Completely unreasonable, selfish rant

[dogmom]

Both my brother and I have common names and even with my slightly uncommon French spelling of my name I get tons of people in my demographic with my name. There are 5 nurses on my unit with my name two with the same spelling. PIA. So when I went to name my kids I really wanted names that were (1) heard of (2) spelled in a way that they wouldn't be repeating themselves slowly how to spell it for the rest of their lives (3) but not currently popular. I scoured the Social Security web site. My son's name hasn't cracked the top 100 for decades. My DD is Eve, Eva is common, but not Eve, but it still was in the 100. I took a gamble. So in her grade there is another Eve. None in rest of her elementary school, none in the middles school, have not heard it AT ALL in 7 years since naming her except this one girl in her grade. I ran into this girl/mom once before school when they were both 3 at the library. I secretly hoped they would move before kindergarden.

So I get the brownie troop list, who do they put in the troop of 8 girls? The other Eve. We have 4 troops for her grade. Arghhh....

Yes, I get it, completely petty and selfish and I have no right. I just don't want her to be first name last initial for the rest of her school years. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Thank you for letting me vent, my husband thinks I'm insane.

[elizabethkott]

Oh, I get it!
In HS, there was a girl in my grade, same first name, middle name, and same first two letters of last name. Our Senior year, we had the. exact. same. schedule. All nine periods, including lunch. Good thing we were friendly with each other!!!
But I get it.
(This totally sent before I was done! Lol!)
It's sucky to have to be the kid with the initial. And you're not nuts for wanting your daughter to not have to have the initial!!
This year, I have two students named Diamond in the same class (yes, really). Sigh. As a teacher, I hate it when that happens.

[Green_Tea]

DD1 has a name that hovers around #250 on the list, and DD2 has a top 20 name (unintentionally - it shot up 50 spots in the year we named her!). Despite DD2's "popular" name, there is only one dupe in the entire 500+ kid school. Yet there are SEVERAL kids with DD1's name. HUH???

[crl]

Oh man. I am sorry. I would be so peeved.

Well if it is any consolation at all I have a super common name--there were FOUR Cathy/Kathy's in my brownie troop. (I was named for my grandmother so not a deliberately trendy choice by my parents.) I still like my name a lot. :)

Catherine

[123LuckyMom]

I get it! My DD's name is Arden. I thought that was pretty unusual. It turns out a family just moved to town, and their daughter is, you guessed it! She's exactly the same age as my daughter. Unless they move or we do, the two will be in the same class all the way through school. It makes me a little crazy!

[Neatfreak]

My youngest has an uncommon (SSA greater than 100) name, and for some inexplicable reason, she's one of three in her preschool class of fifteen kids (seven girls). Me and the other parents are pretty surprised, but our daughters think it's really fun that they all share a name.

[stillplayswithbarbies]

named my daughter Logan because I already did the popular name with my son and didn't want her to be "Logan last initial". Guess what? She is in a private school with just a handful of kids in her class and there is another girl Logan.

you can't win.

[MamaMolly]

I totally get it. So far we've been lucky with our traditional but not entirely unpopular names, but what is driving me bananas is that Dolly's name has a *slightly* unusual spelling. It usually is spelled with 'nn' and we (DH~ I lost the argument!) went with the 'n' spelling. She's going to spend her life spelling it out. I'm sorry, baby girl!!
We tried a toddler gym class and the main reason I'm not enrolling her is because the teacher proudly pointed out that they were practicing writing their names and she had Dolly's spelled wrong. I felt like suggesting that the next time they might want to practice the right spelling :irked: I mean please. You want me to pay BIG bucks for this class, the least you can do is pay attention to how the kid's names are spelled.

We spend a LONG time wringing our hands over our kid's names. It is bound to be a touchy subject!

[dogmom]

Thank you ladies. It's good to know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

At least it's not as bad as my DS best friend. His name is John, there were 3 kids with his name in the same K class. Their last names were are close alphabetically (P,Q,S) and they sat them at the same table! So of course they are still, John P, John Q and John S five years later. (Guess which one my DS BF is! Mom was not happy.)

