S/o names

blondegirl22 · October 2013

I have a few friends or people I know that have pretty common names ie: Kate, Jennifer, Michael, etc and it seems that they came up with some very different names (Raziel, kaden, Naveah just to name a few) for their children.
I do not have a very common name for my age generation and we went with family names for our DD and will for baby 2. Have you noticed this? If you have a common name did that play into you naming your children? Just curious?

dizzycooks · October 2013

Our names are very common for our generation, but I wanted DD to have a name that was different, but not strange. I think of it as a classic name, not a trendy name. I also wanted it to be easy to spell because I feel like so many names (mine included) people are always asking " Is that ie or y at the end?" My brother is forever clarifying that his name starts with a K not a C. I didn't want that for her.

strlitemiss · October 2013

My name is so common and plain DS's is not unique but its also not super common.

I just realized that wasn't the question.

No I never took my name into consideration.

joyfullyfound · October 2013

Absolutely it did. My name was in the top 5 the year I was born, and in school I always had between 2 and 4 girls in my class with the same name. I always went by my first name and last name initial. I hated it.

For our kids it's important to me that their name not be in the top 100. I'm not drawn to really unusual names like the ones you listed though... I like classic names, just not the uber popular ones.

EDIT: As much as I disliked having a popular name, I can see the clear drawbacks of a really unusual or made up one as well. They both have their issues, but I think the unusual names more so.

dizzycooks · October 2013

One more thing, I have three students this year who I honestly did not realize I had their gender wrong until I looked at the paper work. Their names were neutral and they dress/groom neutral or opposite what you'd expect. It bothers one of them that they are confusing people, but the other two are cool with it. I find it disconcerting and felt really bad when I realized it.

rockyrollgirl · October 2013

Nicole is pretty common. I did not take it into consideration when picking a name for my daughter, I just picked a name I really liked.

Allycat11 · October 2013

DH and I both have fairly common names from our generation but surprisingly we both don't know many people with our names. DD has a very uncommon name. We didn't pick an uncommon name on purpose, as a matter of fact I kept changing my mind and wanting something more popular until we signed the birth certificate the day after she was born.

bumpuser924057 · October 2013

DH's first name is as common as they come, but mine was relatively uncommon and I hated that people always had trouble with it (Katrina... is that with a K or a C? With an I or an E? Did you say 'Patrina'? Katarina?) And I had a complicated looking last name with a Z in it, so a lot of people gave up on that right away. I was very picky about my kids names, in large part due to my experiences as a kid and as a teacher who had exposure to lots of different names.

That said, there is no way to escape it. My twins are Glenn and Caroline. Glenn will forever have to answer the question "one N or two?" and Caroline will have to correct a million and a half people who think her name is pronounced Carolyn. Such is life, I guess.

Spin313 · October 2013

I have a lesser-common name of the late 70s/80s. I liked that my name was common enough for souvenirs, but not popular enough that I ever had another person with my name in class.

I'd say that DD's is the same, but gaining popularity. She goes by a nickname that ends in -ie, but people frequently spell it with just an -i. DS has a classic name that is on the fringes of the top 10. Surprisingly, he is the only one in his entire grade (75+ kids) with that name.

Disneygeek77 · October 2013

Diapers&Wipes said:

My name is very uncommon and it played a huge role in picking my kids names. I wanted names that were easy to spell and fairly common. Interestingly enough people struggle with DDs name all the time. Her name is Ava and she gets called Eva about half the time.

I was going to say this as well. I have a somewhat common name but my parents decided to go with a goofy spelling and I do not like it. Growing up, I could never have anything personalized like cups or bookmarks as well as constantly correcting people on the spelling of my name. I have even had important moments like my graduation be...well not ruined but not as cool because the announcer mispronounced my name.

::shrugs:: I don't want to sound like a baby, but it does get old knowing I am going to deal with this for the rest of my life.

