I wanna name my daughter (if I ever have one) after my grandma, Zonelle.
It’s unique, it’s pretty and I can call her Zo, Zoey, Zozo, Nelly Nelle. It’s a versatile name!
Based on similar reasoning, I have identified that the optimal first and middle name combination (as far as I have found, anyway) is Silmarillion Mackenzie for the broadest range of nickname potential. Silly, Mari, Mari Mack, Rilly, Marill, Lion, Kenny, Kenzie, Zie, Ril, Sil, Mar, Ken, Macken, Mari Zie, etc.
I always thought that giving kids a name with many nickname variants was good since it allowed them to have some choice and ownership over the name. As for having the same name, even having one slightly different doesn’t help if the teacher forgets and calls you by the more popular, but also not actually your name, just due to them sounding the same. There are a lot of Chris’s, Christopher’s, Kristen’s, Kirsten’s, Christina’s and Christine’s my age. Keeping them all separate was brutal for teachers.
My grandma, who was a teacher, once had three girls that all had the same first, middle and last name. I think she ended up using their mother’s maiden name initials or something.
As a person with a long name, that 1) has many variants, 2) has many ‘correct’ ways of pronouncing, and 3) has many potential nicknames, I would like to point out that having the latter doesn’t really give the person themself much choice of name; rather it generally means that different groups of people are going to settle into different nicknames for you.
My preferred nickname (and my oldest) is ‘Mano’, which by pure accident is a Spanish word, to the confusion of many over its origins as a nickname. However, the most common nickname for my name is Manny. In addition to these, I have been given the nicknames ‘Emu’ and ‘E-man’, at various points, although the latter lead to much confusion with the similar-sounding ‘T-man’.
Although I have discouraged ‘Manny’ and encourage ‘Mano’, I have gradually come to realize that it’s more effort than it’s worth, and thus I rather utilize my various nicknames to pinpoint exactly where people know me from.
I hope you never went through a period where people sang that Christmas song at you and thought they were being funny and scandalous. Or thought of you when there was that scene in WALL-E.
I have so many questions about people calling you nicknames without your permission. I guess it just seems rude to me to do that, but I guess other people might not consider it to be rude. Maybe it’s a girl vs guy thing or related to certain groups like sports, as I was not really into sports after elementary school.
As for the pronunciation problems, after having an acquaintance go by the Swedish/Norwegian pronunciation of Kirsten and a cousin with the more typical version of Kirsten (the first sounds more like a key than a kur), I have seen how difficult it can be with only 2 main variations. Having unusual spellings can make it difficult too. I find it better to just assume nothing in most cases. I tend to have more trouble with last names though.
Personally, I have a really common name, Jacob, and I do NOT go by Jake, and I tell people that when they try to call me Jake. not because I have a problem with Jake, but rather by pure happenstance growing up whenever I’d be in a classroom with multiple Jacobs I just happened to be the one who got the full name treatment, so I nobody ever called me Jake and as such I’ll get confused when I hear it because that name has always been associated with the other guys in my mind. I do have a long list of nicknames I will go by, but none of them are actually based on my real name. Since I’ve been an adult, people have taken to calling me by my last name, which is fine, but I’m not entirely sure why since there are somehow no longer any other Jacobs in my immediate circle so there shouldn’t be any confusion or need for alternatives.
For reference of how ridiculous it gets sometimes, in high school I had a 30 student class where I was one of 6 Jacobs, meaning we were a full fifth of the class. Back when I played YuGiOh in my group there was one guy who had been in the group since before me who went by Jake, then I joined so I was Jacob since we already had a Jake, and then a guy whose legal name was Jake Jacobson joined in, so he went by JJ.
I’ve gotten many nicknames over the years (hence the aforementioned list), but mostly based on my personality and interests, or in some cases based on specific things that happened, like that time my LARP character was adopted by giants who couldn’t pronounce his name so they renamed him Slappy, and then everyone from that game started calling me Slappy, even out of game. Nicknames are weird and few people are allowed to pick their own.
I’ve been to some place where people use family name + a number for the order of arrival. But it’s not like SPECTRE, if number one leaves you’re still number two.
OYG*, you’d think the administration would have put them in different classes. Or were there three in every class? They must have mocked all the non-Pringles.
A person of my aquaintance got so annoyed at the fact she and all her siblings had their actual names changed to some variant, John was Jack, Barbara was Babs etc, that she called her daughters Fay and Sue. Fay changed hers to Faye and at school Sue was constantly asked, “Yes, but what does it stand for.”
