AIBU to think the government should cap the number of children called a particular name each year?

[sausagesandwich34]

ok I know I am and this is supposed to be a bit of a light hearted thread but....

I am a brownie leader

25% of my pack are called Chloe!
3 of them have a surname starting with the same letter

out of the rest of them Molly,Holly & Emily I have multiples

I've taken to calling the entire pack by their full names so no one feels left out but that's 48 names to rememeber!!!

how do teachers do it?

All that happens round my way is that the children's name on the register is not what they are known as...so any boy with a Mohammed first name has a middle name he uses instead (and then there are the boys with Mohamed as a last name, just to keep me on my toes) and boys called Syed are always known as something else too. Then there are the children who I couldn't tell their gender by looking at their name on the register, and had to wait until I had met them in person. And there are the siblings who have virtually the same name except for one letter...and the parents where the mother has a different surname to both the father and the child as it's not their culture for her to take the husband's name on marriage. Sometimes the child has a surname that is not shared with either parent.

I do have an Emily though...she is the only white British child in the class.

My eldest DD has a common surname and much less common first name, and yet there was a girl in her school two years older with the same name combination. Fortunately their middle names were different, but even so they were continually forwarding emails to each other that had reached the wrong pupil.

Ds2 (4) is Oliver, I am surprised he is the only one in his class and ds1 (6) doesn't have an Oliver in his class either. I do like the idea of rationing names though

YABU. I don't suppose people would be too pleased if they were told they couldn't use their carefully-chosen favourite name!

UABU, move away from this area of people of little imagination.

I live in a very diverse area, I don't think there is any duplication of names in classes although there are two girls called Ellie in the whole school - about 600 pupils.

I am one of a zillion Gemmas. Constantly got 'little Gemma', 'Gemma-with-the-brown-hair', 'Gemma M', 'Geordie Gemma' as a point of reference. I hated it, and cursed my parents for giving me a common as much first name are rarer than hens teeth middle name - why not the other around!

As such, DD has a nickname It could be a nickname for two or three longer names, but I've stuck with that. She was one of only 13 born in the country with that name last year. Happy days.

When my oldest was at primary school there were four Joshua Walkers in the small village school, three of them in his class, as well as all the other Joshua, eight in total in his class alone, half the boys in the school were called Joshua.

Well allocating names would cut out all that needless arguing with your dp about what to call them. But imagine if you got allocated Roger or Alan. I wouldn't be happy at all.

Gold - I think there's also a tendency to call people "big Gemma" or "little Gemma". Both of which are not very nice. We have a "big David" at work.

Names come into and go out of fashion, especially for girls. 10 years ago there were hardly any Amelias, now it's one of the most popular names.
I suffered with a popular name and was determined that my DCs would be the only one in their class (in fact, they were each the only one in their school) with their name. Funnily enough, both DS's and DD's names both became very popular in later years; DD's name was actually number one a few years ago, yet when she was born I had people ask me "what do you want to call her that for, it's an old ladies' name!"

That's a great idea! There was 5 jacks in my class at school, so confusing!

Out of interest, how do you do that thing where you find out how many babies shared a name? Interested how many of dds name there were

How about just giving everyone a number?

They should have a league table of the top 100 names at each register office.

It's not a problem if there are 50 Amelias, but it is if they all live within 1 mile of each other.

Or, we could do what happend to my SIL. On her first day at school there was already a girrl in the class with SIL's name so the teacher just changed SIL to her middle name.

She is now known by her middle name to everyne.

Dp picked DD3s name and i'm dreading her startingnursery/school as i'll bet there are at least 3 in with her name (Emily) I do like the name, but i dont like the popualrity of it. My other 2 dd's have older names, i think there might be only 1 or 2 of each in the whole school.

"But imagine if you got allocated Roger or Alan. I wouldn't be happy at all."

Tough, you'll learn to like it :o

How about this?

Each registry office has 2 lucky dips one for girls one for boys containing 500 names each. Parents pull out a name on arrival and that is the childs name. When all 500 names are gone, the slips are put back and the process starts over again

I get that this is a lighthearted thread... but there is a real grain of truth in it.

I recall one class I was in, way back in my high school years - and there were 6 girls named Catharine/Katherine/Cathryn (or some variation of the name) 5 girls named Samantha, 3 named Amy, 3 named Clare/Claire and 4 boys named Ben. It was just endless confusion about who was being referred to. Nightmare of a class it was, both for teachers and pupils.

It would actually be lovely if parents could be brought up short at the registry office - "Are you aware there have already been 537 girls named Jane in this county this year? Do you still want to name her Jane even with that knowledge or would you like to re-think?" AND "Do you really want to name your son ? Really? It's not at all normal you fucking twat."

While I think people should have the right to name their kids whatever they like (as long as it isn't screamingly stupid) it would do no harm to make folks aware of how popular/foolish their proposed name is - or isn't - and check their spelling before they actually commit it to paper.

We could flood the baby Name threads with more diverse suggestions. Their are four Mason's on my road,two jacks,two Ava's, and each of my kids has multiple Amelia's as friends.
We could suggest the lesser used names like Keith,Peter,Jennifer and Maria and see how long it takes for them to get into the top ten
It would be an interesting experiment.

I've never met anyone in RL with the same name as me!

I'd love it if I did!

but what about similar names?
dc2 has a name that is sometimes classed as 'granny name' but her nick name is quite popular and there are similar popular names in other cultures (indian, polish). result in th nursery group are 5 dc (that I know) with a similar name...

My DD is in Reception. There are 3 Reception classes in the school, and without exception they have put all the children with the same name in the same class. Why would they do that?

Ds has nursery with 4 Finns, Finleys, 2 Dexters, 3 Bellas as well as multiple Jack/George/Josh. I am afraid trying to ask a 3 year old which one he is refering to means it's 'curly hair Finley' or 'Finley who comes on his mummys bike?' type questions. Think they should ban the naming after famous people though, at the register office - No, 'you can not name your child Rhianna, she is already faar too famous and your child will be forever in their shadow'

I don't think this is as much of a problem now as it used to be in the past. There also doesn't seem to be the tradition of naming sons after fathers quite so much, which must have led to lots of "Big John, medium John and small John" sort of situations.

Also when child mortality was high families would use the same name again if a previous child had not survived, my mum has an old sampler with a family list with two daughters called Mary, only one of which lived.

i kind of go off names that are over used my sons have a cousin called joshua and a cousin called thomas both lovely names but in my sons schoool you cant move without bumping into a joshua or thomas i thought lexie was a nice name at first but there are hundreds running around i like the idea of having sixes based on names ie the emilys i think i was the pixes as my name is a variation of anne and there were lots of annes knocking around in the seventies and eighties we should of have been callles the annes!

Give them a number, like the army

yes i see what you mean endo in my family benjamin was a family name great grandad, grandad,uncle, and cousin only uncle and cousin still alive but my mum refers to them as our ben [my uncle her brother] and young ben [ mycousin her nephew] young ben must be at least 45 now!