versions depending on your mood/personality/fashion.
And it’s about to get a lot more fashionable…
I don’t care much for my given name, but I don’t hate it. Luckily, I can go by my nickname.
I’m female and while I don’t mind it now, I used to HATE my given name.
It’s quite unusual and many people think it’s a man’s name if they just see it written down. There’s only so many times you can meet someone for the first time and have them say “I thought you were a guy!” before you’re **forced **to develop a good sense of humor.
It’s not so much that I hate my given name (although it sounds more suited to a tween than to a grown woman), but when paired with my middle name, it gives of a bit of a hick, Ellie May, hillbilly vibe. And THAT I really hate.
Wendy Kay