We gave our children three first names each, and made it clear to them as soon as they were old dough to understand that although we would have one year we always used st home they could choose which one they went by in other situations.
The older one, Iesu Tomos Edwin, is Tom at home, but when he went to college decided to be Edwin there. The younger one, Iago Benjamin Matthew, is Ben at home, and Ben pretty much everywhere else, too – but goes by Iago with his really close friends.
The ability to choose one’s own identity is something my partner and I both consider very important (we both struggled with aspects of our own identities for years).
As a Scout leader, I meet a lot of kids with a lot of names – thankfully we’ve never had more than three of any name at the same time. So there was a Thomas, a Tom, and a Tommy at one time. And another time there were Daniel, Danny, and Dan. I also had several names that duplicated in my form group in secondary school – two each of Thomases, Michaels, Matthews, and Marks, out of a class of 25. xD
Strangely, in my entire life I’ve never met a single other person with the same name as me – Gregory. xD
Neither their father nor Sal called him Walky in the previous pages. I assume that he’s seeing that Billie is really not happy about being made fun of, and decides to get himself a nickname (following her reasoning with last names), to make himself the focus of the other kids’ teasing.
You’re right: this is the very moment when Walky coined his nickname (which totally went over my head, the first time I read it), just to support Billie.
I recall my parents telling me that they each knew, like, four or five different Jennifers in high school and I always wondered how the hell they kept them all straight.
In high school, one of my best friend’s younger sisters was named Jennifer, and her nickname was Fer for a long time. She goes by Jenn now though, as far as I know.
Assuming the classic 10% and assuming the ‘rents knew 4.5 between them, that’s 9 chances at 10% each is about a 62% chance one of their Jennifers is fabulous. But I always thought that 10% figure was highly suspect and likely warped by being measured in a _very_ unnaccepting environment.
Still, 62% are pretty good odds, even if not particularly odd.
When I was in primary school, not only were there a whole bunch of Davids (I only use the Gaelic spelling online, and I didn’t even know about it then), there were two others who shared my surname. One was a couple of years older, but I shared an art class with the other, and we had to use middle initials when signing our work.
One year at an interest meeting for a club in college, 2 or 3 guys named pat showed up. Somebody dubbed one of the freshman pats “mr cuddles” and he remained mr cuddles, even after the other pats stopped showing up. Some of the best nicknames are because there are too many people with the same name.
I’ve always thought that someone named Patrick should go by “Trick”. Maybe I’ll put that in a story someday (if I ever actually get around to putting in the time and effort to write anything)
I’m reminded of a story I heard on a podcast. One of the hosts was in a friend group when he was younger, in which there were 3 guys named Will. If I recall correctly, the story went something like one of them went by Billy, one was Filipino so they all called him Willipino, and the host went by his last name, Stamper, so nobody was “Will” anymore.
I became “thejeff” basically the same way. Too many Jeffs in our immediate friend circle in college. The others picked up descriptors, I was the first so became “thejeff”.
As a teacher, I’ll commonly get two or even three of the same name in a class. I don’t bother with nicknames or initials (unless the student specifically requests it); I just use the name as-is and they always know who’s who because I’m addressing whichever one I’m looking at. Works pretty well.
There were a ton of Jacobs in my school growing up so eventually they all had their first names erased in favor of their last names. So eventually there were no Jacobs, only Levi, Rosen and Fredricks.
My real name is Zoë, decently unique (my spelling especially) but doesn’t stand out too much, but i guess between the years 1995-2003 parents in my part of the country decided they were obsessed, because i grew up knowing at least 3 or 4 other Zoe’s of some variant in my tiny school. One of them was in my grade and naturally one of my “best friends” (we were like 9, all backstabbing little bongoes who hated each other) and to make matters worse, we had the same last initials too.
I don’t think people mixed us up much but when i had to sit next to a Chloe in class (much more common name, only Chloe in the school), that was hell.
My current nickname didn’t even come out of that, no one really tried too hard to differentiate us. zee comes from my now boyfriend seeing “zozeebo” as a screen name when we first met and deciding “that is way too many letters”
One time I was working with a class with three kids named Kate in it, and they all sat near each other, each with a difference hair color, and I just kept thinking about the Ashleys from Recess.
What I remember from that day was taking attendance and saying “Kate” and then having four voices pop up with “Which one?” and then used last initials for the rest of attendance. (I also don’t think “Kate” was the exact given name for all of them, but it was what they all went by.)
All my favourite names for me were gifts from others, and include associated positive memories. It always felt weird to choose my own name when I did, and after a couple of legal name changes (married. mistakes were made) I’ve ended up back with my legal name at the time of my birth.
