My middle name is Rose, which today I find very pretty. It was my grandma’s name (whom I was very close with). As a kid (jr high age) I must have thought of it as an old lady name. 80% of the girls I knew had Marie as their middle name, so I was not in the majority and when you’re in jr high being in the majority is where you want to be!
I dislike my name a lot. I’ve never felt like it really “belongs” to me, and I don’t like hearing other people use it. My first name isn’t too bad, but it’s an alternate spelling I don’t like, and it doesn’t sound good with my last name. I really hate my middle name to the point where I won’t tell people what it is. They’re not awful names–in fact, they’re perfectly fine, normal names. I just don’t like them for me.
I’ve often thought about changing it, but it just seems like a lot of trouble (to actually do it, to change all the documents I’d need to change, and to convince friends to stop using my old one). So I live with it. Whenever possible, I go by initials. I have thought a lot about changing my middle name to my dad’s unisex one, with the same initial.
Do you think you would have changed your name if she had named you Elvis?
I have an unremarkable first name. Common enough but it’s never been on the list of most popular. Fine by me.
raises hand 1973 here.
I haaaate the name “Jennifer” and have been Jenny ever since I was about 6 years old. Finally got to the point where only my passport said “Jennifer” so when I met my husband and we started traveling I legally changed my name to Jenny. Best $245 I ever spent.
People called me “Jen” in high school, probably because so many Jennifers went by Jen, and I answered to it but usually corrected people to “Jenny”. If someone calls me “Jen” now it feels weird. I’ve never allowed to someone to call me “Jennifer” without correcting them.
I am also “the Third” which I think sounds pretentious, but nobody asked me. I am told I was supposed to be named Peter, which would also have been an issue, but sanity prevailed.
I neither like nor dislike my last name. It’s just my last name.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m a Julia, which I always felt sounded elderly, but now that I’m old enough it’s cool. 
It helps that I now pronounce it with all three syllables. As I was raised in the South, everyone pronounced it Jool-yah. Ugh.
I’m Paula, named after my father Paul. As a kid I hated my name. As a grownup it reminds me of my dad, which is a good thing.
Like my first, which is one syllable, and have no middle.
Both our kids have normal names also. Never heard a complaint from them.
My wife on the other hand is the only person in the entire US with her first name, which was a family tradition.
I have a sister born in 1973 named Jennifer Lynn, and she complains of this same thing. There are scads of Jennifer Lynns and Jennifer Leighs her age, and yes, a butt-ton of Jessicas.
My mother blames the Jennifer explosion on the movie Love Story. I have no idea why Jessica became the other “it” name of the early 70s.
My first name is okay, but I feel like my parents didn’t put much effort into my second name, and just went with Ann. I feel a little ripped off - my brother got something like Alister Fitzgerald, I get Lisa Ann. Thanks, Mom. :rolleyes:
The early 70s would have been too early for Jessica influences to have been Lange, Fletcher, or Rabbit. ;). WAG: the Allman Brothers Band song “Jessica” (1973) may have been an influence on that.
Similarly, I’ve heard theories that the popularity of Michael in the 1960s was, at least in part, due to the popularity of folk recordings of “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
I’ve always liked Chuck.
It’s based on reality, after all.
I think alot of what had me not caring a whole bunch about my first name was that my surname was very unusual. When I married it was pleasant to not have to re-pronounce and spell out my last name.
My wife had the same situation – she really disliked her maiden name. It had the same spelling (though different pronunciation) as a common word that wasn’t terribly complimentary, as well as being close in spelling to several other words with which she was teased a lot as a kid.
So, she had no qualms about taking my surname when we got married, even though my surname is unusual, too, and is close in spelling to another word that yielded a lot of teasing at me (though at least that word wasn’t insulting).
I love my full first name, but hate the ‘ends in y’ nickname that I was known as as a child. As soon as I was able, I insisted on being called by my first name, so now the only time I hear the ‘ends in y’ is from family, who can’t seem to respect that tiny little wish of mine. :rolleyes:
I was born in the seventies, when 80% of girls seemed to have been given the middle name of Marie or Lynn, so I’m just “meh” on my middle name (Marie), but I don’t hate it.
My family called me by a diminutive form of my middle name. I didn’t know it wasn’t my first name until I was about to go into kindergarten. I hated the name my family called me, which I thought was too masculine. (I had sadly rigid views along those lines at age 4.) I chose my first name for my “school name,” as I thought it was prettier and I felt more like a Julia.
After Mom passed, I got tired of being known by two names and asked my family to call me by my first name. It’s been 7 years. They’re still working on it.
Hate my first and middle names. Really hate them. No reasonable nickname version exists either.
Didn’t want to change my name while my mother is alive and at this point it’s pretty much too late to gain anything vs. the hassles of changing it.
Mine’s fine. Nothing special, easy to spell, etc.
I’m not embarrassed of my middle name, but I never use it in business (or even my initial), and I try not to use it anywhere except the very-most-official stuff. My last name is so unique, it’s not like the middle name or initial is necessary.