Mom 101’s blog entry was hilarious. She is due in 4 weeks and has yet to decide a name for her 2nd daughter. To say she is freaking out is an understatement. Today she brought up a great point about the name Jennifer…
http://mom-101.blogspot.com/
I am a Jennifer. My name was chosen because it sounded great with my middle name, Gail. Gail is after my Pa, Gale, who is my maternal grandpa. I don’t mind being a Jennifer but I have had to make some life changes due to my name.
In 3rd grade at a very small Catholic elementary school, I was one of 3 Jennifers in a class of 10 students. Two of us were Jenny’s and one was Jennifer. At the rip age of 9 I changed the spelling of my name to Jenni. I had to be different. It didn’t change the fact when someone yelled Jenni on the playground I still looked cuz they didn’t say Jenni with an I.
I am laid back with my crazy unusual spelling and don’t force it on anyone. When a receptionist or insurance person is taking my information I don’t care if they spell my name wrong. If they ask I will happily guide them to the right ending of an I instead of a Y.
Because of my oh-so-popular name and deciding names for offspring, I try to avoid the top 10 and even top 15 names if possible. It makes me a little sad that Lily is creeping up on the list and currently sits at #14. But it’s still pretty and I love it and have no plans to freak the child out by changing her name at 18 months of age. If we had to we could always change it to Silly or Billy cuz she is already familiar with those monikers. Lily Billy Lemon Squeezy is a name given to her by my nieces and nephew if you hadn’t already guessed.
All of the boy names we are contemplating do not currently stand on the top 15 list. Very reassuring. I love the name Aidan (anyone that watched Sex and the City would love the name Aidan…he was so sweet) but it’s the #1 name and I won’t go through that again. According to the social security website, Jennifer was the top name of the 1970’s, counting for 581, 467 girls with this name. The runner up???? Amy…with less than half that at 268, 932. To me, as a Jennifer, that is significant. If you don’t know someone’s name and they are around 30 years old, it’s fairly safe to call them Jennifer. At all of my places of work, it’s always a funny, funny joke that the new girl will be named Jenny to add to the Jenny group. Yes, at my current job we actually have a “Jenny Gang” that sponsored a Jenny bake sale. Sad in some ways, hilarious in many others.
1 comment:
I was one of three Heathers in my grade school class of 30. When I got to graduate school, I was one of seven Heather Smiths on campus. There was even another Heather A. Smith--my middle name is Anne and hers was something else. So I'm guessing Heather was way up on the name popularity charts in the mid-70's, too. :) Unfortunately there are no alternate spellings for "Heather" so I just had to make do. I tried going by "HA" in college for a brief period but it didn't stick.
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