Still love those nicknames people have given me with care though.
It should be more societally accepted for people to choose their own name, without getting weird looks or roundabout accusations of a felony. Taffy isn’t any weirder a name than Gerald, and so what if a few people decide to name themselves “Ghostbusters 2 on DVD and Blu-ray”?
Last year at my school, I worked with three different Ashleys in one grade level. One was Ashley two last names, one was Ashley one last name. And the other was no-E Ashly. And that was only the Ashleys I knew about!
I feel your pain. Movies and songs make things difficult sometimes. One little kid this year at my school is Bruno. We have to restrain ourselves regularly. My daughter’s name is from the same movie. It used to be unusual and unknown, but not any more!
I also have an Eileen this year. Guess what – she tends to be slow. Whenever I say Come on, Eileen, I have restrain myself from singing it.
Of course, my name crops up in numerous songs, so I’ve spent my life with people singing at me. Oh, yeah, like I’ve not heard THAT before.
I am the Willis age so there were lots of Jennifers ans Melissas in my schooling. Now I’m an English teacher in Asia and have been inundated with Elsas and Annas.
It doesn’t feel like she chose the name because she identified with it or anything, just that she realised these girls wouldn’t let her be Jennifer, and she had to say *something*.
Probably for the very reason we see in this strip. There are a lot of Jennifers around, so a nickname like Billie helps you stand out. Don’t wanna end up as an Other Rachel.
How do we know Other Rachel’s first name isn’t actually “Other” and her last name is “Rachel”? Maybe everyone just calls her by her full name cause that’s what she prefers.
I like when people call the not-other Rachel “Tall Rachel” to highlight how arbitrary it is. More people just happened to know and/or like one than the other.
Of course from a real-world perspective it’s also because she’s a prominent secondary character and Other Rachel isn’t but, y’know
In (the cult classic musical comedy show) Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, there’s a group of friends with two Joshes, one of them is just “Josh” and the other one is “White Josh” =D
I had one class in middle school where there were four Johns, three John Cs, and two John Campbells. Fortunately the other one had a different middle initial than me.
We had a substitute one day. We almost all got detention because he thought we were messing with him.
Apparently John is the third most common men’s name in America, so it kind of makes sense. Jennifer is actually the third most common women’s name too. So this all really adds up!
This is a interesting twist, in the original AU Ruth gave Walky his nickname to make it fair for Billie/Jennifer to make fun of him since he started calling her Billie to make fun of her. But here gave himself the silly name so she wouldn’t be mocked alone.
Yes, kids are terrible and will latch onto any difference they can mock. I highly doubt they would’ve called her “Buttifer” and laughed off her correction as embarrassed backpedaling if he didn’t butt in.
Walky served that mockery opportunity up to them on a silver platter.
Well given they’re like 5 and as of the sliding time scale this is 2009… actually probably yeah, MJ died a few months ago and people would be blasting his greatest hits in memorial. Of they’re anything like i was they hate the song and all his other songs bc old people won’t stop playing it
Sometimes I think about the fact that Sharkboy and Lava Girl are played by Taylor Lautner and Taylor Dooley respectively. Like what’re the ODDS? Same spelling and everything. I assume the director just had to use their last names.
What’s important is that this may not just be the origin of “Billie”. The implication here is that Walky started going by Walky as a show of solidarity. They both went by their last names turned nicknames and that connected them, even when they grew apart. So by going by Jennifer, she’s actually kinda severed that bond a bit.
Show of solidarity, but also guilt. That penultimate panel screams that he’s realizing what he did with his loud and obnoxious playing with her name at the start. Helped along by Billie’s very expressive glare at him.
Walky can be very perceptive, clever, and even empathetic when he’s motivated to be. He’s just usually more comfortable to slack off or be a smartass.
That glare? It made him uncomfortable. With the guilt and/or fear motivating him, he flexed his cleverness and solved the issue to make the situation comfortable again.
Oh yeah, I didn’t notice that. I tend to forget that Walky’s first name is actually David because of how long I’ve been reading multiple Willis comics with him going by the nickname Walky, and he’s rarely called himself by his real first name in any of them.
Yeah, I don’t think that had been spelled out before – even that there was a link between them both using their last name. I’d wondered if losing that bond was part of why her going back to Jennifer bothered Walky so much.
I love the solidarity. I do think it’s interesting that, even with her going by “Jennifer” and trying to have a fresh start and all that, she doesn’t call Walky “David”, not that I can recall.
