I read an article today about how people with the most -or least – common names around are forming alliances to “make a better name for their names”. You can find an entire website devoted to the name Wendy (with members bonding over nicknames and sharing their favourite movie characters), and Facebook groups for people named Lisel, Teddy, Peggy, Josh, Kyle, Jingying and Steven among others.
There have been a number of interesting studies released recently about how names may influence how your life turns out. One found that boys with unpopular names are more likely than those with popular names to wind up in juvenile detention facilities. Other studies have found that certain names are predictors of a person’s income and how far they’ll advance in their education.
Another study that I find very interesting is that girls with more linguistically feminine names were more likely to take humanities classes in high school (writes Jennifer, whose grade thirteen subjects were English, Advanced English, French, French Literature, Canadian History and American History). Girls with more androgynous-sounding names tend to select courses in the hard sciences.
When I named my children, I thought I had given them names that were slightly uncommon, but that they wouldn’t have to spell every time. Little did I know how common my sons’ names were among their age sets (there have been two Liams in my eldest son’s class since kindergarten, and we’ve managed to come across three boys with the same first and last name as my middle son at various hockey tournaments this season). My daughter’s name is definitely more unusual. We only found it in one baby book, and it was listed as being a boy’s name. Somehow, though, Rylan suited our girl. The good news is that according to that study, she could end up an engineer or scientist. The bad new is she’ll go through life without ever finding a mug with her name on it.Which is why I was so thrilled when I was approached by Custom Made for Kids, with the offer of a personalized storybook called The First Adventures of Incredible You. Before ordering, I was sent a questionnaire by e-mail, with twenty questions about my child. That way, customers are able to “build” a one-of-a kind book at the Custom Made For Kids website by inserting over 20 personal facts about a child and the people and places that are most important to that child. From tasting a favorite food to cheering on a beloved sports team to visiting a special vacation spot or park, this rhyme-based book celebrates the first adventures of every young child that “stars” in it.
The book arrived in the mail about two weeks later and my daughter couldn’t have been more excited. She’s so thrilled to point out her name, her brothers’ names, her cousin’s name, her grandparents, etc. The poem is fun and the illustrations are fantastic. This is a unique book about her, and includes her unique name and as such it’s priceless.
If you’d like to order a custom book for a child in your life (I think they’d make great baby books too, as there’s room on the front page for an inscription), visit Custom Made For Kids for all the details.
So funny. As a Jennifer I am proud of my popular name. and with my husband’s name being Michael our kids needed to have names that fit. The funny thing is our son, whose name we thought was quite common, has never had a friend or even a kid in his class with the same name. And my daughter, whose name is common too, has a unique spelling so she’ll never have a mug either. Oh well, maybe she’ll be a Nobel prize winning scientist!
Kath, what I find so funny about your comment is that my daughter actually WAS Charlotte for her first 24 hours, but it just didn’t “suit” her, so we dug around baby books in desperation and found Rylan. Guess she never would have gotten her own custom mug either way!
I love it: “The bad new is she’ll go through life without ever finding a mug with her name on it.”
We’ve NEVER been able to find mugs, pens, shoelaces or any fun things with my daughters’ names on them…until we went to England where they have loads and loads of ‘Charlotte’ swag.