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!

Studying A level English Literature towards the end of last century and the beginning of this (so girls born in 1981-1982) we had:

6 Helens
3 Elizabeths
3 Emmas
4 Clare/Claires
5 Rebeccas
2 Sarahs
A Katherine, Kathryn and a Catherine.
3 Rachels
2 Hannahs and 1 Anna.

It got confusing to say the least. We hyphenated our first names with our middle names in my case to distinguish me from the other girls with my name but I think everyone else had Ann, Louise or Jane as a middle name! Luckily, I was adored at birth so much my mum gave me a middle name that signified how very precious I was to her

I love Charlie, Farley, Marley and Harley . My best was two Tylers a Taylor (girl) and a Tanner.

We also had a class with 4 Thomases, three of whom were Thomas C !

I might suggest that my line manager considers names in recruitment. Most of the people I work with have short names beginning with A. All those Adams, Alans, Alexes and Andies are getting very confusing.

Tanner??!!

Poor kid

In my son's reception year there are 45 children divided into 2 classes, and 3 "name pairs" 2x Thomas, 2x Oscar, 2x Summer. All three pairs are in the same class. I'm sure there are other factors to consider but if I had an intake of new relatively unknown children to divide up I'd have put one in each class to start with!

It's not a problem. Ds1 has a very unusual name (on average 5 kids a year in the UK are given it). It was coincidence enough that there was another boy w the same name in his school but when they ended up in the same class together (out of a choice of 10) everyone thought it was hilarious. Cue lots of 'You wait years for an X then two come along at once' jokes. Actually I suspect the teachers of some type of long-term game were they collect points for getting different sets of names.

Aw, I've never met anyone with my name Thanks to the Internet I know there are other people with the name. DD also has an unusual name. A name that other people do have but no-one we've personally met.

I don't know if this matters anyway. Surely if you call your child Taylor or Jayden, or even Jack or Emma, you are aware that you run the risk of encountering other children with the same name? You can't call your daughter Rose and get annoyed every time you meet another Rose.

Yeah, make a separate class for every Emma, Jack or Oliver

Tanner was American Kayeffcee. Don't know if that makes a difference.

I work in a school where there is only one class in each year. They got really unlucky in one year and there are 4 girls with the same name, and 3 boys with the boy version of that name, all in the same class! It wouldn't have been fair to refuse them entry to the school because they had that name, though!

Dp wate Emily for dd3, although its a lovely name, I really didn't want her to be Emily X for her entire school life. There was another Emily in her nursery year, however now she is in reception, the other Emily has gone to a different school so she is just Emily again. Hope it stays that way. Dd1 is the only one of her name in the school (not a wacky name, just an older name like Elizabeth) and dd2 has 1 more girl with her name hut the other girl uses her full name while dd2 uses a shortened version.

I once met a blended family where each parent had an eight year old daughter from their previous relationships.

Yes, they both had the same, relatively unusual and more often a boy's than a girl's, name. As I recall the whole family had adopted a double-barrelled surname, too.

Now that's confusing!

Shadow fire... All children are placed with the three or four friends they chose. You still have to put different friendship groups together to make up a tutor group... And since I didn't go into teaching to be unkind to 11 year olds, clearly I don't put my amusement first. Jeez. The children in question, all called Rhys/ Reece thought it was hilarious

Our classes are formed purely by age. Why do so many people give their kids the same name as illogical a question as the OPs

We have 3 name multiples in the PRU where I work. Safe to say, if I were to have another child you could never pay me enough money to give it one of those names with the associations I now have of them.

If you reversed the OP's issue - prioritising name over other matters would be odd to say the least!

Yes, divide them up due to name

How mad is that.

I work in secondary and we have an eight-class intake.

I recall the colleague who deals with it had set up the computer programme one year to take account of friendship groups, ability range, SEN, FSM, AEL, behaviour, feeder school, specific issues eg students who must be kept apart, requests to study a specific language, and the other things we actually take into account.

She asked it then to create the classes - and ended up with 7 boys called Josh in one class!

That time she did change it. But really OP, the names of the children is hardly the top priority...

mmgirish lol @ "crazy parents"

I taught a class a couple of years ago with Mia, Mia (said differently), Maya, Mhea and Maia. It was a setted group tho so we based it on their French ability

There's no parallel class in my dds primary, it's a smallish primary school. so if you have lots of kids with the same name it's tough!

We only had one class per years and I can't think of a single double in mine!

I work with a group of kids - not a school class - but a hobby group. Out of 24 children we have 3 Olivers, 2 Benjamins, 2 Emilys, Keira and Kyra, then we have Finley, Fintan, Flynn and Fiona, which are not the same but hard to say in a hurry :)
We have never had a Steve, John, Mark, Sarah, Rachel or Elizabeth (all the names that were popular when I was at school)

I am really curious about the name that is only given to 5 per year and who ended up with another in the same class, but fully understand why you wouldn't want to say what it is.

DD is one of 3 Catherine's in her form, but there are no other Catherine's at all in the year group!
I coach several hundred children a week and it is so weird how it works! One class in one town has 5 Isabel/Isabellas and 4 Sophies in it and then another class of teh same age group in another town has none!
At the moment all the little girls seem to be Eve/Evie and all the boys are Archie!! The older girls are all Kate!

The year above me had 5 Nicolas and there were none at all in my year, who were all 'Julie' s .