Jinjer 30: Exploring The Master's Seminary

[may2]

If you want to know if the name your choosing for your child is popular or how popular your name has been for the last century this is a really neat site.

 

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/

[InTheNameofRufus]

My husband named Rufusarian-in-training #2 one of the above "overused" names, and used his own name for the middle name. The year he was born, it was not a popular name at all. When R-i-t #2 went to Kindergarten, he was one of four with the same name. I held him back at 4 yrs old because I felt he was not ready for school. Unfortunately, the year after he was born his name was second on the list of most popular names. Oh well. He's fine with it. I really don't care how people feel about his name, as long as he is respectful to others and a good kid. (He's12, he has his asshole moments!!) I just hope people don't judge him based only on his name, but get to know him as a person first!

[WhoompThereItIs]

Whoever named this horse is a genius https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqj2hkbDnyM

[Four is Enough]

13 hours ago, Chocolatedefrauded said:

I went to Catholic school in the 70's. Everyone had saints names. That's just the way it was. Even now, I think I can tell if a person went to Catholic school by their names. At work the other day, a guy named Tom (Irish last name) made a joke about writing a 500 word essay as punishment and "remember, prepositions don't count!" Catholic school joke!

when I went to public high school, I was shocked to see there were 5 Jennifers. No Mary, Elizabeth, Margaret or other saints names. But trendy names for boys were not yet a thing. There were still lots of Michaels, James, John, etc.

what is really fun is seeing the popular names from 100 years ago. Maude, anyone? Ermaguarde?

Me, too with the catholic school. Lots of Mary Anne, Mary Frances, Mary Ellen, Mary Beth... and John, Joseph, Michael, Francis, etc.

Even the Catholic elementary where I worked when my children were small: Dominic, Giancarlo, Nicholas, mostly saints names for the boys. Girls were all over with the Catelyn, Kaitlin, Caitlin, KateLynn, etc..

Oh, and the 500 word essay cracked me UP!! Couldn't count "a", "an", "the", etc.. and NO DOUBLE SPACING!! Conserve that paper; write on both sides!!

[HarryPotterFan]

15 hours ago, VineHeart137 said:

I'm not sure what the most popular dog names are, but I'm gonna guess Max and Sadie lol. (Not asking you to reveal them btw! )

Spot? Fluffy?

[PennySycamore]

@of_the_lioness,  I have a daughter named Mary, too, but she is in her thirties.  She had an experience like your daughter:  one of her best friends in high school was another Mary.  They were in the same class so the year they graduated there were no more girls named Mary in the school.

My husband did get chastised by some idiot woman he knew from prayer group that said that he wasn't devoted enough to the Blessed Mother.  He told her he had a daughter named Mary.  I don't know if that mollified the woman or not.  He was/is not a rosary clutching, Immaculate medal wearing Catholic.

[sawasdee]

LOTS of Marys, Marias, and Maries at Catholic school in the UK in the 50s/60s. Catholics in my area tended to be Irish, Italian or Polish first generation parents, so I think that is why the variations.

I have the mother of Jesus, the grandmother of Jesus and the cousin of Mary as my three names......but my first name is after my grandmothers, not Mary's cousin!

[SassyPants]

1 hour ago, Four is Enough said:

Me, too with the catholic school. Lots of Mary Anne, Mary Frances, Mary Ellen, Mary Beth... and John, Joseph, Michael, Francis, etc.

Even the Catholic elementary where I worked when my children were small: Dominic, Giancarlo, Nicholas, mostly saints names for the boys. Girls were all over with the Catelyn, Kaitlin, Caitlin, KateLynn, etc..

Oh, and the 500 word essay cracked me UP!! Couldn't count "a", "an", "the", etc.. and NO DOUBLE SPACING!! Conserve that paper; write on both sides!!

Yep- Catholic school here too.

My 30 YO daughter= Caitlin

[PumaLover]

Super random but I got to hold a rescue iguana named Ginger today!!! Her parents spelled her name the normal way.