I’ve skimmed through Jennifer’s post-timeskip reintroduction and I don’t think she did? By this point, Walky likes being called Walky and is called that by 99% of folks he knows, even casual acquaintances (which is what Jennifer is trying to be right now).
I think it was Dorothy who was calling Walky “David” for a little while after their breakup, as a way to mentally reinforce in her mind the fact that they’d broken up and weren’t getting back together.
Once, at least to his face. Then he objected and she stopped. (And he left looking sad, so she considered helping him get over her with a quickie, but Joyce stopped her.)
I know this pain all too well. I was one of three Jeffs in my class in high school. We were all Jeff H. [I mean, presumably, we all still are… But you know what I mean]
The other two were Harvey and Hart. So, like, there wasn’t even a way for Hart to abbreviate his name.
Given the dominant element of my last name sounding like “Hog”, I wasn’t exactly about to start going by “Piggy”, as an insecure, fat, shy nerd in high school. But honestly? Looking back, I probably could have leaned into that. Made it work. But high school-Jeff was a very different person than current Jeff. It took a long time for me to cultivate any sort of personal confidence.
No one should go by Piggy until at least a year after you have read Lord of the Flies in class. Things did not end well for Piggy and people do not need to be encouraged.
My 4 year old is routinely Elsa, the Brick Piggy, Little Red Riding Hood, Spiderman… She calls her big sister Doggy or Mum as often as she calls her by her name. (I’m Mummy, or Ho Ho aka Mummy Christmas, mainly, but sometimes I get to be my 7 year old 😏).
She spends her whole life playing and has a good imagination and a compliant big sister, with whom she’s “best friends forever” when they aren’t fighting 😉
Been learning mandarin on duolingo for a couple monrhs so I for curious about your avatar, here’s what my dictionary says:
彩〔-/綵〕
PY cǎi
1 colour; 2 applause, cheer; 3 variety, brilliance, splendour; 4 prize, lottery; 5 blood from a wound; 6 special skills employed in magic or opera to achieve a desired effect.
Nice =)
(Then again maybe yours isnt a Chinese character and means something different in Japanese or whichever Hanzi-using East Asian language you chose it from)
Well if we’re comparing experiences let me just say through out my high-school days I met 5 different Brandon’s at once and one of them ended up being one of my best friends at the time.
This is why I never wanted to name my kids a top 100 name. I’ve finally conceded to banning the top 16 and hoping my favorites don’t trickle up. I just don’t want to add to the army of Emmas and Jackson’s lol
A friend of mine is a refugee from Sudan. his first and last name are extremely common and like many people on the planet who come from non-bureaucratic, low-literacy countries, he never had an official date of birth so in France he’s registered as being born on Jan. 1.
It took SO MANY phonecalls and emails and official letters to untangle his identity from that of another refugee with the same name and date of birth living in the same city. It was a fucking nightmare. Bank account, social security number, employment office, even their Uber Eats rider accounts: everything was completely mixed up. The people in the various institutions i would talk to on my friend’s behalf would freak the fuck out and try their very best to get rid of us because they knew if they touched this case they would spend days sorting it out. (we managed to corner someone into helping him eventually, sent them a 10 page email with dozens of attachments. We harassed them for weeks until finally they did their job and fixed the bureaucratic botch-up.)
Oof. It really do be like that sometimes. I used to work in banking and then healthcare (durable medical equipment) AND THEN insurance (cars and houses) and even now that I work at a towing company I still run into situations that are just … boiling tar. Sticks to everything and burns. No escape. The complications JUST. KEEP. COMING. It’s like that Parks and Rec clip where you wipe, and you wipe, and you wipe and wipe and wipe, still brown! It’s as if you got a permanent marker down there. Sometimes it’s like there’s no bloody end in sight–or worse, all the ends, seen and unseen, seem to be the “bloody” kind. There have been darn near half a dozen occasions at my current job where the company owner himself had to intervene and cut losses, losing hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the table, just to GET AWAY FROM IT. Gnawing our own leg off to escape the bear trap in here.
And I used to pride myself on being the place where the buck stops. I wanted to be THE FINAL PERSON someone had to talk to in order to get their situation fixed. It got me in trouble. Over. And Over. Again. Because call centers don’t care about RESULTS, just “handle time”: how quick can you get someone to HANG UP. It was disgusting. At least here, I generally leave people in better shape than I found ’em in. But even then, there’s always a chance we’ll hit another one of those cursed situations with no solution accessible that won’t take a hundred man-hours to resolve.
oh yeah, i’ve been in remote customer service for a few months as well. At least my job was for Apple, so if i couldn’t solve the problem there was a specialized technician i could bump the case over to (though i was highly encouraged to limit those to a minimum, as well as to end the call as quickly as possible.) So, i have an idea of the kind of pressure you’re talking about.
