Society for Preventing Parents from Naming Their Children Jennifer

I remember an interview where someone with a very common first name, something like Sarah or Anna, described what it was like living with that name. She said it was so common that it basically represented the concept of “woman” or “girl” in her mind. When she would hear her name called in a crowd, it was like someone yelled “Hey girl!” She became conditioned to ignore it unless the comment was unequivocally directed at her.

When I started my current job I found out that there was another person with my first name on the team. My name is not common in the US. I expressed my slight anxiety over this (will people be confused, will this affect my career, etc) to my manager who has a name like “John”. He said, “Oh dude, there’s three other Johns on the team. It’s working out fine for me.” I suddenly felt very silly, and then curious about what having such a common name would be like...

I dated 4 Jennifer's in a row and at the same time had 2 close friends named...Jennifer. I had to give them nicknames for anyone to tell who I was talking about.

Gah I miss the days of the early internet.