I saw that a person changed his name, legally, to Tyrannosaurus Rex. My first thought was that it should really be Tyrannosaurus rex. Or Tyrannosaurus rex. Either way "rex" would not be capitalized. And the whole thing needs to be underlined or italicized. How is he going to do that when signing things and filling out forms? Ridiculous people that don't understand science mutter mutter grumble. (yes, these were my first thoughts, not "that's stupid" or "why the hell is this in my Facebook feed?")
After my internal geeky ranting, I began ruminating about our family's names, starting with my own.
I hated my name growing up. Shawn. A boy name. I got picked on about it. Put in the wrong gym class. I raged and cried about how awful it was. Why couldn't I have been named Karen or Susan or something NORMAL? But by the time I was old enough to actually change it legally, I didn't mind so much anymore. In fact, I enjoyed the fact that I wasn't one of the 3 Susans in the room at any given event. I liked the anonymity that came with an androgynous name. I wonder how my brother, Erin, feels now as an adult. I know as a child he hated having the "girl" spelling. For the record, my parents chose Irish names and spellings.
Flash forward, eventually the time came when I had the privilege, along with Brian, of choosing our children's names. I didn't want anything popular. My husband agreed (though he never minded being one of several Brians in his social circles.) As it turns out, we had names picked for YEARS before we decided to actually have children. Yep, I'm a planner.
If our first, or second, baby had been a boy, he would have been Vincent, named after the great Vince Lombardi, of course. Alas, no baby boys were born to us so the name waits for another to use it.
For our first girl, we decided on Sandis. No we did not make it up. There was a player for the Avalanche, way back when, named Sandis Ozolinsh. We liked his name and years before having children, decided we would use it. Sandis has never appeared in the Social Security Admin's top 1000 baby names. We were good! Not at all popular. Check it anytime, never does Sandis appear on their list.
After Sandis was used, we needed a new girl name for our next baby, yet unconceived. I had many years for Sandis to be the chosen name for our first child, I needed to let the second child's name grow on me as well. In order to move things along, I came up with a short list and from that, the only one Brian really liked was Stella (on the veto list were Seraphina and Tabitha.) No problem, the most recent data available showed it was #656 for girls in 2000. Stella it was.
Stella was born in 2003, looking at the table for that year, in Colorado, Stella did not make the top 100 chosen names. I did what I set out to do, pick unpopular names. By golly, I did it.
Now, just look what has happened to Stella's popularity (from the SSA website):
| Year of birth | Rank |
|---|---|
| 2010 | 85 |
| 2009 | 126 |
| 2008 | 184 |
| 2007 | 244 |
| 2006 | 242 |
| 2005 | 250 |
| 2004 | 291 |
| 2003 | 381 |
| 2002 | 499 |
| 2001 | 598 |
| 2000 | 656 |
| 1999 | 724 |
Eighty-fucking-five! That is not allowed to happen. I am most definitely NOT pleased. Not a lot I can do about it now, except bitch on my blog. I tried, Stella, I really did. Not that it matters to you. Both you and your sister like your names and I guess that is good. Ok, well there was that time when you were about 4 and you were LIVID about your name. We had the following exchange:
Stella: "Mommy! Why didn't you name me what I wanted to be named?!"
Me: "What did you want to be named?"
Stella: "Harry Potter!"
Since then though, you have decided that Stella is a better choice for you.
Now lest you, dear reader, think I am considering your child's name, be assured, this, like everything I write, is all about me. Do not project my choices as judgements of what you did/do. If you want to name your children popular names, that's up to you. It's just not what I wanted to do, and like so very many, many things in life, it didn't work out how I planned. Like I said, it's all about me. In my blog, my little slice life, the world DOES revolve around me. ;)
Oh, and do you notice that "did/do" kind of looks like "dildo"? No? It's just me and my dyslexic and/or dirty mind? Ok, I can accept that.
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