On the other hand, most of the people i’m talking about were all some sort of public servant (ok not the bank or the Uber Eats staff, and those were definitely among the least helpful and most blatantly dismissive), so that was kind of an extra layer of infuriating.
Been there, done that, Cyrus, for over ten years as a CSR for three different cellular providers. The only thing you didn’t mention was that as well as trying to keep calls under a certain time per call, you had to sweat out the customer response surveys, whereby even if you DID solve all their problems, they could still trash your reputation (and cost you bonus money). I don’t know how many times I got a survey that went something like “Bill solved all my problems but I still think the service/company itself sucks so that’s why I’m giving this call a zero.” And management didn’t care; a zero was a zero, whether it’s your fault or not.
yyyyep. makes some twisted sense though, because from the point of view of the company they pay you to represent them and their good name. Your job is to make sure the customer is happy not just with you as a person, but with the company.
Not that i’m defending them, but it’s the system that’s fucked up, not (necessarily) the individual companies or managers.
Going with the name stories, in college I joined a service organization which had over a DOZEN members named “Rob.” No Bobs, no Roberts, ALL of us went by Rob. So we were assigned adjectives. Short Rob, Tall Rob, Old Rob, Heavy Rob, Good Rob, Evil Rob, Black Rob…
But they called ME “Hack.” (Partly because I played D&D fighters a lot, partly because I wanted to be a writer but wasn’t very good.)
I actually wanted to do this for my son, as we had picked a non-American first name and I remembered how cruel middle school was for some children. It reflected our family, while being something new in both of ours as we had enough of duplicated names.
However, there was another unusual name that I liked and his father loved, so we went with that one for the middle. My husband had very little input on the name of his first born (birthed by a previous partner) and kids sometimes like being unique in thay way (as long as name is easy to spell!), so it was important that my husband’s voice was represented. As it stands, it doesnt seem to matter how common a name is anymore, because the name diversity at his school makes me sad I was a 90s child.
When he’s older, if he wants a name change, we have a list of old alternative names if he wants to look at that as a statting point or he can find something completely new. I had a name change so I completely understand.
I’ve had a friend with a rather uncommon first name and his probleme isn’t that he’s been picked on while kid (you don’t need a name to be uncommon for that), but that he has no access to the relative anonymity we’ve all been given. He says he can’t quit a job with some boss’s anger, nor unionize, nor use social networks with his real name. And his name being uncommon, I’ve never thought of giving him a nickname – and it’s been strange using it when he asked it from us. It was strange that he didn’t want to create a new identity with that. I don’t know if that nick sticked.
On one hand I am glad I never had to be Firstname L(astname), I think I actually never went to a school where there was another student with the same first name as me until university. On the other hand I never got a cool/fun nickname.
I wish I could say this got better in adulthood but it doesn’t…
As a Michael who was always “Mikey” at home or “Mike” elsewhere, I still always put “Michael” on paperwork like a resume or officially signing up at work, because y’know that’s my actual name. So I start a job where there’s already a “Mike” there, and my everything says “Michael,” so the latter sticks. I’ve been Michael at work for 14 years, and nowhere else. Finally getting more “Mike”s now that I’m the last Mike standing, but it took a long damn time.
I had a social worker named Miguel who was “Michael” in his personal life because his family had a million Miguels, so there was a Miguel and a whatever Mike is in Spanish and a Mike and a Michael and a Mikey… In his professional life he was Miguel though.
Cripes how have I been reading Willis’ stuff for nearly 20 years and only just now realized both Billie and Wally go by their last names, unlike the rest of the main cast of any comic they’ve been in?
In my graduating class there were two Ben Johnsons and they even had the same middle initial, so we nicknamed them by their hair color since one was blonde and the other had brown hair
He used to be perceptive. Is this a Mike case where he got worse due to experience (golden childed) or just his spectrum kicking in ad that can be more noticeable with age ( meeeeee)?
This case doesn’t require much perception, it mostly requires ears. It more likely just got HARDER with time as other people picked up on social rules and started to say things with more subtlety while Walky didn’t due to his ADHD because you know, someone calling someone a name copier is a clear insult.
Obviously this shows Jennifer has experienced personal growth and cast aside the crutch of the Billie name to become a more mature experienced adult, banishing Walky as well as other childish things to the Outer Planes of her soul.
