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<p>at that point why not double the ‘i’</p>
<p>i have a traditional name which has variations on the spelling. Mine is spelled the “normal” way. I always find the variations to be pretentious and annoying, but nobody would ding someone in the hiring process for those variations, since they are still waspy.</p>
<p>Asians use my name a lot. It’s a good name just the way it is. ;)</p>
<p>A few years ago there was a news story about how one of the Scandinavian nations was starting a pilot project to pay new parents some kind of monetary incentive to avoid common baby names. I think it was also offered to any adult who had a common name. Apparently the phone book in Demark or Sweden or wherever it was had names like Peter Johanssen or Frieda Sigurdson or Hans Rasmussen for pages on end and the multiplicity of names began to cause problems for various government services like mail delivery and entitlement benefits, for example.</p>
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<p>People might think she was Finnish. :D</p>
<p>Lake Washington, at some point there were so many people in Denmark with the surnames Andresen and Christiansen (or some spelling thereof) that they were required to change their names to something else. Many apparently chose some identifying geographical feature, which is how the person who told me this ended up with a name that meant “boat farm.” Their family farm was bisected by a river. Same thing happened to French Canadians under British rule. There were many people who had emigrated from a single location in France who went by the same basic surname, modified by something that indicated their trade or location. Think “Jones, the baker” and “Jones, of the marsh.” The British made them change their names to the modifier, which is how someone I know became Lanouette (a marshy field).</p>
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<p>Yipes! Indeed, Homer is is only a hair’s breadth away from “homely”. Elmer, Edsel, Mortimer, Roscoe, and Wilbur also sound like the names of Depends wearing nursing home residents.</p>
<p>We were discussing this phenomenon in my Labor Economics class this week. There is an app on iTunes called Nametrix which lists the most common occupations and political party for people with a certain first name. The names were extracted from lists of political contributions, hence the political party information.</p>
<p>I’ve known quite a few people of Asian descent whose “Western” names are ones commonly held by older “white” people.</p>
<p>I have a short list of names for my future children. My top “female” name sounds very “black,” which would probably raise a few eyebrows when people learn her name. </p>
<p>If you ever want to discover your preconceived notions about the types of people often represented by certain names, try coming up with random names or looking through the phone book thinking about the people who would “likely” have those names. It’s often the case that your perception of a certain name is based on a couple people you know who happen to share the same name.</p>
<p>I couldn’t get over the Sister Wives baby named Truley Brown.</p>
<p>I have a nineteenth century ancestor named Wealthy Ann.</p>
<p>A couple of years ago, I ran into an RN and office staff at a doctor’s office, and the name of interest was something I had never heard of - “Nevaeh”. I don’t know if this was just their private slant or if there was any merit to their opinon on the types of families where kids were named like that - it wasn’t exactly flattering. Hope the kids don’t pay a price for that if that viewpoint was more widespread. After I failed the test to determine the derivation of the name, they enlightened me. Thought it was strange - I would have associated heaven backwards would associate the name to something like hell…</p>
<p>I’ve heard Nevaeh also. Keep thinking of those supposed secret messages you get when you play a recording backwards…</p>
<p>Funnily enough, our habit of claiming to be “Irish” or “Italian” despite (in many cases) never even having visited those places often confuses or angers people who really are Irish or Italian.</p>
<p>My roommate in college was Irish, and the following conversation was quite common:</p>
<p>Stanger - Oh I love your accent!
RM - Uhh… thanks?
Stranger - I’m Irish too you know.
RM - Awesome! Where are you from?
Stranger - Boston
RM - ???</p>
<p>Those of you who are claiming that the experiment we are discussing is hardly scientific… true enough. But there are scientific studies that find the same result. You get similar results in France if you use a stereotypically Arab or Muslim name.</p>