Human names gone out of fashion

[kaycountrygal]

I have two peeves about names in general.

1) The first name of a child should be the name that the child is called. It can be confusing. At home I was/am called by my MIDDLE name. At school and work I was always called by my first name. One time my brother called my work and asked for me by my middle name and noone knew who he was talking about until he said the last name.

2) I dont like names that are not easily identified as male or female. Often these days, children are named with a name that can be male or female and it is confusing to me.

[Karen]

Kay, are you by any chance Catholic? Paul's family is, and he and his sister were both named after their father and mother respectively, but called by their middle names so as not to cause confusion. Which of course causes plenty of confusion everywhere else!

[carole]

speaking of names my daughter melissa tells me she would much rather we had called her Nicole which is her second name, i guess it is a bit late to change now, i am used to calling her melissa, but would not worry me if she wanted to do that, as obviously i love the middle name as well.

[cassiesmom]

My dad and brother are Senior and Junior. My nephew was given his dad and grandfather's name as a middle name; but he uses it because he used to be in a group with another guy who had the same first name! So when we say the name at family get togethers, we have to be darn sure of who we want

My first name on my birth certificate is Elise. It was changed to Elyse in fifth or sixth grade when people kept calling me Elsie. I'd like to change it back now, because Elise is much more common than it was when I was named. But it's not easy to do - with a mortgage, driver's license, nursing license, bank account... :-|

A dear friend of mine from high school has a daughter named Evelyn.

[5Cats]

I have two peeves about names in general.

1) The first name of a child should be the name that the child is called. It can be confusing. At home I was/am called by my MIDDLE name. At school and work I was always called by my first name. One time my brother called my work and asked for me by my middle name and noone knew who he was talking about until he said the last name.

2) I dont like names that are not easily identified as male or female. Often these days, children are named with a name that can be male or female and it is confusing to me.

My legal name is Meredith, which I hated because it was unusual back when I was growing up and therefore gave bullies in school more ammunition to pick on me. My family and friends called me "Merrie" which is what I'm used to. My parents thought it would be cute, and then assumed I'd use "Meredith" when I grew up. Never assume anything that important! I believe my life would have been easier if I'd only had one first name with everyone, preferrably something short, easy to pronounce and spell. Now that I live in the south, I tend to use "Meredith" more frequently because people with southern accents often can't say and/or hear the difference between "Merrie" and "Mary," and I despise being called "Mary" - it's not my name.

I agree also about unisex names. Isn't growing up difficult enough? So many of them (including "Meredith" at one time) were male names that were taken over by females. It must be getting more and more difficult to name boy babies. But with so many unisex, unusual and contrived names nowadays, maybe a name is no longer a reason to be harrassed. I hope so!

[chocolatepuppy]

I work with a girl named Ethel. She's around 40 years old. I don't like some of these new names people are coming up with.
Some don't even sound like names!