I love the idea of picking names in that sweet spot of standing out and fitting in, and my taste runs there completely. Nonetheless…
I grew up a [name]Jessica[/name] during its peak years in the early to mid 1980s, and am basically happy with my name. With some brief exceptions, I pretty much always have been.
I know my name dates me (to some extent), but I’m still happy with its sound, its history, its meaning to my parents, and while there are disadvantages to being dated by your name, it’s never struck me as the worst naming fate.
I have only twice been in a class with another [name]Jessica[/name], and the whole [name]Jessica[/name] X. / [name]Jessica[/name] Y. thing never bothered me. [name]Both[/name] times, students with other popular names were doing the same thing, so I never felt singled out by it.
For what it’s worth, my friends with very popular names have NEVER said they hated how popular their name was…growing up or now. Of course, they’re not posters here : D. Many of my friends with less common names love their names, sometimes to a particularly noteworthy degree, and have always loved them. But, this is actually the group I hear some members of complain the most, that there were moments of at least partly genuine sadness for them, that they never met another X, or there was never a Y bike license plate, even if they’re happy now.
So, I’d love to hear thoughts on this issue from all ends of the popularity spectrum! Or second-hand stories!
My name is [name]Dana[/name] [name]Ellen[/name] and I was the only [name]Dana[/name] I in my school and now I’m the only [name]Dana[/name] at work. I like the name but am not madly in love with it.
[name]Dana[/name] is after my great-grandfather, [name]Daniel[/name]…and might I add that I am so glad I wasn’t named [name]Danielle[/name]. I think [name]Danielle[/name] is gorgeous but a very bad experience with a very bad [name]Danielle[/name] left me with an aversion to the name.
Anyway, I do like the fact that I was the only [name]Dana[/name] amongst a sea of girls named [name]Lori[/name], [name]Amy[/name], [name]Kelly[/name], [name]Rachel[/name], [name]Jennifer[/name] or [name]Lisa[/name].
One of my friends is also a [name]Jessica[/name] (like you) and does resent the fact that there are so many [name]Jessica[/name]'s amongst her peers.
I have a French name - one with an accent and therefore not really a cross-over name. I’ve never run into another one in the US. I grew up in [name]Maine[/name] so there wasn’t very much diversity.
Here’s what I think the common pattern is with names…in the early years, maybe up to the teens, children actually take reassurance from fitting in. There’s security in the way things are. I think it lines up psychologically with kids not being at a stage where they’re beginning to rebel or seek independence. This also seems to lead to those kids wanting names that are familiar. They like having popular or common names - ones that they hear on TV or see in books.
Once you hit your teens and begin to strike out on your own, you tend to veer more towards being unique. I certainly found myself liking my name a lot more in high school, and certainly love it now. When I was younger I didn’t really enjoy having to say it and spell it for people (although honestly, it wasn’t that big a deal).
I can’t remember, but I read some article that talked about this. Children of difference age groups were asked to pick a name that they’d like their name to be changed to. The younger children tended to pick the name of their best friend or someone they were around a lot, whereas older children tended to pick rare names that belonged to nobody else in the group.
I also had three friends names [name]Sarah[/name] in our class of 60 - all three hated that they weren’t the only one.
I might have been a weird kid, but I loved having an uncommon name. It wasn’t totally strange, I admit, but I was the only one born with my name in my province that year (weirdly 14 followed in the next year – copycats!) so in my little world I guess I was unique. It bugged me sometimes that I couldn’t find things with my name on them, but then whenever I did I was thrilled to bits, so there is that.
Regarding what the pp said about alternative names children would choose, I know for a fact I would have picked [name]Charlotte[/name] at any age between 6-12 (at thirteen I would have picked [name]Arwen[/name]. Yeah.). My nan was a [name]Charlotte[/name], but we seldom saw her and I didn’t refer to her by that name, so I’m not sure it was a case of familiarity causing liking. But then I was the kind of kid who liked reading, playing alone, that sort of thing, and hated team sports and the very idea of camp. I was the only girl in my class who didn’t like the spice girls or the backstreet boys. So I don’t think I’m really representative of the norm :lol: !
I have a pretty uncommon name, I’ve only ever met one other person named Hollyann at this point in my life. But I think because it is a combo name of two fairly normal names that it was never a big deal growing up. I’ve always liked being the only person with my name. I think it’s a perfect blend.
I think it does give away my age though, which isn’t a problem at this point as I am still young, but I was named after a song from the band [name]Boston[/name] in 1986, so in the future I may not want to divulge that fact as freely as I do now!
