With all of the odd, crazy names that are given to babies these days, I always wonder how many of those kids grow up cursing their parents for their names?
So, who here likes their first (and middle if you want) name and who hates theirs and wishes they had a different name? Has anyone changed their first name?
I like my first and middle name. As a kid tho, I was embarrassed for some reason by my middle name. I guess it just wasn’t that popular at the time. Another stupid kid thing that should never have been worried about. :rolleyes:
My first name is William but I go by Bill. I like Bill and don’t much like William. (It’s okay written on forms but it would be really odd to hear it aloud.)
What may make my situation worthy of hearing about is that, when I was very small, I was nicknamed Billy. When I was four or so I announced that Billy was too childish for my mature self and that thenceforth I would be known as Bill. So while I never cursed my parents for the (nick)name they saddled me with at birth, I did quite firmly reject it.
I have always liked mine. As a kid I wondered why my name started with a B when my sisters all were Cs, I kinda felt single out. I now know its wasn’t a planned thing, it just happened. But, yea, I like my name.
I like my name just fine. It is not too odd, but not overly common, either.
I know people stuck with names they don’t like, and they usually just pick some diminutive form of it to be called. Maybe they don’t want to cause conflict with their parents.
I do know someone who legally changed his surname, though. His last name was “Gay”. Of course you can imagine how he was picked on growing up. As he became an adult and his relationship with his father became more and more estranged, and his mother remarried and didn’t have that name anymore, he changed his to “Gray”. There is no relation or other family line with the name Gray, he just picked it. It was his way of shedding that baggage.
I didn’t like my first or middle names growing up. My first name wasn’t all that common and my middle name is a family line last name. For the longest time, I wouldn’t tell anybody what my middle initial stood for. Now that I’ve done the genealogy research on my family, I’m proud to have that name. I never liked my last name, either. It’s my stepfather’s last name and nobody spells it correctly, so I’ve spent nearly 70 years having to spell it out and correct pronunciation. Then again, the last name I was born with is no picnic either.
I never liked my first name. I think it’s mundane and pedestrian, although not very common nowadays. I never really think about my middle name, but I probably wouldn’t go by it.
I really like my first name except for the fact that I used to get a lot of “Princess Jasmine” jibes, especially during the time when the Disney character Princess Jasmine was featured in movies and on Disney TV. I remember once when I was animatedly whispering to a friend when the teacher was ready to start. Suddenly I hear, “If Princess Jasmine would be gracious enough to allow it, I’d like to get started now.” Grrrrrrrrrr!
My middle name was just a fun thing and my mother’s idea. I mean, how many people can say that their middle name is “Turquoise”? LOL
My first name is an ordinary, unremarkable name, and I’ve never had a problem with it. It’s uncommon enough that I’m usually the only one in a group who has it, though there were a few years in grad school when there were three of us. And it’s common enough (and doesn’t have any common variants) that nobody ever has to ask “Wait, what was that name again?”, or “How do you spell that?”.
My middle name is John, which is about as common and ordinary as you can get in the English-speaking world, but it comes up so seldom that I’m not sure I really have any opinion about it.
Personally, I think that parents ought to give their kids ordinary first names, but if you want something exotic, go with the middle name for it. That way the kid can choose on their own whether to embrace it or ignore it.
I’ve shared this many times here when these threads have come up.
My name is ok, kind of sounds bimboish. At the time my parents named me, the trend of spelling names that end in the “ee” sound with an i was just picking up steam. As a kid I thought it was kind of fun to have something unique (even though I could never find souvenirs with my spelling on them) and then at some point, having an i at the end of ones name became the object of ridicule. It took *years *to realize I was part of that group of people that others made fun of :smack: It’s just such a part of me I never thought about it.
I would have much preferred the name my birth mother gave me (Andrea).
The OP mentions being embarrassed by his middle name. Does anyone else remember when as a kid you were mortified to tell people what your middle name is and it became a big thing to find out and tease you about? I still hate my middle name (Pamela) but it doesn’t give me a panic attack to admit to it like it used to.
I’ve always liked “Jennifer Marie” well enough. Thousands of other women born in/around 1971 share my name, but it never felt boring despite being common.
I grew up being called “Jenny.” In my late 20s I had a phase where I thought that didn’t sound professional enough, so I tried going by “Jennifer” at work: it didn’t stick, and after less than a year I fully embraced “Jenny” (for whatever reason, I’ve never felt like/been a “Jen”).
Using my nickname kind of doubles down on my baby face, but whatever. I am who/what I am. I can’t imagine going by anything else.
I’ve grown up a Jessica in an era of Jessicas. Anywhere I go if there are other women around the same age as me, there’s other Jessicas (and/or Jennifer). One time my friends and I were playing Whirlyball and we were able to field an entire team of Jessicas and a Jesse!
There are different groups of people who call me Jessica, Jess, or JJ. It’s an interesting organizational exercise for me.
My dad hates his middle name (Elmer) and avoids revealing anything other than the initial. (Which he’s had to do, because it’s the only way to distinguish his mail from mine ;))
I like my first and middle names well enough, though I rarely use my middle name. They’re both common enough that no one misspells or mispronounces them, and I’m set apart from others with the same name (there are four that work in the same building as I do) because I use the proper form, rather than a diminutive.
All that said, I usually go by my last name because it sounds cooler.
I feel “meh” about my name. There ia nothing objectively wrong with it. It just doesn’t fit me all that well. I have always liked names like “Gwendolyn”, “Frances” and “Marilyn”, so I wish I had one of those kind of names.
I have not changed my name because I don’t dislike it enough to want to go through trouble. Also, I think it would hurt my father’s feelings since he was the one to name me.
I never disliked my name, but the issue I did have was that it was incredibly common in my peer group – Michael was the #1 most popular boys’ name in the year I was born (as it was through most of the 1960s), and I always had one or more other Michaels in my classes, throughout grade school and high school. In grade school, I was one of three Mikes in a class of 25 or so (and all three of us has the same last initial, as well). I went to a small, all-boys high school, and over 10% of my graduating class was named Michael. Because of this, there was always a certain level of confusion / clarification that would have to go on: “which Mike?”
As for my middle name: it was the #2 name on the popularity list for that year. I have about the most common, white-bread name imaginable for my age cohort.
I can’t imagine going by anything else.