[bekkah]

Unique names opinion. I have a unique spelling of Rebecca. I'm back in school late 20s and my ochem prof made a remark last week on the weird spelling. My dad made it up in the 80s pre internet without knowing any origins. Anyway, I understand the slight inconvenience of my name but once you learn to spell it and it's not really that different.  I also had a teacher teach me to spell the correct version of Rebecca as the right way to write my name, that did not fly. 

 

I could totally go by my middle name because it's normally spelled. I have looked into changing my first name, it's to complicated. 

 

Here is my word of advice, ask how it's spelled if unsure (or apologize in advance). Jinger and I are in the same boat but it's part of our identity.  My dad is proud of how he spelt my name, I can't get rid of it for that reason. Maybe in a few generations, there will be people looking through my family tree and will name a kid after me because it's cool looking. 

[CinnaJen]

Eh...I'm one of endless Jennifers in this world and promised I wouldn't give my kids "Jennifer" names.  My son is Nathaniel after Nathaniel Hawthorne and my daughter is Olivia which ended up being a "Jennifer" name after all.  Oh well. 

[Greendoor]

This is true, as strange as it sounds.  I worked for a heavy equipment dealership and we had:

Barry, Larry, Garry, Gary,  John, Jon, Dave, David, and another guy named John David. 

Poor Bob and Jim, no one had their names.

 

[PumaLover]

Eh...I'm one of endless Jennifers in this world and promised I wouldn't give my kids "Jennifer" names.  My son is Nathaniel after Nathaniel Hawthorne and my daughter is Olivia which ended up being a "Jennifer" name after all.  Oh well. 

Me too!!! I always had at least one or two other Jennifers in all my classes. My mom originally thought about naming me Rhiannon after the Fleetwood Mac song. That would have been cool.

I am terrible in thinking up names. Luckily my kid that I adopted came with a name already

(Side note I absolutely love the name Olivia!)

[divadivine]

29 minutes ago, PumaLover said:

Me too!!! I always had at least one or two other Jennifers in all my classes. My mom originally thought about naming me Rhiannon after the Fleetwood Mac song. That would have been cool.

I am terrible in thinking up names. Luckily my kid that I adopted came with a name already

(Side note I absolutely love the name Olivia!)

My Mom wanted to name me Reagan until she saw The Exorcist when she was pregnant with me. She was afraid I'd be possessed by the devil. 

I had a Rhiannon in a class I student taught. I thought it was a great name! I also had a Kellen in that class too.  And a girl named Tylynn. That was eons ago, how do I remember these random things? 

[Curious]

I had 2 rules for naming my kids.  It had to be spelled normally and include my grandparents in some way.

My daughter's name is in the top 100 for her birth decade, but I just checked and it's not even in the top 200 for this decade.   Her middle name is Marie after my grandma.

My son has his father's middle name as a first name and my grandpa's name as his middle name.   His first name is one that is always very common for boys.  We initially planned to call him DJ, but that never stuck.  In fact, it drives me crazy when people use the common shortening of his name because I feel like it doesn't fit him at all.   Afaik, he has never used the shortened version himself either.

I got lucky with both kids because with my first we could not agree on any boy names and with the second we couldn't decide on any girl names.   I have lots of girl names that I like, but when trying to come up with one while pregnant with my son none of them worked for me at all.  We opted not to know the gender of my daughter beforehand.  I was over that by the time I had my son and wanted to be able to plan accordingly, even though I was nervous it would end up being a case of bad ultrasound reading because of my luck and all.

[Jenn The Heathen]

1 hour ago, CinnaJen said:

Eh...I'm one of endless Jennifers in this world and promised I wouldn't give my kids "Jennifer" names.  My son is Nathaniel after Nathaniel Hawthorne and my daughter is Olivia which ended up being a "Jennifer" name after all.  Oh well. 

Another Jennifer here.  A Jennifer Lynn, none the less, which a was super popular combo around here in the early 80s.  I really tried to not do this to my kids.  My oldest has a normal name that's never been popular but my youngest is Aiden.  I just couldn't help myself.  He's been fortunate, though, he's only had another Aiden in his class in preschool.