[rin]

My DD1 has a name that's not even on the top 1000 list . . . when we sent out the birth announcement we learned that we'd given her the same name as my SIL's brother's kid, who was born a few months before. Yeah, we don't really know this family (we've crossed paths at a few Thanksgiving dinners at SIL's house, when her side of the family is there too), but still!

[HannaAddict]

Funny, no John's around here, but our school has an Arden, Logan (x 2 one girl and one boy), Eve and Eva. I had 8 of the short version of my name in my house in college too.

[specialp]

I completely get it. I shared my super common came with 2 other people all through school and once in high school, one of my best friends and I had the same name. It was too confusing and everyone called her by her first & last name all the time. I do not think she would even turn her head or acknowledge you if you called her by her first name only. My kids have very uncommon names although it wasn’t motivated by that reason.

Re: the John, I’ve ironically had the opposite experience with very common names. I volunteered with a county youth program for 10+ years and the only two names I had in my class that I never had repeated in all those years were two boys named James and Joseph. (There was one other name, but he was French so that doesn’t count.) I always thought that was so odd given how uncommon the other names where that I had.

[fedoragirl]

I agree with pps. You just can't win with names. It's annoying but there it is.
We named DD an uncommon name and it was hard coming up with something that could be pronounced the same in several languages. Guess what? It's a pretty common name in Germany. I am bummed.
I had 4 Madeleines in one class at one point. It was insane. It was the same class when I had 4 sets of twins too. Yikes!

[belovedgandp]

Can't win.

Never heard anyone use DD's name; name her that and meet five of them. She was my third and I was already around lots of kids.

Went to a birthday party this weekend with four Camerons - 2 boys and 2 girls - 15 kids at an 8 year olds party.

[karstmama]

my name isn't common - it's marci. i've met others, certainly, but not many.

until i was working in a small recovery room. recovery rooms are usually fairly big rooms with curtains between beds. there were 8 ft employees. three of us were named marci/marcie/marcy. short for marcia, marceline, and marcella. it was the first time i had to filter 'who are they talking to when they call out 'marci'?' :D

[Twoboos]

I hear ya. Add me to the "can't win" list.

DD1's name is very very common, top 5 most popular for years and years. But we didn't care. And there have been surprisingly few overlaps, maybe every other year she has to be "Name LastInitial."

Dd2's name we decided on something a little different - or so we thought. First the spelling is a problem, people constantly mispronounce her name. Then I discover there are 4 other girls with the same name (different spelling) in her graduating class, PLUS at least 3 more in the year ahead of her. SERIOUSLY?? The name barely broke the top 200 list, never mind the top 100.

Last year DD1 had 2 girls with DD2's name in her class, and DD2 had another girl with the name in her class. I never thought she would have to be "Name LastInitial"!

[vonfirmath]

Now. Unpopularity is NOT the main reason we choose names.

But DS's name was #300 when we chose it. its jumped to #200 in the 6 years he's been alive.

He's got another 1st grader in his school and in Extended Day that shares his name (and a very similar last name. Also German-derived). Luckily they have different Nicknames.

For DD, she is X Abigail. And though my FIL tried to get me to change it to Abigail X (totally discounting the fact that I chose X because I LOVE the name and the people it reminds me of). We just said No. Abigail is too common. I've been quite gratified to notice this indeed is the case. Everytime I turn around there's another Abigail. Living on our street, in her nursery class at church, in daycare (when she was there). On internet boards I'm on. Etc.

[kit]

I find this thread so interesting. I have the opposite view. My name is incredibly uncommon. To this day people constantly misspell or mispronounce it, even people who have known me for years. Trying to spell it over the phone is just a PITA. Plus, it makes me incredibly easy to google, which I hate. So of course I gave my kids very common names, and it doesn't bother me at all when we run into someone else with the same name :)