Maybe Acheron or Limbo. Probably not the Nine Hells.
This strip reminds of how quickly kids can come up with incredibly stupid and silly things to make fun of other kids for.
Also it kinda sucks how some first names end up being so very common. There have always been multiple Daniels at every school I’ve gone to, and at work too.
One of my family lines is from a small German village in Bavaria. Custom is to name you after your godparent. The cemetery is full of Andreas, Johann and Heinrich. Almost exclusively. One of the three female names was Kunagunda.
My great grandfather Andreas had a brother Andreas. The older one was called “little” because he was shorter. They both moved to Wisconsin and lived in the same city, where the mayor shared their name. I think they did that to mess with genealogists.
my mom got in a fight with a girl that had the same name as her in her school days…and I mean a FIGHT, mom lost a tooth when she bit the girl hard enough that it got stuck in her arm. It was the other girl who initiated the fight but my mom finished it.
I think I remembered that recently the most popular baby boys name was Oliver in a lot of States. And the most popular girl’s name was Olive. (It might have been in 2020). A moment of silence for those poor teachers in three plus years.
Before I was proclaimed Opus, my father and I had the same name and middle initial, which caused much confusion (still does 10 years after he died), and people tried to call me by my middle name. Unfortunately this was the same name as a popular comic strip character, who had a trope of misbehavior that I didn’t like. And yes I see the irony in getting named for another comic strip character 40 years later.
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tbh I wanted to give any theoretical kids I had names that allowed for MANY nicknames if they so wanted to differentiate
…tho that does bring to mind a friend’s story about the first day of classes:
Teacher: Emily A?
Emily A: I prefer Emma.
Teacher: Okay, Emily B?
Emily B: I prefer Millie.
Teacher: Fine. Emily C?
Emily C: I prefer Emwy.
Teacher: Good lord… Emily D?
Emily D: Emily is fine.
Teacher: Oh thank god… Boyd?
Boyd: I prefer Emily.
The last one is so great. As a substitute teacher, I am very familiar with this phenomenon.
I wanna name my daughter (if I ever have one) after my grandma, Zonelle.
It’s unique, it’s pretty and I can call her Zo, Zoey, Zozo, Nelly Nelle. It’s a versatile name!
Based on similar reasoning, I have identified that the optimal first and middle name combination (as far as I have found, anyway) is Silmarillion Mackenzie for the broadest range of nickname potential. Silly, Mari, Mari Mack, Rilly, Marill, Lion, Kenny, Kenzie, Zie, Ril, Sil, Mar, Ken, Macken, Mari Zie, etc.
Very creative!
I always thought that giving kids a name with many nickname variants was good since it allowed them to have some choice and ownership over the name. As for having the same name, even having one slightly different doesn’t help if the teacher forgets and calls you by the more popular, but also not actually your name, just due to them sounding the same. There are a lot of Chris’s, Christopher’s, Kristen’s, Kirsten’s, Christina’s and Christine’s my age. Keeping them all separate was brutal for teachers.
My grandma, who was a teacher, once had three girls that all had the same first, middle and last name. I think she ended up using their mother’s maiden name initials or something.
As a person with a long name, that 1) has many variants, 2) has many ‘correct’ ways of pronouncing, and 3) has many potential nicknames, I would like to point out that having the latter doesn’t really give the person themself much choice of name; rather it generally means that different groups of people are going to settle into different nicknames for you.
My preferred nickname (and my oldest) is ‘Mano’, which by pure accident is a Spanish word, to the confusion of many over its origins as a nickname. However, the most common nickname for my name is Manny. In addition to these, I have been given the nicknames ‘Emu’ and ‘E-man’, at various points, although the latter lead to much confusion with the similar-sounding ‘T-man’.
Although I have discouraged ‘Manny’ and encourage ‘Mano’, I have gradually come to realize that it’s more effort than it’s worth, and thus I rather utilize my various nicknames to pinpoint exactly where people know me from.
I hope you never went through a period where people sang that Christmas song at you and thought they were being funny and scandalous. Or thought of you when there was that scene in WALL-E.
Ah, another Christmas song baby! Yeah!
I have so many questions about people calling you nicknames without your permission. I guess it just seems rude to me to do that, but I guess other people might not consider it to be rude. Maybe it’s a girl vs guy thing or related to certain groups like sports, as I was not really into sports after elementary school.
