How does your school differentiate kids with same name?

[CastleTower]

Just to be clear, this is all very lighthearted, and I'm just wondering what your school does.

My eldest started school recently, and it turns out that someone in her class has a sibling who will be in her younger sibling's year, and has the same name. So let's say two girls both have a younger brother called Noah the same age.

Normally I'd assume they'd be (for example) Noah A and Noah B but they actually have the same last initial too!

It's not a name with any obvious nickname or shortening, so that's out. I suppose one is blond and one dark...?

We and the other parents have all had a good laugh about it, and no one is feeling hard done by or anything. But I was wondering how you would go about differentiating in this instance? Just full first name + last name at all times? Has anyone had this at their school?

When I was at secondary school there were two boys in my year who for the purposes of this thread I will call John Smith. Both the same house so both in the same classes six years. Both the same spelling of John and Smith. Both farmers.

When we were in sixth year one of them was announced as school captain but only after he announced it did the head realised he had two kids with the exact same name in the same house and he didn’t know what John Smith was the new school captain. It took them a week to figure out which one it was.

Why the two John Smiths were put into the same house remains a mystery.

My DD and another girl have the same first name and very similar surnames - they are known as Big and Little Name (one is much taller!)

a girl I went to secondary school with had the exact same name as me, first, middle and surname. The first two names where incredible common but our surname is extremely uncommon - as in it’s dying out!

We both had opposite hair colours so I was Amy Francis goodberryferry brown and she was Amy Francis Goodberryferry red

This was decades though - probably not the done thing to distinguish by personal appearance these days…

Also not our real names!

Full names. There were 3 charlie's on my son's class and they went by full names

Usually they'd use the full name, though for class lists and other stuff where they'd usually remove surnames it's the first two letters of the surname, so got example Jane Ab and Jane Am.
At my DD's gymnastics class she's one of two Sarah's ( not real name), but they don't use surnames at all there so she's Sarah 1 and the other girl is Sarah 2, that way round as she joined first.

Growing up in Wales, all the family were known by their farm or house name. Christmas cards would be to "all at Brookfield" from "all at no 1 the Green".

My 70yo brother let's call him Dai Jones, (though his real name would be no more identifying), has 3 nicknames, one "Jones + Farm Name", one based on my fathers unusual first name "young (!) Brunel", and one DaiGee first name plus middle initial name due to there being 2 of the same full name in his class at school.

At one point there were actually 3 farmers (not related) with the same first and last names living along the same lane.

If the school captaincy was based on voting, they were almost guaranteed to win!

As another person mentioned this as well - my Dad ended up using his second name as there was 6 with the same name in his school many years ago! Only his very close family uses his first name!

Primary my daughter luckily had two classes so they tried to split the two girls. Though at secondary school - out of 250 they ended up in the same tutor group and majority of classes! They are know. As Emma S and Emma T (not actual their names) You could shorten their names but neither girls like that version 😂

In my ds's primary class, there was Taylor Girl and Taylor Boy. They were named by their peers and it stubbornly stuck until they left, despite the teacher's attempt to replace with initials....

I had a teacher (and indeed friends) who called me by my surname to get round this issue.

My son's got 3 Alexanders in his class. They're all known as Alexander too - so they get their full name.

I find it weird when he's talking about something at school, and even in a conversation where he's used the full name once, he'll just keep using their full name (and one of them has a very long surname) - it's just habit for them to all use the full name now!

When I was at school, there were multiple people with my name, so we all had nicknames assigned - I met up with one of my fellow namers 20 years later, and the first thing she said was to ask me to use her full name, because she'd always hated the nickname she was assigned (I liked my nickname - brought from home - but hated any shortening of my name too, so I completely understood)

Dh was in the same tutor group as someone wth the exact same first name and surname, they were actually related.
Everyone referred to them by the primary school they had attended.
So Simon Meadow Grange & Simon Farfields.

