Names poll

[pne]

At lunch today, we talked about the names we would have had if we had been born the opposite sex, and I thought I'd make a poll about it. (FWIW, my parents didn't have an alternate name for me, but they did for my middle sister, who they thought would be a boy. The gynæcologist, who had predicted her sex as male, ended up buying some girl clothing for my mother when he ended up wrong :D)

For "parents", read "people who gave me my name(s)", if appropriate.

And I realise I've forgotten an option on one of the last questions: "I go by a given name other than the first given name, but my parents intended for me not to go by my first given name but rather by that later given name" (Example: they wanted you to have the names Thomas and Andrew, to be called Thomas, but felt that Andrew Thomas sounded better than Thomas Andrew). Comment if that's the case.

[Poll #969380]

Comments

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Neither of my actual given names are relative names, but my boy middle name is, so I ticked that box anyway.

I like my name, except that people mispronounce it and Joanne's a bit bleh. The boy names were cool, thouh.

[pthalo]

I don't know some of those answers, I think it was picked out before our birth but we don't know when. And I'm way too lazy to ask the mother to fill out your poll. Being multiple, we go by the body's first name, or first and last, though the middle name isn't really a secret, though we usually only volunteer it to people who might be interested in it (Persians, generally). We also each go by our own first name, but we don't expect to be called by it if people can't tell us apart.

[asciident]

Given the poll, I thought you might be interested in this...

I'm not sure when my parents realized I'd be a girl, but they had a male name picked out first, which is what I answered. It's the male name of my mother's name for the first, and my father's name for the second (Christopher Michael from Kristine and Michael). At some point they started thinking about female names. They couldn't decide for quite a while, and whether he was joking or not my father came up with lots of names that my mother absolutely hated, including Candy, Bunny, Barbie, etc.

The way my father tells it, he'd have you believe he suddenly picked out a name that belonged to an old girlfriend of his, Melissa, but my mother insists that this is nonsense and they both picked it out of nowhere. ;) I still did get the female version of my father's name as my middle name, though (Michelle from Michael).

I used to joke that I would never want to be a doctor or a dentist because my initials would be MMD, M.D. or MMD, D.M.D.

Anyhow. That's the story of my name. ^_^

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

Now see...I hate my "real" name. I never use the full version except for official purposes (swearing oaths, being official) and I hate people calling me it. Whenever I hear it I think "OMG I'm about to be told off" which is why I really hate it.

I hate the shortened version too but I'm quite happy for people to call me that. However, over the past 10 years or so I've been warming to people calling me by my internet moniker Stegzy Gnomepants. Purely because it is amusing to hear people introduce me as Mr Gnomepants. I have been thinking of having my name changed to Stegzy Gnomepants but somehow I doubt the wife would agree to it. The curious thing is I used to hate people calling me Stegzy.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

I'm named after a great-grandmother, with my mum's name as a middle name. Speaking of names, I'm changing my surname soon. It's going to take some getting used to.

[pthalo]

It's fascinating to see which names people think are common or uncommon (both of my given names areis rarer, in my opinion, than the ones that people listed).

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

For #2, you forgot "I was born before it was possible to do ultrasounds to tell the baby's sex."

I don't know when that became possible in the US, but my sister is about to turn 23 and it wasn't possible for my parents to know if she was going to be a boy or girl. I have a cousin who's 17 or 18 and I know his parents did know and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Huh.

My middle sister just turned 28. I'm not sure, but always assumed, that it was on the basis of ultrasound pictures that the doctor predicted her sex.

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

I know the doctors predicted my sister would be a boy because she was so active. Her name was going to be Matthew Thomas (Thomas is my dad's name), if you're interested (her name is Susanna Lynn).

I have friends who are my age (28--well, I guess they just turned 29) who are twins and when they were born, the ultrasound technology wasn't even advanced enough to show there would be two of them (something about one of them "hiding"). Their parents didn't know until they were actually born.

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

In a clear display of the pin-pen merger, my mother wanted to name me Tin-tin (after the dog--she's not familiar with the comic book character) because I weighed approximately ten lbs and ten ounces at birth.
Of course, my father wouldn't have that, so he chose the name Joseph, and my mother chose my middle name, Matthew.
As far as I know neither parent had chosen a name before, and I don't know how long it took them to come up with those.

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

Also, my father and my two brothers and I all have names starting with J. I'm told this wasn't planned until the youngest, when my dad didn't want to break the trend or something.

[diffrentcolours]

My parents wanted their three children to have names which rhymed...

[dan4th.livejournal.com]

Actually, I legally changed my name, and so did my sister. My parents were apparently really bad at picking names.

[maetang.livejournal.com]

My parents asked my older brother to pick out my middle name.

[schnurble.livejournal.com]

It was tradition in my family to give the child the mother's/father's first name as middle name, so my brother's midle name is that of my father, my sister's middle name is that of my mother, and when I came, there was no other parent left and my naming was done in an entirely different way ;o)

My father and my mother each picked a name, and the one that was easier to call out loud became my first name, the other my second. My first name was rather popular at that time, I know dozens of other Anjas; but my middle name is a bit old fashioned, and I hate hate hate it, so I don't tell it others if not absolutely necessary...

Btw, in the 70s, there was no possibility for my mother to get an ultrasound to know my sex before I was born.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

We got our middle names from our grandparents. I'm one of four, so it worked out perfectly--except for the fact that there were three boys. I keep telling my younger brother he's a wussy for using "Charles" instead of "Charlotte".