My name is [name]Leah[/name] and in my high school of 4000+, there was only one other [name]Leah[/name]'s I knew (and she wasn’t in any of my classes). However, when I went to cosmetology school (with only about 35 people) I was one of three. I enjoyed having an offbeat name, although it’s much more popular now. I was sad that on all of the field trips we went on, my friends could all get pencils and ornaments with their name on it, and I always had to get blank or generic ones. However, this is hardly a reason to dislike my name. My name was constantly being misspelled and mispronounced. I think it just depends on where you live and what names are being used there. My daughter’s name is [name]Grace[/name], pretty common. But she’s the only one in her toddler group and at church. She has had her name misspelled and mispronounced countless times and sometimes we can’t find cups or license plates with her name on it. Pick a name that you really love and when you can’t find her name on a pencil or she’s the fifth person in her class with the same name, just be comforted by that fact that she is not alone.
I am a [name]Jennifer[/name]…so I’d say it was popular. I went to grade school overseas, so it wasn’t so common there. But when we returned to the US, there were Jennifers everywhere!
I even went to high school with a girl named [name]Jennifer[/name] Simonaitis (my name was [name]Jennifer[/name] [name]Simon[/name]).
The ironic part is, I have two sisters and a brother, all with rarer names. So I saw first hand how cool it was to be able to call someone on the phone and only need to say your first name…whereas I was saying my first AND last name…
My experience as a [name]Jennifer[/name] is influencing my naming style for this baby due in [name]June[/name].
Another [name]Jennifer[/name] here – HATED IT. My family had always called me by my initials, but when I started school (because I thought initials were too “boyish”) I was just one [name]Jen[/name] of a zillion. When I got to college, out of 48 girls on my freshman dorm floor, there were 8 Jennifers. EIGHT!! That’s 17%, in case you’re wondering. :lol: I went back to using my initials exclusively and have done so for the last 15 years. Now there are people who don’t even know my given name, as I introduce myself by initials only.
My mom insists that she didn’t know it was so popular at the time. I give her the benefit of the doubt, and I thank her for at least giving me a nn I can live with, even if it is a little boyish.
So interesting to hear the different experiences! It really runs the gamut!
My mother has a very rare name (never in top 1000) and I wonder if that connected into naming me #1 [name]Jessica[/name]. The main story is actually that it was based on a dream about the Biblical [name]Jesse[/name] (a story I like). I was reminded of that idea, though, of going for a name somewhat opposite of your own experience, when I read [name]Jennifer[/name]'s thought that her experience will influence her naming choice.
I posted elsewhere that I think having a very unusual or very common name might work differently in big cities or small towns. My mother grew up with her name in a small town. She went by another name (that actually shares some characteristics with [name]Jessica[/name], now that I think about it) for many years. She changed back to her given name when she went from smaller towns to bigger cities. I doubt that’s the only reason, but I wonder. My relatively positive experience with [name]Jessica[/name] has been in mid-size cities and big cities. Anyone else see a role for that?
What I really like reading here is the role of randomness – I guess my own experience has randomly played out to make [name]Jessica[/name] seem somewhat less common than it really is, and others haven’t all had that experience, though some have. This idea, that people with relatively common names, like [name]Leah[/name] and [name]Grace[/name], are often still actually the only ones in their peer groups, is very interesting to me. Likewise, although I don’t think we’ve seen it here yet, I can imagine someone with a relatively rare name randomly being in a peer group, where that name is more common than among the population as a whole (like [name]Leah[/name]'s cosmetology experience!).
Always happy to read when people like their names, and if you don’t, I hope that even if you don’t like the name as a whole, there’s at least some part or aspect you can latch onto :D! My mom still doesn’t really care for hers, but she likes the story of where it comes from.
This is a really good point about randomness and also the difficulty sometimes in predicting names. When I was given the name [name]Chelsea[/name] it didn’t even rank in the top 100 names in the UK and was hardly ever used, but ten years later it was #38 and [name]Chelsea[/name] [name]Clinton[/name] was in the news and its use was reaching its peak in the US.
Someone named [name]Hayden[/name] I think it was here made a comment about being asked whether they were named after [name]Hayden[/name] Pannettiere, who is actually several years her junior. It’s funny isn’t it, because to be named after [name]Hayden[/name] Pannettiere you’d have to be only about 4 or 5 now, if that, but it’s still funny that those are the associations people make.
