Monday, April 16, 2012

The Story Behind the Name

I have a super common name.

My name was #1 for the decade of the 80's and it spent many years as either the #1 or #2 spot between 1980 and 1990.

I hate this.

From the age group of roughly 25-35 there are a whole hell of a lot of Jessica's.

Of course my parents didn't know this would happen at the time.

There are not a lot of Jessica's very much older than me.

It was not a popular name before the late 1970s and I was born in 1981.

Luckily they had the wherewithal to make it unique in it's spelling if not in it's pronunciation.

Ok, that's not why there is only one 's' at all.

It had nothing to do with me and letting me have a common name with a unique spelling.

There's a story behind my name.

And I've always liked it.

My name does in fact have only one 's', Jesica is not a lame attempt to be anonymous, that's my real name and the real spelling.

The story goes like this.

I am the middle child of 3 girls.

All of our first names start with the letter J.

And have 6 letters.

See, if I was the first child maybe we would of all had 7 letters in our names ;-)

But no, 2nd child means somehow they had to make Jessica have 6 letters, so I lost an S.

But it gets better.

Our middle names all start with L.

And have 4 letters.

And when you put the initials together, JLB it stands for my parents names.

J is the first letter of my dad's first name.

L is the first letter of my mom's first name.

And B, well we all have the same last name, duh.

Had any of us been boys the letters would have stayed the same, but the numbers were going to be flip flopped, so the first boy name they had picked out and never got to use was JOEL.

Cute, no?

Common name I may have, but I have a story behind the unusual spelling of the very common name.  So when people ask me "why is there only one 's'?"  Which happens often because they always think it's just spelled wrong, I have a cute story to tell them.

And people are always impressed that there's actually a story.

I've thought long and hard about doing this with my own children.  But since we all have J names I didn't want to add any more to the mix, there's a LOT of J names in my family and D for my husband's name, well....I'm not a fan of very many D names.

In fact I can't think of a single D name, boy or girl that I would consider.

So, what's a girl to do?

I'd like my kid to have a story behind their name.  But you can't just INVENT a story.  Stories have to happen organically.

As you can see, we're still stumped when it comes to the name of our future little terror.  I say terror because I'm pretty sure god has a sense of humor and this kid is going to be a Leo...just to fuck with me.

And out of nowhere, I just now remember a dream I had last night.

I had a boy baby.  And we named him my maiden name as his first name.

That would totally solve all of our problems wouldn't it.

Hmmmm......did my story just happen?

11 comments:

  1. I always think it is sweet when couples use the woman's maiden name as a first or middle name for their babies. Such a fun way to preserve that name especially when you come from a family of girls :)

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  2. Love that your name has a background story to go with it. My name ended up being quite popular around the time my mom had me also and like yours, it wasn't so popular before that. In fact, my mom had only heard one other girl named Heather. If I hadn't been named Heather, I would have been a Jennifer...almost as popular too. :)

    I'd love to give my kid a name with a story too, but for now I'd just settle on it being able to be pronounced and somewhat 'normal' for Finland and the US and something both DH and I can agree on. That isn't too much to ask is it? LOL

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  3. Hi, Jennifer here. Boy do I hear you on the popular name thing. Check out my 27 Jennifers tab on my blog. It's been really interesting to see how many Jennifers have been in the waiting rooms of the various fertility clinics I've been too. I've had st least 3 incidents of potential mistaken identities. Freaky when you are letting someone make your babies in a lab, that's for sure!

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  4. this is kenzie, I just didn't get out of Nicks gmail. Anyway - love that there is such a cool story to your name!! We didn't do anything near as cool for Bear. And I love that you are having gender dreams, I never had those-glad it was a boy dream, it helps confirm my guess. I think you are an absolute genius for not finding out the gender, BTW.

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  5. Whats your maiden name? I wanted to name our daughter after my maiden name, Ella. It's not my maiden name but it's the end of the name. D nixed it but if we have another girl, he won't have a choice! Your parents were so creative in coming up with your names, love it! I will admit, I've always loved not having a popular name =-)

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  6. Dear Jesica #1,
    I love the idea of your maiden name as a first name!

    Love, Jessica #2

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  7. If we have a boy we're naming him my maiden name. I think it might actually be the next generations trend but oh well. They'll surely be unique!!

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  8. I have a very uncommon name. My husband's name is quite common. We're kind of on the fence about unique names. I like my name, but it is always mispronounced. Hubby doesn't want one of the top 10 names, or a unique name. To complicate matters we're both teachers. We see so many kids, that certain names are ruined for us because all we can think of is the particular student.

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  9. So exciting coming up with a name for your baby. I'm currently 36 weeks and we finally have a name we both love. It doesn't have a great "story" behind it, but it's a family name and that's special to us. I'm just glad we agreed on something! Who would have thought it'd be so hard?!

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  10. Very cute name stories! As one of the Jessica's in this world I know what it is like to share this name with at least 2 people in a room at all times. When I was in middle school I convinced my teachers and classmates that the spelling was Jessca. No I. No cute story to go along with this other than I wanted to stand out! ha.

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  11. 1. if you were the oldest, your name would be Jaclyn. 2. Like me, you know that having a "slightly" uncommon name (like spelling it differently) makes it hard to find personalized gifts...They're always Christy (with a Y) or Christina (which I don't actually go by), and 3. Our cat goes by your maiden name. *giggle* but I really like that idea!! ...maybe we can use my maiden name too if we have a boy.

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