[marmalade]

15 hours ago, may2 said:

If you want to know if the name your choosing for your child is popular or how popular your name has been for the last century this is a really neat site.

 

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/

Good lord, my name was in the top ten for almost 30 years before I was born! It was 23 the year I was born, but I still had two others in elementary school, and two besties, one with my middle name as well, but with an alternate spelling.  

It hasn't made a comeback (thank goodness, I hate it). It's down to 900 now. Yay! I have a granny name. 

eta: I looked up the hubby. His name has never been top 10 in the US, but it's a HUGE name in Europe (in different forms; it's similar, but not the exact name here as it is in, say Spain). It's around 200 here now, but hovered in the 30's and 40's for years here until being pushed out by "aidens." 

eta again: I just noticed my new post count title, and I'm confused. I get praying FOR my next meal, like a Rod kid, but I don't get the reference for praying IN my next meal. 

Anyone? Bueller? 

[Cheetah]

On September 8, 2017 at 4:59 PM, Kaylo said:

My kids names are the two most popular dog names. I like to think I chose friendly sounding names for my kids lol! They are totally not unusual, but they are the only ones in their school.

I've got one of those (mine's a Max).  And my dog is Ruby, which seems to also go with human children now, too.  Did not name them after that kid cartoon show.  My Max has the most popular name for his birth year of my 3 kids... I think his was in the top 80 or so but not in the top 20.  Our criteria for all 3 kids was a) not unheard-of and b ) not top 20.  

 

My niece has a super uncommon name (it's actually a fairly common place-name, but is not at all common as a girl's first name).  She hadn't met another one... until last week when she got to college for the first time and there's another one on her dorm floor! 

[VeryNikeSeamstress]

14 hours ago, HarryPotterFan said:

Spot? Fluffy?

I feel like I've met a lot of dogs named Lola or Lulu. I've met some Sadies too. Milo also seems like a popular dog name, especially among pug owners (based on the movie Milo and Otis).

[Rachel333]

I have a common name and as a kid I actually really liked it when there were other girls with my name. I've never wished I had a more unique name.

I do have a very uncommon last name and have never met anyone else with it other than my family members. I kind of like it, but on the other hand I've often thought it would be nice to have a common last name so that I couldn't be so easily googled. 

[eveandadam]

Out of my 56 students high school graduate class there were 4 girls with my first name. 2 of them even had the same last name as well. My first name was the most popular in the 80's in Germany. I too want to name my kids with not so popular names but you never know what names will become popular in the near future, or even worse, what names will become trashy. It's just a game of chance and luck.

[Cheetah]

I might have mentioned this already but we have a very uncommon last name (unless you are in Germany, and then it's only kind of uncommon) and my daughter's first name is probably top 100 but not top 50 (averaging out over a number of years).  So she's the only 'first name last name' around.  Except... my nephew (with the same last name) is getting married next month to a woman with the same first name as my daughter... and she's planning to take his surname... so we'll have two of them in the same extended family.

[Four is Enough]

14 minutes ago, Cheetah said:

  Except... my nephew (with the same last name) is getting married next month to a woman with the same first name as my daughter... and she's planning to take his surname... so we'll have two of them in the same extended family.

This happened in my family. Cousin named Carol, brother married Carole. They became "Carol Ann" and "CarolE" in discussions 

[Rachel333]

My dad and his cousin both married a woman with the same first name, so now there are two women with that name. My mom was first by 15-20 years and she was a little miffed that she was not going to be the only one with her name anymore!

My uncle also married a woman with the same name as his sister, so she now has  my aunt's maiden name.

[ThunderRolls]

I picked my long-time favorite girl's name for my daughter - classic but not common. Well, when she was born last year, it soared in popularity to the top 20 (it had previously been in the bottom 500). *sigh*

My college roommate has an unusual first name (actually quite common amongst Lutheran girls born in the 80s in the Midwest but unusual everywhere else it seems). Anyway, she ended marrying a guy whose last name was the same as her first (just spelled differently). She thought about hyphenating her maiden name and married same, but decided to just embrace the weirdness. It's actually kind of cute.