I just wanted to add that I don’t dislike my name. I just wish people wouldn’t shorten it to [name]Jen[/name] or [name]Jenny[/name], etc. b/c they know 12 Jennifers and THEY like [name]Jen[/name] or [name]Jenny[/name], etc. I prefer being called [name]Jennifer[/name], but no one seems to understand that. I feel like if I had a less common name, my nn choice would be more well-received.
My dad chose my name. My parents knew they were expecting twins, but had a strong feeling we were both boys. When we came out both girls…they were scrambling. My sister got [name]Meredith[/name], since [name]Meredith[/name] [name]Baxter[/name] [name]Birney[/name] had just had twins herself and was in the news, and I got [name]Jennifer[/name], my dad’s choice (Mom picked all the others’ names). I do wish he’d given me a more fun mn, instead of [name]Lee[/name] - I feel like all Jennifers are either [name]Jennifer[/name] [name]Lee[/name] or [name]Jennifer[/name] [name]Lynn[/name].
I was born in 1975, and I’m a [name]Heather[/name]. It was #3 that year.
I like my name now that I’m not always around people my own age, but while I was in school I HATED it. HATED, hated, hated. I hated being [name]Heather[/name] B. all the time. Worse, my maiden name was [name]Brown[/name], so I actually met other [name]Heather[/name] Browns here and there. One even had the same middle name: [name]Lynn[/name]. Popular first name + filler middle name + extremely common last name=SUCKY NAME.
Life is good now that I’m not in school anymore, and I’ve married and have a less common last name. But man, I was miserable. I would have traded being able to go into a store and buy a keychain or cup with my name on it in a heartbeat if I could have had a more distinctive name.
Like a [name]Jennifer[/name] that posted above, my mom swears she had no idea it was so popular. To her credit, she named me [name]Heather[/name] for reasons other than just liking the name…my grandmother is from [name]Scotland[/name], and my mom was inspired by a song in the musical Brigadoon, “The [name]Heather[/name] on the [name]Hill[/name].” [name]Gene[/name] [name]Kelly[/name] and Cyd [name]Charisse[/name] dance to the song in the movie version, and I ended up being a ballet dancer and a major anglophile/fan of all things British, so my name kind of fits me. Plus, I’ve had a pretty intense, difficult life (if I do say so myself), and I’ve had to weather a lot of pain and heartache. I like that my name is a hardy, strong wildflower. I can relate.
My daughter’s name is [name]Genevieve[/name] B”atrix. [name]Genevieve[/name] was #288 the year she was born, lots of nickname options ([name]Heather[/name] doesn’t really have any…always hated that, too), and B”atrix is far from a filler middle name (it honors someone who was very dear to me). I love most of the top ten names right now, but didn’t even want to touch the top 100 with a ten foot pole! :lol:
I grew up [name]Suzann[/name]a nicknamed [name]Suzy[/name] and I was born in the late 70’s. I feel it important to add that I was given my paternal grandmother’s name, that she was no longer around, and that [name]Suzanna[/name] has a long history of use in my father’s family. [name]Suzann[/name]e was just coming down from barely making it into the top 100 in popularity, and [name]Susan[/name] was also slowly starting to plummet. In middle school there was a [name]Suzann[/name]e whom I did occasionally have classes with. I don’t know how others felt, but I always felt that our names were different. I’ve since worked with a [name]Suzanne[/name] and have come across a few other [name]Suzanne/name, [name]Susan/name and even a [name]Suzette[/name]. However, I’ve never come across another [name]Suzanna[/name]!
I’ve stressed the “a” vs “e” ending, because it’s always been what makes my name different… unique… mine. [name]Every[/name] report card I ever got, the teacher’s wrote my name [name]Suzann[/name]e, or just simply put [name]Susie[/name]/[name]Suzy[/name]/[name]Susan[/name] (before computers - otherwise this might not have ever been an issue). This little lapse drove my mother nuts. “Your name is [name]Suzann[/name]A, not [name]Suzann[/name]e. Your report card should have your accurate name. Not your nickname and NOT a completely different name!” Personally, I didn’t care too much. [name]Suzanna[/name] was my name, and I knew it and felt it special/unique/mine. In a way, I think the fact that others couldn’t get it right helped me see just how special/unique/mine it was.