You know, now that I think of it, our grandparents died in the order we were named: Paternal grandfather, maternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, and now the maternal grandmother is the only one left living.

[weatherpixie.livejournal.com]

I actually hated my middle name as a child...

First one was fine tho...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yay, I get to tell this story again!

When I was young (12 or so?) I asked my mother how I got my name. "When I was in the hospital after you were born," she told me, "the nurse came into my room and handed me a dart. She closed the door and on the back of it there was a dartboard with names written on it. I threw the dart at it and speared 'D_____'. So that's what we called you."

Years later, I found out that my name was supposed to be "Luke". My pious paternal grandmother wanted her grandchildren named for the Four Evangelists. My eldest cousin was "Matthew", my older brother was "Mark", and I was the next boy in line so I naturally would've been "Luke". But my mother couldn't abide it; whenever she heard the name "Luke", it conjured up images of a farmboy in overalls with a haystem between his teeth.

After this, I confronted her with the lies she'd told me and she was horrified; she had no memory of telling me she used a dart to pick my name. "I must've been really tired when you asked me," she said by way of excuse. I was able to milk that for a bit.

In retrospect, I'm happy she put her foot down: Dukes of Hazzard and Star Wars would've made my life hell. And though I like the figure of Luke the Evangelist, I don't care for the name. "Lucas" I could stomach, but never "Luke". I just feel a little bad that my sainted grandmother never got her wish, even though she ended up having so many grandchildren that she could've had all twelve (thirteen?) apostles if she wanted.

[lexabear.livejournal.com]

There's a metal cup in my parents' cupboard that is inscribed Homer. This is, they tell me, what they called me before they knew what sex I was going to be (although they didn't intend to keep it either way).

[ryf.livejournal.com]

Actually, my first name was picked by my parents and my middle name was more or less picked by my grandparents :)

[pne.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday BTW!

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

My parents knew I would be a girl because of my mother's extensive prenatal testing to see if I would have Down's syndrome. (My mother was 42 when she had me.)

My mother wanted to name me Joy Patience. My father and sisters argued against it, and I ended up Jessica Pamela.

My mother has since conceded that there is absolutely no way in hell I should ever have been named Joy Patience. :)

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

As with other family members, it took quite a while to pick a name for me - apparently there's a deadline and they got my name in pretty close to the deadline.

There was also apparently a process where Mum, Dad and my brother and sister all listed their favourite names. Apparently Peter was everyone's second choice, and no two people had the same first choice, so Peter it was.

I don't have any stories about my middle name (Timothy) - I've nothing against Tim as a name, and the T bit is quite nice, but I never cared for the rest of it as a middle name for me.

[jordik.livejournal.com]

My name used to be quite rare, but then some stupid footballer named his son my name. Ever since it's been getting more common :(

Also, my mother is still annoyed that her brother stole my "alternate name" (if I'd been a girl) for his daughter.

[pne.livejournal.com]

A family we know gave a son my middle sister's "alternate name" and a daughter a name very similar to my eldest sister's (same second given name, first given name two syllables in each case with the second syllable shared between the two).

Though I'm not sure whether that was on purpose. Still, picking first and second given name for a boy that was the same as my sister's "alternate name" seems strange.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

No clue. I got a nice, Catholic name, I feel fairly certain my parents didn't know my sex before I was born, and I have no idea if they considered other names. No one who I could ask is still alive.

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

My parents ended up giving the opposite-sex name they'd chosen for me to my younger brother when he was born. They'd picked out one of each (first and middle name) before I was born, and on the way to the hospital decided to change the female name, so I got the newly changed one.

[eva]

You should have included "My parents knew what sex I'd be without ultrasound"! My mother swears that she knew I was a girl all the time. Granted, she had a 50/50 chance, but still... Only when she was already in hospital, she saw something written on a medical file (I'd guess they had masked it in Latin, which she can read), which confirmed her knowledge.

As for the names I use - in RL, I go by both names, as my parents were clever enough to give me my mother's first name and attach a second one to it (which is also her third name), so my dad needed to use both when talking me to avoid confusion. This combinatinon is quite common in Germany, as you'll know, but I have had to tell everyone during my whole life that YES I WILL NOT ANSWER TO THE FIRST NAME ALONE, AND YES, THERE IS NO BLOODY BINDESTRICH BETWEEN BOTH. 25 years of suffering...

Honestly, the names are quite OK.

I use the first name on the internet for reasons of simplicity, and also to mask my identity, which anyone with a little bit of knowledge about Google and my university and work could probably figure out anyway - so that's not really the main reason, and as you see I gave both names in the poll anyway. When the baristas at Starbucks want to know my name, I only use the first name, too, or I make something up, like "Sarah" or whatever comes to my mind - strange how names still have some magical part to them, so that we don't want random people knowing them without us knowing theirs, especially if it is just to make us a "tall low-fat vanilla latte" (those coffee names give me a shudder, especially the way the baristas here pronounce them)...

[fledchen.livejournal.com]

I had to pick both "it's a fairly common name" and "it's a fairly rare name" because while Elizabeth is a fairly common name, the spelling Elisabeth is fairly rare in English-speaking countries. Even when I specifically point out how my name is spelled, people still spell it with a Z.

My middle name, Rhea, is fairly rare and no one knows how to spell it.

[tungol.livejournal.com]

My parents called each of us "Jennifer" before we were born. (None of us ended up with that name after being born, and I don't know if they ever considered it as an option for an actual permanent name for any of us.)