I used to know a lot of people with the same name. Let’s say it was Luna.
Dh said let’s called Luna Smith Luna Sheffield, because she lives in Sheffield. I said no that won’t work because Luna Smiths dd’s best friend is actually called Luna Sheffield.

At my DS’s nursery there were two boys with the same first and last name. They also looked very similar, had the same hair colour, skin colour etc so no real identifying features. It was extremely confusing for young kids, in fact I don’t think my DS actually realised they were two different people! The staff used middle initial but one of them actually didn’t have a middle name, so they just assigned him a random one 😂

Use nicknames/ shortened versions if there is one - but it's hard if it's a 4 year old because they might not know if they like a nickname enough to go by it until they're 11. (And the one having to use a nickname might feel a bit put out!)

Middle initials are the other option; Jenny J Wood and Jenny L Wood can be Jenny J and Jenny L. It's unlikely they'll have the same middle initial too.

My primary class only had 19 kids in it and we had:

• 3 Paul's (2 with the same letter surname)
• 2 Nicholas
• 2 Clare/Claire's
• 2 Angela's

Not a whole lot of imagination by parents in that year! 😂

My daughter’s class had Big Mary and Little Mary at one point 😳

(They weren’t actually called Mary …)

At my daughter’s school, in reception they split all the double names across the 2 classes. The kids then became known as their class name instead of surname eg Tilly Ducklings and Tilly Swans, which was cute. Though they’ve now mixed the classes and based it on friendships so both Tillys are now in the same class, not sure what they’ll do now 😂

I once taught in a school that had 2 girls with the same first name, extremely similar surnames - and the same birthday! Eg Hannah smith and Hannah smyth both born on 17th May 2012. The council actually called the school to query it as they thought the school were trying to claim additional funding by claiming twice for the same kid. They were in different classes thankfully and just always known by their full name outside of the classroom.

Either by using surnames or middle name.

I remember having the same name as a girl in my class when I started school and because I was the younger one I was called "little x" and she was "big x", I remember hating it!! After reception they switched to surnames which was much better

I was one of the two. So like Tammy Wilson and Tammy Walton. We had a few 'Tammy!', 'which one?' 'Tammy W'... 'yeah, which one?!' moments! Didn't take more than saying the surname to differentiate us but it was a little camaraderie for us for a few seconds. The teachers learnt who was who, quick enough, so we knew it was just whichever one they were looking at when they said our name.

Full names. And 15 years on they're still friends and refer to each other as Jane smith and Jane jones 😍😂

At our DS's school, they always used surname initial regardless when singling out children for achievements/awards etc. It made us laugh when they would specify that (to exaggerate only slightly) 'Rhododendron-Lettice S.' had been given a 'great work' badge - we wouldn't want any of the other children in the school called Rhododendron-Lettice or their parents to think it was them!

Big Mary and Little Mary is fine in multi-age/extended family groups, where one is 13 and the other is 4; but it can be upsetting when they're the same age, as they might be self-conscious about their height (either way) and don't like it pointed out every time they're mentioned. Plus, the little one can have a huge growth spurt at any time and end up considerably bigger than the big one!

Surely you would think that the one person who could safely refer to 'Jane', without anybody being confused, would be the other Jane!

Unless she was one of these strange people who usually referred to herself in the third person!

When I was in primary school in a class of 24 we had two girls with exactly the same name - first, middle and surname - spelt identically. There were a total of six girls with the same first although one was spelt differently. They were all known by first name, surname and the two identical had one and two added after so they were Lucy Jones 1 and Lucy Jones 2 (not the actual names.

In a class at my school, there were four girls with the same first name and their surnames were Barrett, Borrett, Barnett and Burnett. No idea how they dealt with that!

At my childminder, there were two other boys with my son's name- so three 'Bobs' (not the real name), one 10, one 5 and one a baby. So they were known as Big Bob, Little Bob and Tiny Bob. But obviously that wouldn't be appropriate in a school. I guess they'd just be called by their full name.