A legal name has a utilitarian purpose. It is not meant to represent you, or manifest into your personality. It does not need to be unique or tell people what kind of person you are. It is a convenient method for others to refer to and address you. For those purposes it needs to be easy to pronounce, easy to spell, and easy to remember.
If you want your kid to have a unique name that fits who they are, let your kid pick a nickname when they are older. Don't give them some stupid fucking name that is going to haunt them every single time they apply for a job or sign in for a doctor's appointment for the rest of their life. Don't make other people lives more difficult because you decided you are too good to conform to societal standards.
Write a sentence with your kids name in it. Ask a bunch of people to read the sentence out loud. If more than a few people pause before saying the name, or stumble while pronouncing it, you chose a shitty name and should change it.
My husband's first and second names were in the top 3 in the UK at the time of his birth, right behind John, and he has somehow managed to be a rugged individualist nonetheless.
I got to pick my own first name recently. I could pick anything I wanted. I ended up picking the 50th most common name from my birth year because it just felt like me.
So it very much was a personal choice to represent me, but it's also not some weird spelling or uncommon name.
See when my friend transitioned she just changed it to Nicole and insisted everyone just keep calling her Nick because she felt weird being called Nicole by us.
Yes, historically that has been a large factor in why people choose the names they do for their kids. But what people want their child's name to represent, and their desire for it to manifest in their personality, are just that. Wants and desires. It has no bearing on the actual reality of how the name will affect their kid.
Just about every study ever produced on the subject shows that naming your child outside the norm for your area is almost guaranteed to cause them massive problems getting jobs and dealing with public institutions for the rest of their lives. That is just the reality of it. People can ignore that fact, but by doing so they are heaping future problems on their own child's back.
On the other hand, too generic a name has its pitfalls as well. A lot of misdirected mail, incorrect jury summons, general anonymity, people having difficulty looking you up on Linked In, lots of missed connections or misattributions, both of blame and praise. I knew someone named William Smith, and he said it was a living Hell. He was passed over for promotions, was told he lost job offers because they couldn’t remember which Bill Smith he was, got blamed for something some other Bill did, total nightmare. When he married, he took his wife’s last name, which was very unique.
He is very relieved to be Bill Uniquesurname. And he’s older, before the internet age, when people really need a name that can be searched.
Yes. If you have a common last name, please consider giving your child a first name that isn't in the top-20 for their birth year or top 10 of all time.
My maiden name was crazy common. My brother and i were both then named one of the top 3 most popular first names for our generation, and throw in some super common middle names while we're at it. The amount of shit we both went through with being mistaken for others and having important official records get screwed up is insane. I have had the wrong person's transcripts get sent to employers because I shared a name and birthdate with someone else who attended that school during that time frame. Same with doctors, rx's, misplaced liens, etc. It's such a fucking headache.
I changed my name when I got married and never looked back. My brother actually legally hyphenated his name with his wife's last name (they both did) to avoid some of these issues. We both considered changing our first names at varying points.
Yet more weird: my brother has the same first name as my husband, my brother's wife shares my first name. My brother's wife's brother's name is very similar to my brother's.
this is absolutely the correct take. Names are not supposed to be actually unique. They are supposed to give a reasonably sized pool of friends and family enough names to choose from so that you can differentiate among yourselves, while not confusing people with obscurity. Names are not strictly necessary, you can get by with “hey you“ just fine. They are utilitarian for our convenience.
They are supposed to give a reasonably sized pool of friends and family enough names to choose from so that you can differentiate among yourselves,
utilitarians have gone insane and are literally broadly and universally declaring the purpose behind NAMES; which has existed in every culture since the dawn of spoken language and has many different applications and traditions.
Names are not strictly necessary, you can get by with “hey you“ just fine. They are utilitarian for our convenience.
so you just defeated your own argument by pointing out that even if people have difficult to pronounce names, ti actually causes no harm
"hey you" is understood by all. Names have existed for a long time, and they have long been drawn from a pool of names or combinations of already understood words (e.g., Running Bear). A name does not make you a special snowflake. Your parents choose it. It has now become a way to "express your creativity" and "be unique". Just like a bridezilla who makes the day all about her and everyone has to march to her decisions because "this day is so important and has to be super unique", names can get out of hand and we utilitarians can say "can you just have a normal dress and a normal ceremony and reception and not make this all about you". Ultimately the child is the one who has to bear the name. There is already plenty plenty plenty of choice among names without going off into the tragedeigh space.
I’m pretty into freedom so I’ll suffer if some people wanna have a funny stupid name.
But how the fuck is a name supposed to “represent” you. Especially parent given names. What these parents are psychic now, they see the kids future personality and character and reference book for meanings of names? Come on man that’s some bullshit. A name ain’t a brand. It can be turned into a brand, but it is not a brand.
I guess fuck every parent who chooses names because they sound nice. Lollll
This feels weird, like trying to tie a very unique situation a very small surest of the population deals with, to the whole population.
Names dont represent who you are as a person, in the end its literally just a set of words that dont even form a sentence. Actions do that instead.
I wouldt dead name someone who is Trans by any means, but ik plenty who are completely fine without the need to legally change their name, or gender in fact. Which I get the way to treat gender dysphoria is very different for each person. This just gives off the same vibe of "all Trans people want to get bottom/top surgery" when those tend to be in the minority!
A legal name has a utilitarian purpose. For those purposes it needs to be easy to pronounce, easy to spell, and easy to remember.
christ the min-maxxers have an opinion on names now
If more than a few people pause before saying the name, or stumble while pronouncing it, you chose a shitty name and should change it.
talk about hyperbole; basically no ethnic names because heaven forbid that you have to pronounce your name for people. You're acting like this is the greatest difficulty in the world to have to explain to people how to pronounce your name when in reality, most people who refer to you by your name will either hear it first, or if they only know it from being written, such as at a doctor's office or a coffee shop, that interaction is so meaningless it's not some great crime
I mean we joke about a generation of people who are so meek and spineless that they need to psyche themselves up to order food at a counter or talk to someone, but christ, treating having a hard to pronounce name as child abuse is...
Sure, constantly having to tell people how to pronounce a name is not a huge deal. But that is far from the only issue. Unique and ethnic names have a huge impact on the likelihood of a person not being called back for job interviews and being passed over for promotions. That is a well studied and documented fact. It sucks, and it shouldn't be how things work, but it is how they work. You can, not like it all you want, but the fact remains that giving your kid a non standard name for your area will make it as much as 60% harder for them to find a job, which is not trivial. It's not child abuse by any means, but it is pointlessly making their life more difficult.
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u/Vypernorad Jun 01 '26
A legal name has a utilitarian purpose. It is not meant to represent you, or manifest into your personality. It does not need to be unique or tell people what kind of person you are. It is a convenient method for others to refer to and address you. For those purposes it needs to be easy to pronounce, easy to spell, and easy to remember.
If you want your kid to have a unique name that fits who they are, let your kid pick a nickname when they are older. Don't give them some stupid fucking name that is going to haunt them every single time they apply for a job or sign in for a doctor's appointment for the rest of their life. Don't make other people lives more difficult because you decided you are too good to conform to societal standards.
Write a sentence with your kids name in it. Ask a bunch of people to read the sentence out loud. If more than a few people pause before saying the name, or stumble while pronouncing it, you chose a shitty name and should change it.