Jennifer, Tiffany, Stephanie

an observation

I have an irk. Maybe not an irk, per se, I'm not sure what to call it. Maybe it's just some snobbery. I can, unfortunately, be prone to that. But one of my pet peeves is dated, faddish names.

These names are destined to potentially make individuals sound bland and vapid to their peers for the rest of their lives; they are so common and singular to a decade that they can only be associated with the cocktail servers and student athletes/ ASB representatives in highschool whose names were repeated often enough to leave a generic impression of overuse on my brain. I may overprioritize uniqueness by others' standards (after all I am a designer), but I don't understand why a parent would want to brand their infant child with an identity that is bound to be unoriginal and stereotyped with time. Is your family that lame? It's not a good omen.

They are the Jennifers, the Tiffanys, the Stephanies, maybe even the Katies of my generation. They are the Judys of my mother's generation, and the Bettys of my grandmother's. I am bound to offend someone, here (my grandmother's name is, after all, Betty, and one of my closest friends a Jennifer, but I give her the benefit of the doubt because her parents are Chinese and there is oftentimes a funny cultural thing that happens when Asians take Anglo names. Plus I don't think she knows I have a blog. ;) )

Historically, male names have been a little less prone to these fads. It seems as though there has always been a smaller pool of names that have been drawn from. Also, possibly the mindset of naming girls is different from naming boys. Socio-cultural gender norms probably also play a role- the idea the men should grow up to be solid providers may lead to boys being more often given classic, traditional names. The feminine identity that families envision their little girls to grow up to have might be more prone to vary with cultural norms of the time and consequently become more influenced by trends. It's a theory. Maybe female self-criticism and general bitchiness just causes me to perceive this more in women's names.

However, the past ten years seem to find both girls' and boys' names victim to trends: as a daycamp instructor, I heard quite a few names of either gender frequently that all seemed to reflect British estate names or surnames of powerful east coast families: Madison, Clayton, Holden, Preston, Parker, Brittany, Jaden....

Okay, that's my rant. I feel better. But please don't name your kids Tiffany, Stephanie, or Madison. It just conjures up images of flighty cocktail waitresses who got my drink wrong, or smelly kids who constantly wanted band-aids or ice packs.