The effects of growing up with an extremely common name
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I think my previous first name was well chosen by my parents. It was a name that was more common in the generation before me. That meant everyone knew the name, I didn't get asked how to spell it and no one looked confused when I said it, but also I was always the only Y in the room. I have literally never met another Y my age in my life.
I didn't actually spend a very long time picking a new name. I wanted one that fitted a few pretty precise criteria and there wasn't many left to choose from. It has however ended up that my new name is quite common for women my age. Last weekend I was at a party and there were 3 other Ys out of 20 people.
I've thought about the change from a well known but rare name, to a well known and common name quite a lot. I have noticed that often trans people go one of two ways; pick a super common name because they want to fit in with their peers as much as possible, or they choose a really super unique name as as way of expressing themselves.
Being called my new name is still relatively new to me (coming up to one year full time, three part time). I still am alerted a lot more by people saying my old name than my new one. I wonder if this will ever change as the only time I hear my old name now is when talking about my past, which means that label is still exclusively for me. Whereas I hear my new name being used to refer to loads of different people all the time.
Lots of my friends have said they find it odd to think what name they would pick if they were to pick one of the opposite gender.
Interesting anyway :-)
Michael is a common boy's first name for my generation where I'm from. There was two in my primary school class, two in my secondary school year and I was once in a band with two at the same time!
Usually that guy goes by "Mike", though, so I try to insist on being called "Michael". I honestly don't recognize "Mike" as being my name, which is confusing when people who want to seem friendly shorten my name.
People also obsess too much about telling the world which groups they are a member of.
It's common here for restaurants and cafes to ask for your name when ordering, and often I'll make up a more common name for myself to avoid the hassle spelling out and explaining 'Cathal' to the cashier.
Having a unique name does however create an interesting talking point when talking to a new person, and it seamlessly opens up a discussion about my background and origins after introducing myself.
To say it affected me negatively is an understatement. Nobody could spell it right, and nobody could pronounce it right. It made me feel like a freak because I was the only person I knew who had to spell their last name when giving it to people. And they still got it wrong. I've had my name misspelled on important documents, such as my lease and my electric bill. I hated the last name I was born with with the fury of a thousand exploding suns.
Before I accepted that I was both trans and aromantic, I used to fantasize about getting married to a woman with a common last name like "Smith", taking my wife's last name, and giving the finger to anyone who tells me that a man shouldn't take his wife's name.
Of course, I eventually came to accept the fact that a) I'd be much happier as a woman and really don't want to be a man and b) the idea of getting married or even being in any kind of romantic relationship actively disgusts me, so that fantasy went away and was replaced by a newer, more plausible fantasy, one that I eventually fulfilled: transitioning to female and legally changing my entire name.
One of the hardest parts of my transition was choosing a new last name. My first name came easy, and while it took me a while to settle on a middle name, I was solely concerned with aesthetics for that one. But my new last name had to be perfect. It needed to have no variant spellings or variant pronunciations, it needed to be monosyllabic, it couldn't give away my ethnicity (I was sensitive about my old surname being a slur), it needed to be common, and I needed to like the sound of my initials (my initials were the only thing I ever liked about my deadname). It took me ages to find one. I even considered Korean surnames (particularly "Park"), because Korean was a language isolate (cognates are the biggest sources of variant spellings, and language isolates have no cognates), all Korean surnames are monosyllabic, and I liked that it would totally mislead people as to my ethnicity, but I eventually rejected them. Eventually, I relaxed my definition of "common": instead of requiring it be common as a last name, I'd also accept names of common household objects. And then I stumbled on the perfect surname, which also happened to be the literal English translation of my mother's maiden name, so I still had some kind of family connection without being obviously ethnic. While it's not super common as a last name (only 24k people according to forebears.io), it has an advantage in that it's one of the most common household objects you can think of: Book. If someone does mishear my name (and I have had people mishear it as "Brook", "Brooks", or "Buck"), all I have to say is "it's like the thing you read".
