To resent my parents choice of name for me?

[Blaengwnfi]

This is a rant - apologies.

I’ve always hated my name.

No one can pronounce it. Not even my father or siblings. It was always read out incorrectly at school and the other kids would laugh at me. It gives me major anxiety having to introduce myself.

I use my middle name professionally but it doesn’t feel like “my” name. I feel so angry with my parents sometimes for burdening me with this name.

Parents - please think before giving your kid a weird or “unique” name! It could really mess them up…

I’m well aware of how they’re all said in Welsh thank you, but the OP isn’t in wales and has said that she doesn’t like having a welsh name that people in England cannot pronounce. I was thinking of alternative names that have some sort of vague link to the original name.

Obviously if her name is Gwenllian and she went with Llian people in England still wouldn’t be able to pronounce it, if she went with Leanne (which I know is not said as the Llian in Gwenllian) then people would be able to say it and it would at least have a vague link in some of the sounds to her current name.

I wasn’t suggesting Welsh nicknames using the Welsh sounds to Welsh names because it was the Welsh sounds whilst living in England that the OP was saying are the difficulty!

I’m well aware of how they’re all said in Welsh thank you, but the OP isn’t in wales and has said that she doesn’t like having a welsh name that people in England cannot pronounce. I was thinking of alternative names that have some sort of vague link to the original name.

Obviously if her name is Gwenllian and she went with Llian people in England still wouldn’t be able to pronounce it, if she went with Leanne (which I know is not said as the Llian in Gwenllian) then people would be able to say it and it would at least have a vague link in some of the sounds to her current name.

I wasn’t suggesting Welsh nicknames using the Welsh sounds to Welsh names because it was the Welsh sounds whilst living in England that the OP was saying are the difficulty!

I know there's no R. I never said there was. And I'm sure you do know how to pronounce your own name.

I really love this.

I have a double barrel name. The first part is boring (to me) but when I introduce myself, lazy people will just hear that. They won’t bother to say my full name. If you yelled it at me on the street I wouldn’t turn around.

The second part is better, but I don’t like it alone.

So I introduce myself as a diminutive of the 2nd name, which I don’t really like much either but I can live with it. A friend in college told me her family made fun of it and said I sounded like a telemarketer. (I thought her name was old fashioned and weird but was polite enough not to say so!)

Most people only find out my real name after knowing me a long time. The people that call me by it are my real friends. I’ve come to feel protected by keeping it to close friends and family.

@elphame, Buddug isn't obscure. I don't know many, but I know more than one.

Roxanne is the anglicisation of Rokhsane, an Iranian name for Alexander the Great's wife, meaning bright star. Nothing to do with prostitutes.

The only one I know is my Aunt.

My friend, who always hated her name, changed it in her late twenties or early thirties to something completely different . I met her a few years later so only knew the new name. Her mother was annoyed and would still use her original name but her siblings were understanding. Change it OP, as it makes you so unhappy.
Just a thought, are you still Naomi on your birth certificate?
Do you live in Wales ? As many, if not most, Welsh names get totally mangled by anyone not Welsh speaking. Neither of my dc have the family names I might have chosen, as I was worried if they left Wales for university or work nobody would ever say their name correctly. I regret this now though it worried me at the time. My children have easy to say names that still get mispronounced so I should have stuck with the others !

Blodeuwedd is pronounced so beautifully. I've never heard of it before today (sheltered!!)

Same.

"I just cannot imagine growing a human being in my body, birthing them, looking into the face of this human that I’ve created…and then giving them a boring untoasted bread name like ‘Elizabeth’ or ‘James’ that six other kids they know will have. It seems mad to me."

Get a grip. There is 1 James in my DCs primary school and no Elizabeth. Both are lovely names.

Boohoo
You hate your name?

Change it

And stop using excuses why you can't
If you HATE your name CHANGE it

I did. When I was 15. I hated my name
And how now lived almost 3 decades with a name I love and makes me feel shiny and happy

Stop sulking and staying in a victim role. It is time to take action

Tick tock up. life is too short . And a name is one of the most important things. It defines who you are in a way
Your name should make you happy. Not miserable and awful.