As for the pronunciation problems, after having an acquaintance go by the Swedish/Norwegian pronunciation of Kirsten and a cousin with the more typical version of Kirsten (the first sounds more like a key than a kur), I have seen how difficult it can be with only 2 main variations. Having unusual spellings can make it difficult too. I find it better to just assume nothing in most cases. I tend to have more trouble with last names though.
Personally, I have a really common name, Jacob, and I do NOT go by Jake, and I tell people that when they try to call me Jake. not because I have a problem with Jake, but rather by pure happenstance growing up whenever I’d be in a classroom with multiple Jacobs I just happened to be the one who got the full name treatment, so I nobody ever called me Jake and as such I’ll get confused when I hear it because that name has always been associated with the other guys in my mind. I do have a long list of nicknames I will go by, but none of them are actually based on my real name. Since I’ve been an adult, people have taken to calling me by my last name, which is fine, but I’m not entirely sure why since there are somehow no longer any other Jacobs in my immediate circle so there shouldn’t be any confusion or need for alternatives.
For reference of how ridiculous it gets sometimes, in high school I had a 30 student class where I was one of 6 Jacobs, meaning we were a full fifth of the class. Back when I played YuGiOh in my group there was one guy who had been in the group since before me who went by Jake, then I joined so I was Jacob since we already had a Jake, and then a guy whose legal name was Jake Jacobson joined in, so he went by JJ.
I’ve gotten many nicknames over the years (hence the aforementioned list), but mostly based on my personality and interests, or in some cases based on specific things that happened, like that time my LARP character was adopted by giants who couldn’t pronounce his name so they renamed him Slappy, and then everyone from that game started calling me Slappy, even out of game. Nicknames are weird and few people are allowed to pick their own.
Yes. I’ve been Tommy and Tom and Thomas, and even TopCat, all with no control on my part.
I’ve been to some place where people use family name + a number for the order of arrival. But it’s not like SPECTRE, if number one leaves you’re still number two.
OYG*, you’d think the administration would have put them in different classes. Or were there three in every class? They must have mocked all the non-Pringles.
*Oh Your God
A person of my aquaintance got so annoyed at the fact she and all her siblings had their actual names changed to some variant, John was Jack, Barbara was Babs etc, that she called her daughters Fay and Sue. Fay changed hers to Faye and at school Sue was constantly asked, “Yes, but what does it stand for.”
I have a name that’s “short” bc Mom wanted to make up for our long last name, and everyone thinks it’s short for something
uh
no
stop adding “uh” to my name pls
We gave our children three first names each, and made it clear to them as soon as they were old dough to understand that although we would have one year we always used st home they could choose which one they went by in other situations.
The older one, Iesu Tomos Edwin, is Tom at home, but when he went to college decided to be Edwin there. The younger one, Iago Benjamin Matthew, is Ben at home, and Ben pretty much everywhere else, too – but goes by Iago with his really close friends.
The ability to choose one’s own identity is something my partner and I both consider very important (we both struggled with aspects of our own identities for years).
As a Scout leader, I meet a lot of kids with a lot of names – thankfully we’ve never had more than three of any name at the same time. So there was a Thomas, a Tom, and a Tommy at one time. And another time there were Daniel, Danny, and Dan. I also had several names that duplicated in my form group in secondary school – two each of Thomases, Michaels, Matthews, and Marks, out of a class of 25. xD
Strangely, in my entire life I’ve never met a single other person with the same name as me – Gregory. xD
I would have been that kid. Say it as a joke, but most of the supply teachers we had would have called my bluff and I’d be boy Emily all day.
My grandmother’s named Billie. Like not as a nickname, that’s just her first name.
Is her last name Holiday? 😉
Billie Easter.
Is it Billie Jean, famous non-lover of Michael Jackson?
William Jeanette is not my paramour, she is simply a young female with a spurious claim regarding the parentage of her progeny.
The humanling was not begotten by yours truly!
Yeah I’ve got an Aunt Freddie myself. Gender bent names surviving the times, ftw!
I have an Uncle Stacy – Didn’t even know it was a “girl’s name” until I was in middle school and someone laughed.
Both my uncle and maternal grandfather were named Merle. It’s a type of bird, so it’s usually a girl’s name, but not in my family.
Billie: Origins
Hrm. Did she intentionally not name-drop her last name? That feels… very intentional.
Of course it was. She realized she didn’t want them to know she’s rich.
I think she realized that the teasing would continue until she picked another first name.
Well, ‘Billie’ IS her last name, so she’s not exactly hiding it.
I love how Walky goes through, “Hey, they’re teasing her for her nickname – hey wait, I’M often teased for my nickname… BESTIES!!”
