To wonder why schools put multiple kids with the same first name in the same class?

[KayEffCee]

DD is year 5 and goes to a primary school with 3 classes per year group.

In her year there are 4 girls with the same christian name. Two of these also have surnames beginning with the same letter, which I'm sure gets confusing at school.

This year, all four girls with the same first name are in the same class! When there are two other classes in their year group, so they could have been spread out a bit more.

AIBU to wonder why schools do this? I remember having 3 Sarahs in my year at primary school and also 3 Emmas and one year all 3 Sarahs and all 3 Emmas were in the same class!

Dear Mrs/Ms X,

We are sorry to inform you that even though your DS/DD is in the top 20 pupils in the school in English she will be in set two this year as we have reached our name quoter for the top set.

Pleased be reassured that your DS/DD's education will not suffer due to this inconvenience.

Yours

Head of English (soon to be in the Daily Mail with sad face pictures of your child)

I set tutor groups at secondary for new Y7s. Sometimes I put children with the same name in on purpose because it amuses me... And often they are friends anyway. Me and my two best friends at primary were three of eight of the same name and we survived!

The dynamics of the class will be given priority over the children's names.

Not once, in all these years of organising classes, has the name of a student been a consideration when deciding which class will be the best fit for them.

"Oh no, you can't put Ella J in the class with the teacher who has specialised training in her particular additional need,because Ella D is already in that class."

i cant see the problem in separating them a bit in primary school

my son was named after his great granddad how the fuck was i supposed to know everyone else would name there kid the same name?

named my second son after his great great granddad looks like his name was popular that year too i might have to refer to him as his middle name instead as no one has heard of it but then i would have the whole she called her kid what?!! to deal with

In dd's first primary class, there were 4 Georges and 2 Georgias. The parallel class had none. Never even crossed my mind to query it.

I teach a class with three Jacobs. Now, this is in secondary, but even so, I can only think of maybe one occasion it's been confusing as to who I was referring. It always works out fine, IME.

Well, schools do this because they don't have enough to worry about and this seems a fun way to stir things up...

It takes bloody hours and lots of revisions to put year groups into classes that has a balance of age, gender, Sen, abilities, behaviour, personalities etc. and ensures that all children are with at least one friend, names don't even get a look in!

I love that a teacher setting tutor groups would do this deliberately . I was one Sarah among 5 in my class at secondary ...

In DS1's y1 class they had a Neah, Leah, Sophia, Lucia and Mia (just needed an Ikea for the full set).

I once had a class with 5 Matthews and several Emmas (in the 1990s, as you can tell from the names). Also once had two Bhupinders but one was a boy and one a girl so no confusion, there!

My 20 year old's best friend the whole way through school had the same first name as him.

In the mid 90s, when my good friend was pregnant with their first, she asked dh and me (both teachers) if we had many Sams in our school. "Oh no," we replied, airily. "Perhaps one or two out of 450." (but absolutely true!)

Oops! Cue: stampede of a whole generation of Sams.

My DD2 has a fairly popular name, that also has many variants or shortened versions. In primary she was known by her full name so firstnamelastname all as one as it worked and created a new name, in fact a new teacher thought is was her name and asked what her last name was. The school wasn't big enough for them to be split and anyway they were best friends.
In secondary in her friendship group of 10 there are 4 with the same name in different forms, the manage and the teachers manage. Well unless they call her by her big sisters name which really annoys her.

When are are/have been a teacher, it makes it hard to name your own kids (and pets). There are names I used to love but now you just say that name and I have a certain personality in mind. Tony the psychopath! Lee the one who tried to kill someone with a house brick! Sarah - had permanent nits!) It's very hard to find a name without associations.

My DS1 is one of three with the same name in his class.

The only problem so far is that if you ask him to write his first name, he automatically appends his surname initial.

Dd has an unusual name beginning with E. In her Y4 class there were 4 Emmas, 2 Ellies, an Ella, an Ellen plus dd. 9 girls out of 14 with an E name.

But as a previous poster said, abilities, SEN, ethnic mix, autumn born/summer born is a more important consideration.

I grew up in North wales. There were 7 Marks in my class, 3 were called Mark Williams and two Mark Roberts.

In an a level.maths class of 18 we had 3 sarahs, 2 joannes, 1 joanna and 2 catherines. One of the sarahs had an identical twin who was also in the group. The teachers managed although it did get confusing at times.

This is perhaps why all those threads about "reserving" baby names aren't so unreasonable after all...

Joffrey

The very first person to reply to this thread nailed it.

I find it a bit disturbing that one pp who sets tutor groups has said that Sometimes I put children with the same name in on purpose because it amuses me...

Plenty of pp have given very good reasons why duplicate names might end up in the same class (although I'm not convinced by the "make everyone able to distinguish between the children" reasoning), but doing it deliberately just for amusement is an absolutely terrible reason. I would hate to think that part of the reason I was put in a tutor group without a single friend from primary was because someone thought it would be amusing to put the 2 Shadows in the year together.

I had a Charlie, Farley, Marley and Harley in a class with jacie, Lacey, and casey!! I wish they'd all just been called the one same name. Would have been much easier!!

That's what hapens when you follow fashion.

My kids are the only ones to have their names ( traditional, non freaky easy spelling) in a school with 1200 pupils.

Farley, Marley and Harley ffs! You couln't make it up! What are the parents thinking of- One named after a baby biscuit, one a after dog, the other named after a motorbike.

Growing up, my immediate circle of three best/closest friends were ALL called Jo! We distinguished with daft nicknames in front of Jo (i.e. Crazy Jo etc) which have still lasted to this day! People (lads) did used to think we were winding them up on nights out when they introduced themselves!