There were times when I’ve disliked my name… but I think that was mainly just a reason to dream about names (even as a child I loved names). Overall, I’ve always loved my uniquely mine name. My only regret with my name is that I don’t have a daughter to pass it along too. I hope that one day I might have a granddaughter with a FN/MN of [name]Suzanna[/name]. Part of me would like to see others love [name]Suzanna[/name] as much as I do, with the funky “z” and the feminine “a”. However, I like my name mine, and it suits me to have it obscure.
I was born in the late 80s, my first name being [name]Natalie[/name]. It was somewhere in the 50s range in popularity at the time, but I only met one other [name]Natalie[/name] throughout my life. We happened to be in the same class, but it didn’t bother me much at all because we never had much to do with each other, and we looked pretty different so there was no confusion. Suprisingly, I was never called “[name]Natalie[/name] G.” as opposed to just [name]Natalie[/name]. Whenever my teacher (I was in 6th grade at the time) called on one of the Natalies she would just point to one of us say “[name]Natalie[/name]”. (we sat at different sides of the room)
However, I am extremely confused at how much trouble people have with spelling my name. I honestly didn’t know there were that many ways to spell [name]Natalie[/name]. I’ve gotten “Natily”, “[name]Nataly[/name]”, “Natile”, and “Nathlae” (seriously, where did THIS come from?!) of the ones I came remember off the top of my head. The one I get most often is “[name]Nathaly[/name]”… I just don’t get it at all.
I think the thread that’s also interesting is parents having no idea the name was so popular. If you think about it, before the internet, it would have been harder to figure out. Still not impossible to get a general sense (newspaper announcements, peer groups), but pretty hard to get a true sense. Now, of course, plenty of parents probably don’t pay that much attention to the SSA information even if it is widely available, but it’s a whole different ball game.
[name]Love[/name] the stories about [name]Suzanna[/name] and [name]Heather[/name] : D. Also liking the theme that it’s nice when any name, but maybe especially a widespread one, has more of a story than just the parent liking the sound. Of course that is a nice connection to the parent on its own.
[name]Natalie[/name], that is interesting about the spelling of your name. I work with a lot families of Latino heritage, and the spelling [name]Nathaly[/name] seems really common among them (the TH is pronounced t, which we have at least in [name]Theresa[/name] and [name]Thomas[/name] and maybe some others), I wonder if that is part of it? Then of course [name]Natalee[/name] Holloway was in the news for a while with that spelling.
I am always surprised when this happens to me too – I occasionally have to spell [name]Jessica[/name] over the phone. My mother has had the same experience making calls regarding me. I think sometimes it’s non-native English speakers not hearing the name right? But one time my mother asked and the person said because there are Jessikas and Gessicas and Gessicas and Jesicas etc out there, they have to ask!
Still happens to me much less than it happens to people with many names, no doubt.
@Jesba: Yeah, that’s probably it. I mostly see “[name]Nathaly[/name]” at work, and my boss and many coworkers are Hispanic. So, yeah, I can see why now.
I’m just now realizing that I’m very satisfied with my name. It was #272 the year I was born, which I think is a good place to be in terms of popularity. There’s one other [name]Rosa[/name] in my grade (and we happen to be friends) but I don’t really mind occasionally going by my last initial. And it’s definitely not as bad as the Emilys, Madelines, Hannahs, and Emmas which overpopulate my school. On the other hand, I don’t think I’d like having a really obscure name-- I like that my name is familiar to everyone but not overused, and doesn’t need an accompanying explanation at every introduction. I almost never get pronunciation/spelling issues, either, which is good because I’m the kind of person who gets extremely annoyed when things are spelled wrong. Another plus is that my name is usable in a number of different languages-- it’s pretty universal, as far as names go. My only issue is the flow with my middle name, and the slight cheese factor (two floral names in a row). But I like it on its own and it’s definitely not filler, which is good.
My name is [name]Linda[/name] and I was born in 1985. As I kid it wasn’t that my name was too uncommon, it’s that I tired of hearing, “My mom’s name is [name]Linda[/name]!” or, “My aunt’s name is [name]Linda[/name]!” I didn’t like my name growing up, and even now I’m typically mistaken for [name]Lindsey[/name], since people tend to deem that more likely for someone my age.
I’ve grown to like my name more, as I’ve found it travels well with me internationally, and it works for me as a young professional–I think some of the people with whom I communicate via e-mail assume I’m a few decades older! I guess I am glad that I didn’t get lost in a sea of Rachels, Sarahs, Jessicas, etc.
I went to grade school overseas, so it wasn’t so common there. But when we returned to the US, there were Jennifers everywhere!