What’s in a name?
So I feel from my experience that in general people tend to like the same name. If two people like the name Fred, then if one suggests another name they like than the other person will most times like it as well.
Here are my examples, funny how they are all Ellsworth related, I guess because the Ellsworth names are pretty classic/popular, so maybe that is more what’s going on…
1. Older son was Zachary (sp?), younger son was Jake.
2. Older son was Matthew, younger son was Zachary.
Ok, so it isn’t a lot of examples, but kind of an interesting coincidence.
We met Matthew (2.5) and Zach (5 months) at the park today for a Pig Pen play group. This was a group of moms getting their under 3 sons together to play and get dirty. Sadly Colin’s injury means he isn’t interested in the slides and such, which isn’t a surprise. He was also pretty easy to cry over toys at the park. Colin spent the entire time playing with 2 year old Rex’s toys. Rex has a brother name Beck (7 months). Very unique names for those boys.
We are looking forward to meeting up with these boys again next week!
Did you tell the family with Zachary and Jake that they had them in the wrong order?
Another name phenomenon to watch for is this: You think you’re going way outside of the mainstream to name your kids, then at kindergarten (or some other grouping of same-age kids), you find that the mainstream came out and grabbed you. Seems like there were a lot of Matthews and Jasons in Matthew’s class. Of Matthew’s high-school top twelve, three were “Matt”.
I also used to think cousin Jennifer had a way-out name, until John Mark had a middle-school band concert and Matthew was involved in laying out the program with student names. I think there were six Jennifers in the sixth-grade band alone.
I didn’t know a single Justin when we named our son. Later he complained he wished he had a less common name. You’re right, Dan, the mainstream comes out and grabs you.