My small obsession with people's names :)

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I love names Every time I happen to talk online to someone from another country, I have this irresistible compulsion to ask whether their name is common or not, obsolete or modern Every time I read about a foreigner with a rare name, I must check what said name means. I love all unusual names (maybe but for those having which could cast their owner into ridicule, like Bonawentura or Telesfor - most definitely the weirdest Polish names I know of ) and every time I create a Sim character, I give them a very unusual name - one taken from a book/movie etc.

Is there anyone who loves uncommon names, too? Or maybe you have a rare name yourself, too?

Nope. I'm called Paul.

The Polish equivalent of your name is Paweł - a very common name in my generation. Even more common than my own names - Magdalena and my middle name - Justyna

I love names, especially uncommon ones. I have a very generic name which I don't like, but if I ever have kids I plan to give them unusual names. It always interests me when I meet someone with an unusual name and I have to try to stop myself from commenting on it. (I've never understood why "I like your name" is seen as a compliment since most of the time you're really complimenting the person's parents.)
I also enjoy making up silly-sounding names for fictional characters. My favorites include Eyor Fwækam, Pigford Letexson, and Tujer the Quanz.

I'm not good at remembering people's names and coming up with interesting or creative names is a struggle.

I want to add that people's names have their specific colors to me It's a form of synaesthesia

I've been obsessed with people's names my whole life. That's one of the reasons that I've always enjoyed watching the Olympics.

I have an uncommon name. And no you cannot have it.

I'll admit to spending a lot of time on baby name websites. The algorithm think I'm expecting but I actually just use them to name my characters.

Stories about the fae and never revealing your true name (because they'll steal it) have always interested me. I think you could definitely do some interesting things with that concept.

All names given to me are not rare.

Not even my full name.
But the most frustrating about it is that my first name is almost always written merged with my second name by almost everyone else I dictated to because it's commonly written as a one long name, making my legal name a risk for clerical errors.

I'm not particularly good at recalling names and faces of other people.
Too busy coping with crap to bother with that since 4th grade.


Naming kids in my country is particularly weird.
Plenty of which just take any and spelt it differently; adding silent 'h''s before or after vowels, turning 's''s into 'z''s, 'c''s into 'k''s, etc...

It's one thing to name a kid before someone that parents are relatively close to or even themselves...
And then there's merging syllables of parents' names into their child's name, a couple said parents would ship, or names of several people like their top 3 favorite singers.

It's one thing to name kids after famous people, saints, and celebrities...
... Then there's some who name their kids after a meme, show characters in fiction shows or games, etc...

Then it's one thing to name theme kids starting with the same particular syllable or starting letter, even after objects, concepts, animals, etc...
And then there's naming them alphabetically, numerically themed, blending consonant sets (ba/be/bi/bo/bu, etc...).

There common first names like John and Maria then add a second name afterwards...
I wonder... Is naming any kid Prince or Princess as first names weird or common elsewhere?
It's a common thing here actually.

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In Poland practically ALL baby names are either common - just common - or very common. Or extremely supercommon (like Julia, Lena, Amelia, Zuzanna etc. - the most common female names in the generation of the current kids/teens). When someone decides to give their baby an unusual name, they are accused of being snobs (something like: "what, a normal name isn't good enough for your kid? Are you someone better than us or something?") I knew just a couple of people with rare names - and just FOUR of those were VERY rare names (Domicela - a grannie name, Darina - very pretensious, Ścibor - an old Slavic name and Benita - not a Polish name, though the person who had this name was one hundred percent Polish; her two brothers had very common Polish names from what she told me when I asked her about this). All the rest of rare names of those people I knew, were just normally rare ones - I mean, they were not common but any means but they were, as I already said, normally rare to put it in this way.

In the youngest generation, old names from the generation of my grandparents, got extremely supercommon - Stanisław, Antoni, Jan, Franciszek, Maria, Zofia, Weronika, Wiktoria... all of those were the classic examples of old folks' names in my generation. There is another category of names though in the youngest generation - so called "pathology names" - you know, English names given to Polish children. The most classic examples of those are Brajan and Dżesika - yes, a Dżesika spelled in this very way, adapted to the Polish spelling; even an ordinary Jessica name given to a baby in Poland would be pretensious but a Dżesika is EXTREMELY pretensious.