You have no idea how happy I am now that I'm not saddled with that awful last name I was born with. All those awful feelings went away as soon as I walked out of the courtroom with the signed court order for my name change. I'm actually proud of my last name now.
My name is Amy Jessica Book, and I love my name, which was something I was never able to say before mid-2014.
Oh, and while I'm on the subject of my first and middle names: my old and new first names were roughly as common for my birth year in the US (two places apart) and both in the top 20, and my new middle name is much more common than my old one ("Jessica" is the 2nd most common girls' name for my birth year, and my old middle name didn't even crack the top 200 boys' names). Funny thing is that my old middle name is technically gender-neutral, but I've only ever even heard of one woman with that name, and she's a famous actress. It's also more common as a last name than as a first name, thanks to a certain astronaut. I like having common first and middle names. I don't want to stand out, and I like the anonymity that having very common first and middle names give me. I have to admit that I did consider "Sunset" as my middle name, because I liked the dichotomy of having a really common first name and an ultra-rare middle name, but I'm glad I made the choice I did (if only because AJB looks much nicer than ASB; I can even write the former as a ligature). "Amy Book" is even ungooglable, since googling it returns a ton of results for "Amy's book".
Just because all three of "c", "ck" and "k" are in common use.
I think there are some "sen" variants too.
Having to explain it's "sleep without one 'e'" and instruct people how to pronounce it every time is something that got annoying, but am used to it now.
On the flip side, it's very easy to pick out relatives in a sea of names.
Sidenote, how do you say slep?
Of course, I'm assuming that you aren't just using "Slep" as a similar example.
It's always misspelled, misheard, and mispronounced, but I've never minded. It's more a source of amusement than annoyance or inconvenience. I can't imagine ever changing it.
I taught at a university with a lot of students of Korean descent. I kept getting e-mails from one of my students whose last name was Park and answering them. I hadn't put a face to his name because I had large classes, but I'll admit I assumed he was Korean. One day he came to office hours and it turned out he was a white guy.
So I can confirm that that would have successfully misled at least some people. I suspect "Lee" would have worked as well.
Cathal, if I am pronouncing it right in my head, just sounds cool to me. I have the worst time with hearing and understanding the non-romantic language names though.
If you want to have fun come up with two words that when said together sound like or spell your name. Cathal, spelled cat-HAL. For the sounds I usually tell people my name is Barrett, as in grin and "bear it".
I found it interesting that within the last 5 years or so, my employer found an employee with the last name of "Barritt"
Dylan is pronounced almost constantly in the English way to the point where I gave up correcting people. (Because I am okay with it even if it does not sound like 'my name'.
To make it worse, my neighbour when growing up was about my age and his name was "dilan" pronounced the english "dylan" Way.. So friends mixed up our names sometimes.
Though they sound quite different, at least to me.
My last name has the same issue. Multiple pronounciations and spelling thus I always have to spell it out or correct people as well.
And my last name is common in all spelling variants.
Your problem does occur even without an exotic name, unfortunately :p
If I order food, I use the name Tom. No one wants to spell my name out, including me. Also the consonants are easily confused, so if I do spell it out people are like, N-E-A-T...Tom is easier for everyone involved.
It does create a talking point when I mention to people that Tom is not my real name.
I do agree with the article. Having a unique name does seem to imply to other people that I am a little different.
In my case, I have never been 'average' or 'normal', and I always envied the Sarahs and Johns of the world. Then I realized that often 'normal' people really want to be unique, and those born 'unique' really want to be average.
Besides my mom, nobody really uses my real name - Leonardo - and I am very vocal to correct everyone to use the more natural "Leo". As for my last name, which has two parts separated with a space due to how Spanish last names work, I usually avoid writing the accents and provide only the first one.
All of that doesn't mean that I am ashamed of my name, which I adore. I just want to assimilate and make other people comfortable. In the words of Abed, from community:
"When you know who you are and what you like about yourself, changing for other people isn't such a big deal."