My kids have somewhat common names with the most common spelllings. Although there are several popular ways to spell DD's name so she might have to go through the same thing.

pevila · October 2013

My name is very long and pretentious. My DD has a German last name which is very hard to pronounce and spell, so I went with a simple, easy name for her. It had to end in a vowel too because her last name starts with an "S" and it would have been even more difficult to pronounce if her name ended in a consonant.

foxmini · October 2013

DD's name is Lily. DH and I have common names. I actually wanted a more uncommon name for her... uncommon, not made up. I didn't realize Lily was such a popular name until after she was born. Oh, well. I still love it.

Mrs.Hizzo · October 2013

foxmini said:

DD's name is Lily. DH and I have common names. I actually wanted a more uncommon name for her... uncommon, not made up. I didn't realize Lily was such a popular name until after she was born. Oh, well. I still love it.

I love the name Lily.

pitterpatter129 · October 2013

My name is so common that this happened: I went to the public library in high school, but forgot my card. They were going to just look me up by name, but three other people in the city have the same name (first, middle, and last.) They had to use my social security number. My DH's cousin has the same first middle name as I do too. Makes putting names on cups at family parties annoying. My mom said she was trying to name me something she didn't think other people would name their kids and then there were a few others in the nursery in our tiny town when I was born.

My husband's name is super common too and we named our kids Nathan and Caleb. We like traditional names and weren't going for unique at all.

ASullivan1231 · October 2013

I ALWAYS have to spell my name so one of my requirements when picking names is that it have 1 spelling, and an obvious spelling. My married name also has to be spelled constantly such a PITA.

My husband has a really common name for our generation so he wanted something that 3 or 4 other kids in the class wouldn't have, so yes, I can totally see that happening with parents and their kids going either way.

notkateanymore · October 2013

Is Kate really a common name? Until I was an adult the only other Kate I knew was a little girl who was named after me! I mean, I knew Kathryn/Catherine/Katherines but no just Kates.

And no, I've never noticed that. I have noticed a connection between lack of brain cells and crazy names though.

caybeh · October 2013

Yeah, it played into our naming decision. DH has a common, popular name. My name is common, but spelled differently. I didn't want to do a super common name, but H likes the common names. We agreed on Eli for DS, and it is becoming more popular. We are in trouble if we have more boys as we had a hard time on agreeing on names.

jnksmom · October 2013

Yes, it played into our decision. My name is super uncommon and it is frustrating at time. I get tired of spelling it all the time and explaining where it came from. Our last name is Russian and very difficult to say and spell also. DS and DD both have common names. Although DD's can be spelled a couple ways and I didn't really think about it or I probably would have chosen something else.

kcisthebombdotcom · October 2013

I have an uber common name. I hated it growing up. It was so annoying to be one of multiple kids with the same name, turning around when someone said my name when they meant someone else, etc. as I got older I started going by my middle name which is far less common and I still do today. Due to that I chose uncommon names for my kids. Nothing like apple or anything--just classic, properly spelled names outside of the top 100 names. I happened to give them more popular middle names that were family names, so if they dislike their uncommon name they can choose to go by a more common one.

kcisthebombdotcom · October 2013

KateMW said:

Is Kate really a common name? Until I was an adult the only other Kate I knew was a little girl who was named after me! I mean, I knew Kathryn/Catherine/Katherines but no just Kates.

And no, I've never noticed that. I have noticed a connection between lack of brain cells and crazy names though.

As a stand alone name I don't think it's common, no. I've met a lot of Catherine/Kathryn/Katherine's and most went by Kate though.

blondegirl22 · October 2013

Interesting reading everyone's responses. My name is gender neutral and is typically spelled with a y or i, ie. I am constantly spelling it and it also rhymes with others. So when I spell it I always say the first letter followed by c, like cat. DDs has a couple spellings too as does our last name, but I never put that much thought into when we picked her name.

I just made sure there weren't a lot of things her name could be rhymed with to tease her.. ie: hairy mary, fat Matt etc... I was teased relentlessly and wanted to make sure her name wasn't a way to do that. I'm sure there will be other ways..

peacelove&mama · October 2013

My name is very common. No matter where I go I seem to run into at least a few people who share my name. DH's twin brothers girlfriends name is the same as mine. DH has a very common name too. We chose names for our kids that aren't weird but they aren't heard every day around here, although we didn't make it a point to choose uncommon names. We just went with what we liked.