Generally, people are more tolerant when it comes to unusual names now than they were in the previous generation, they are more open to differences. I knew just one person with a very unusual name in my generation - Alan - that boy from my class in elementary school who, I strongly suspect, was an aspie too. There is that well known singer, Michał Wiśniewski in Poland who gave all six kids he has with, I believe, three or four different women, VERY unusual foreign names - Xavier, Falco Amadeus, Noel Cloe, Vivienne, Etienette and Fabienne - which sounds like this proverbial Sesquipedalian Smith because Wiśniewski is a very common last name.

From where I came from it's like...
... They don't care.


Here's the less common ones;

Even goes as far as naming kids after food; in blatant English like "Swiss Cheese" as a legal name.
Or giving something absurd like "COVID" as their first name. Seriously. No different than naming one's pets.

Or basically remove all vowels; replace them all with 'y''s and letter's names as a vowel alternative (like g standalone is 'dyi').
Example: Hhbgll is pronounced as Abigail.

There's giving a kid and all their siblings the same names, there's giving gender bent names (boy with a feminine name, girl with masculine name)...

... Then there's giving the kid a name with NUMBERS.
As in alphanumerics in their legal names. 0, 1, 2, 3... 74, 85, 45... Etc.


At some point, anyone here from where I came from WILL encounter one of these in real life.

I did. Though I hadn't encountered someone with any alphanumerical yet.
But I really did encountered someone whose name is a food, the lack of vowels, absurd concepts and anything I mentioned in my previous post, actually, I encountered them all.

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I'm not obsessed with other people's names but I get obsessed when I have to name a child or pet myself. I agonize over it because I microanalyze too much, thinking of every possible association or meaning or potential bullying / rhymes with nicknames. I also find it hard because I'm big on the syllables flowing, and I have synaesthesia meaning every name has a colour which I have to like, and the colour has to go with everyone else's colours. When I named my second child her name colour couldn't clash with my son's name, my name, her dad's name, or our last name.

It's a PITA.

I've had a new kitten for three weeks and I still haven't decided his name definitely, because of colours.

There's giving a kid and all their siblings the same names, there's giving gender bent names (boy with a feminine name, girl with masculine name)...

In Poland, you can't give your baby a name that is the name of a representative of the other sex. It's against the law. The only exception is Maria but it is a name you can give to your baby boy ONLY as a middle name - hence the name of the Polish politician - Jan Maria Rokita. We don't have double-barreled names either - there is that singer Anna Maria Jopek though but it is not a double-barreled name but her first name is Anna and her middle name is Maria and she uses both. You can't give your child a shortened version of the full name either because it's also against the law - the only exceptions here are Kuba (short for Jakub) and Magda (short for Magdalena) which over the course of time became names on their own.

I have an unusual name but it's an old name, not a made-up name. I live in the US but it's not an English name. I find it embarrassing and I don't like it.

One of my peeves is people with foreign names in the US insisting that their name be pronounced perfectly, as if the person saying the name was a native speaker of that non-English language. I always say my name in the way that an English speaker would pronounce it, to make it a little easier for them to say. It seems arrogant to insist that someone whose native language is not yours perfectly pronounce your name as if your language was their language.

There's no law that forbids certain names in my country at all.

One can basically legally name their kid Hitler (which exists), Osama Bin Laden (exists), etc. even slurs and terms that would break this forum rules if I actually mention more.

It's just frowned upon in few cases.
But otherwise not illegal.

Even if the kid who will get that name is born female, have it re-spelled into something weird and alien, added with special characters or names like some strong password though that would require some affidavit.


Even with something like Junior is supposed only for boys.

Going III, IV, V ... generational suffixes doesn't necessarily mean they're named after their father. It could be their great grandpa, it could be their cousin twice removed.
And one can actually put III, IV, V ... suffixes in someone's name even if the dad or someone else isn't a Jr. himself.


https://philstarlife.com/geeky/649473-b ... gal?page=3

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My name was very common in the year i was given it. There were always 3 or 4 kids with the same name as me in any given class. Not that common now though.

In my daughter's class there are 4 Zacks which I find extraordinary since Zack isn't a typically British name. Why did everyone suddenly decide that Zack was a good name? Is it the generation that grew up watching American imports like Saved by the Bell?