Ps i never changed my name LEGALLY
Because $$$
But I just started going by a different name. And have never looked back.

@MolkosTeenageAngst , but your suggested alternatives are mostly nothing like the original. Buddug to Beth - just why? Gwenllian wouldn't call herself Llian, but she could call herself Llio or Gwen. Leanne sounds nothing like Gwenllïan and has a completely different vibe.
How would you get Do or Ira from Blodeuwedd, and why wouls a woman want to give herself a man's name (Ira) as a nn?
Heulwen to Helen or Ellen - Helen maybe, but why not just use Heulwen.

Your suggestions are like suggesting that a Jacqueline call herself Kelly, or a Caroline call herself Roly or Colin something.

Yes but then she goes on to do the typical thing of laughing at African names with clicks in them. The whole world is supposed to be respectful of Gallic names but can always poke fun at African names. oh ha ha funny times Sharon

I changed my name for £20. I have passport, driving licence etc in my new name

My father always hated his name. Thankfully he had been given to others so he used one of those. Interesting that Clive Staples Lewis the great author never liked his name from a boy and always insisted on being called Jack. Published under the name CS Lewis

I find the generational aspect of wanting a special /untoasted? name that expresses the unknowable uniqueness of a new baby interesting. Relatively recently, parents in working class UK towns were happy to send their child to a primary with several Julies, Claires, Sarahs, Rebeccas, Catherines, Davids, Simons, Marks, Pauls, James and Richards and by my rough calculation, c3% of a primary class had an unusual names. No stress by parents or children and no expectation of a disaster if another child in the school dared have the same, no calling family or friends copying a name someone had declared they owned evil or copycats. The names changed by cohort and fashion.

Yes, I totally agree that the analogy that a Jacqueline who hates her name could change her name to Kelly first with what I was trying to suggest.

I wasn’t looking for nicknames based on the name, which she hates. Rather thinking of new names she could choose that have a vague similarity, such as a shared first letter or a shared sound somewhere in them, if she wanted to go down the route of legally changing her name.

I have a friend who was called Nigel and hated it so he changed his name aged 37 to Nick. Not really that similar to Nigel at all but he felt that it at least honoured his birth name in that the first letters were the same.

That’s sort of what I was suggesting. That the OP legally change her name, but that she could choose a name which bore a small relation to her original name so that it did isn’t feel as alien as, say, changing her name from Heulwen to Jesssica.

I admit I didn’t realise Ira was a man’s name though. Maybe Iris then 😆

I’m fully in hand. I don’t agree with you that they are lovely names and if you’re disputing that either of those is an extremely common name, your grip on reality is clearly quite loose.

No, I didnt give DD a privileged white male name funnily enough.
By “Prime minister names” I meant names that will never mean they get their CV chucked out at first glance.
That shouldn’t happen and hopefully it’s getting better but we all know people DO get judged on their names, starting before school and for the rest of their lives.

As a non-British person from a country where sharing a name with someone in your class was quite unusual, this is alien to me. I don’t think I’d even come across the concept of an ‘unusual name’ until I moved to England. I remember going to a picnic where there were three women named ‘Louise’ and just thinking it was the maddest thing ever.

I think of names as beautiful (fairly) unique identifiers that mean something and are the beginning of a person’s story. I think they’re important in a way that doesn’t seem to exist for a lot of people over here.

Who will actually be PM though?
Elizabeth I imagine

"I’m fully in hand. I don’t agree with you that they are lovely names and if you’re disputing that either of those is an extremely common name, your grip on reality is clearly quite loose."

Heidi, Zara, Delilah, Clara, Aurora, Luna, Ada and around 70 other names are all more popular than Elizabeth. At the current birth rates if you think a child named Elizabeth with have 6 other little Elizabeth's in her class, your grip on reality is quite loose.

You think your point re ‘PM names’ holds water despite this diversely named Cabinet of phenomenally successful people and the existence of Rishi Sunak because you believe they on this occasion Liz might win? So that justifies your narrow minded parochial naming conventions?

Cool, cool.

I know the name - means Flowerface, in Welsh mythology she was an extremely beautiful woman created from flowers by magician Gwydion - but I’ve never heard of anyone actually being called it.