Notwifezilla7 · October 2013

We went with different but not made up names because we liked them. I seriously think I should live in the UK/Ireland, as most of my favorite names are popular there - Millie, Aiofe, Bridget, Dashial, Percival, Seamus.

DH has a super popular first name from the last '70's early '80's while mine wasn't super popular, but still somewhat. The joke now is that to remember dad's name in our town it's pretty much safe to go with: Steve, Dave, Brian, or Chris.

nosoup4u · October 2013

None of my siblings have very common names for our generation, but I don't think it affected how we named our kids. My oldest sister named her kids all top ten names, but my other sister and I have more unusual names for our kids. One of DH and I's requirements was to stay out of the top 100 popular names, which we did. We wanted to name them something that's recognizable, but not too yuneek.

Ironically, there are a lot of boys with either DS1's name or a similar version of his name at his school (his elementary school goes up to 8th grade, and is primarily Latino) - but then again, his name is fairly popular depending on ethnicity/group. Knowing other kids with his name doesn't bother me as much as it would have when he was first born, though.

ToastieSimons · October 2013

Disneygeek77 said:I was going to say this as well. I have a somewhat common name but my parents decided to go with a goofy spelling and I do not like it. Growing up, I could never have anything personalized like cups or bookmarks as well as constantly correcting people on the spelling of my name. I have even had important moments like my graduation be...well not ruined but not as cool because the announcer mispronounced my name.

::shrugs:: I don't want to sound like a baby, but it does get old knowing I am going to deal with this for the rest of my life.

My kids have somewhat common names with the most common spelllings. Although there are several popular ways to spell DD's name so she might have to go through the same thing.

I have a very classic 80's name, with a french spelling. It's not YOU-NEEK and I've met a few with their name spelled the same. But I hated it. Whenever anyone asks my name I always start spelling it because they will NEVER just assume it's spelled my way.

Even now, half of my sons' IEP and IFSP has the wrong spelling, or it has some combination of my letters in the wrong order.

DH has a standard 4-letter "american" name. As does most of the males in his family.

DS1 has a different name, I went to high school with a kid who had his name and loved it. His nickname that he goes by is totally conventional but not common.

DS2 has an uber popular name. I hate that everytime we say his name we get the response of "Oh so-and-so named her son that" etc. But his name suits him and it's super easy to find personalized stuff for him.

shortstuff15 · October 2013

Kimbus22 said:

DH and I have common names. Joey is certainly not out there. Pterodactyl throws people though. But it wasn't done on purpose to be unique since we had normal names. I didn't really think about it.

Completely not related to the post, I have thought about the looks people must give you when you use your sons middle name in public. It makes me want to use a completely out there middle name too, but my husband would never go for it. And I swear I'm not creepy, we are just in the process of picking middle names and for some reason I thought about your sons middle name.

To answer the actual question, both my husband and I have common names. That did not factor at all into choosing names for our kids. We didn't even look at popularity at all. It wasn't until after the fact that I realized that both names were pretty high up there in popularity. I never once minded being Name X in school and there were always at least 3 people with the same name as me.

EliseJ · October 2013

Lurker- but funny name story: I have a very common first and middle name. Have a friend with the same first and middle. H's cousin is married to a woman with the same name as his sister. So the SILs have the same name. My husband is in the same situation, his sister and I have the same name. So at family gatherings there are 2 Julie SameLastNames and two Jordan SameLastNames. It gets confusing.

lyingliarlies · October 2013

DH & I both have rather uncommon but totally recognizable names. the problem is that there's multiple ways to spell each of our names and we don't have the most popular spelling so we're always having to spell out our names and could never find personalized stuff. our last names both had/have spelling issues too, so i just automatically spell my name whenever i have to give it to someone. it absolutely affected our name choice for DS, which is a classic name w/ one spelling unless someone tries realllllllly hard to make it youneek. his name is getting more popular like other classics but it doesn't bother me at all (i just like to compare middle names out of curiosity.)

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