There are, I'm sure, many brown/Asian HN users reading this thread, cringing at the days when teachers would do roll call, or on a daily basis annoyed at introductions taking 5 minutes longer than they would with a "normal" sounding name.
- ZellynBy having my lastname @gmail.com, I've met lots of people with the same name who erroneously give out my gmail address as their contact information. At first this was kind of annoying, but now its become just amusing. I've gotten people's internet / cell / rv / NRA membership info sent to the address, and they are normally grateful when I reach out to them to ask them to correct it.
Having a very rare/globally unique name makes for a very different experience of online exposure than most people. If your name is shared by even a few dozen people, your identity online is at the very least muddled in a bit with information about other people.
In my case, if you google my name I'm the only non-historical person you'll find. This has been a pain point in the past with 'real name' policies in online communities. For people named, say, Alex Smith, having their real name attached to a post online allows them to remain pseudo-anonymous, whereas my real name easily reveals much more about me. Mostly I've just embraced it and just make sure that I control the first page of profiles you find if you google my name, but it can be annoying.
(Only one has included a snailmail address so far, and like most of them it's in the US, which would mean a transatlantic postcard, which means a ten-minute queue at the post office...)
- Some woman (whose email address is [myFirstInitial][r][myLastName]@gmail.com) put me on her synagogue internal planning committee mailing list. I have never seen so much drama. They refused to remove my email address until I started doing a "reply all" to their emails with my lunch order.
- A contractor (whose email address I still can't figure out) keeps getting $100k+ quotes sent to my email address. I'll inform the sender, but it never stops happening.
- I received the background info for a small business loan request, including 3 years of tax returns, bank account statements, and credit statements for two folks in Texas.
Short story, nobody's ever been grateful.
My brother, a choreographer and filmmaker, has the same first+last name as a lawyer in DC and they compete for search results. In recent years, my brother has begun branding himself as first+middle+last name to distinguish himself from that lawyer.
If you are concerned about privacy, then having a common name may provide you some benefit, but if you are concerned about your own personal brand, then having a unique first+last name identifier is hugely beneficial.
I feel like there's a social network concept here.
According to census data in the US alone we're looking at 5,000 unique first names (at least).
So even if we throw out the fact that there are probably upwards of 100k unique last names... combining 5,000 first middle and last name variations puts us in the range of 125 billion unique combinations in English alone.
Well, one problem with having a common name: the other person who shares your name might not be quite so reputable. I have the same name and birthdate as a repeat criminal, and I'm reasonably certain I'll find out the next time he goes to jail because I'll be stopped at the border again.
Indeed. My real name is completely ungoogle-able.
First Last = there's ~5000 in the US
First Middle Last = there's 1 in the US, as far as I can tell
I have a few friends with common names: One has to tell people that the first google result regarding a drug arrest isn't her. Another has to tell people to not google her name because it's identical to some porn star.
I have a unique name, and I'm aware of this so I only use my real name in situations where I'd be ok with it showing up on the first page of my google results. I've gained freelance clients through word of mouth and being easy to find on Google.
Nowadays, Sarah is supposedly an uncommon name, we named our daughter Sarah partly because of this. I didn't realize it was so common previously, I only ever met a few Sarahs in my life.
My 11 year old daughter is named Sarah, but we just liked it. Her mother is Jennifer, and frequently tells me about how ridiculous it was to be named Jennifer in the 1970s.
In fact, when I meet someone who shares the same name, I almost always say, "Hello, me!" and they seem to get the joke.
My first name does have some (humorous) baggage however, which was a bit damaging psychologically growing up. Said baggage probably contributed to the name becoming rather unpopular after the mid 1960s.
The only time I even had a Joe issue was, when working another startup with a Joe, and my son Joseph joined, we all sat in a row in one room. Folks had to say JoeC, JoeA or Joseph to get the right one!
There are guidelines, and it's up to the official registering the name to decide if they think it is acceptable or not, ask for additional proof, ... – if they parents disagree with them, it ends up in court, which can override.
There is not an official list of "these are the allowed names", although "this name has been accepted before" is of course a strong positive signal.