Neither their father nor Sal called him Walky in the previous pages. I assume that he’s seeing that Billie is really not happy about being made fun of, and decides to get himself a nickname (following her reasoning with last names), to make himself the focus of the other kids’ teasing.
You’re right: this is the very moment when Walky coined his nickname (which totally went over my head, the first time I read it), just to support Billie.
This is sweet. New sister acquired!
I recall my parents telling me that they each knew, like, four or five different Jennifers in high school and I always wondered how the hell they kept them all straight.
I mean if they wanted, they could have used Jennifer, Jenny, Jen, and, uh… Fergie?
In high school, one of my best friend’s younger sisters was named Jennifer, and her nickname was Fer for a long time. She goes by Jenn now though, as far as I know.
Jenna is an alternate too, or going by a middle name.
Furry and Nif
Jenjen! Nifnif! Jennifnif! Nifferfer!
…i like reduplication =D (not all my friends approve of that quirk.)
We don’t know, odds are one of them was gay.
Fair point. Jennifer’s attempts to keep herself straight will always be doomed to failure.
That’s not very odd.
Assuming the classic 10% and assuming the ‘rents knew 4.5 between them, that’s 9 chances at 10% each is about a 62% chance one of their Jennifers is fabulous. But I always thought that 10% figure was highly suspect and likely warped by being measured in a _very_ unnaccepting environment.
Still, 62% are pretty good odds, even if not particularly odd.
Something using the last name is pretty common.
When I was in primary school, not only were there a whole bunch of Davids (I only use the Gaelic spelling online, and I didn’t even know about it then), there were two others who shared my surname. One was a couple of years older, but I shared an art class with the other, and we had to use middle initials when signing our work.
I think my favorite version of this was in college when yet another Chris joined our local “All Things Nerd” club.
“We’ve got too many damn Chris’ here. You’re like the forth one, so you’re C4.”
Tripping into a good nickname out of frustration. The early 21st century was a wild time.
I was one of 3 Andys in my fraternity, and there were also 3 Mikes. Considering the chapter was like 14 men, that was mildly surprising.
One year at an interest meeting for a club in college, 2 or 3 guys named pat showed up. Somebody dubbed one of the freshman pats “mr cuddles” and he remained mr cuddles, even after the other pats stopped showing up. Some of the best nicknames are because there are too many people with the same name.
I’ve always thought that someone named Patrick should go by “Trick”. Maybe I’ll put that in a story someday
(if I ever actually get around to putting in the time and effort to write anything)I’m reminded of a story I heard on a podcast. One of the hosts was in a friend group when he was younger, in which there were 3 guys named Will. If I recall correctly, the story went something like one of them went by Billy, one was Filipino so they all called him Willipino, and the host went by his last name, Stamper, so nobody was “Will” anymore.
I became “thejeff” basically the same way. Too many Jeffs in our immediate friend circle in college. The others picked up descriptors, I was the first so became “thejeff”.
The Jeff is a very elusive creature which can be found in groups in upper education institutions.
At least you weren’t C3.
As a teacher, I’ll commonly get two or even three of the same name in a class. I don’t bother with nicknames or initials (unless the student specifically requests it); I just use the name as-is and they always know who’s who because I’m addressing whichever one I’m looking at. Works pretty well.
Same. Knew a ton of Jennifers growing up.
Also, currently, I only have two ‘mom’ friends (that is female friends who have children of their own). Catherine and Katherine.
There were a ton of Jacobs in my school growing up so eventually they all had their first names erased in favor of their last names. So eventually there were no Jacobs, only Levi, Rosen and Fredricks.
My real name is Zoë, decently unique (my spelling especially) but doesn’t stand out too much, but i guess between the years 1995-2003 parents in my part of the country decided they were obsessed, because i grew up knowing at least 3 or 4 other Zoe’s of some variant in my tiny school. One of them was in my grade and naturally one of my “best friends” (we were like 9, all backstabbing little bongoes who hated each other) and to make matters worse, we had the same last initials too.
I don’t think people mixed us up much but when i had to sit next to a Chloe in class (much more common name, only Chloe in the school), that was hell.
My current nickname didn’t even come out of that, no one really tried too hard to differentiate us. zee comes from my now boyfriend seeing “zozeebo” as a screen name when we first met and deciding “that is way too many letters”
One time I was working with a class with three kids named Kate in it, and they all sat near each other, each with a difference hair color, and I just kept thinking about the Ashleys from Recess.
Did you call them using their last names or something?
What I remember from that day was taking attendance and saying “Kate” and then having four voices pop up with “Which one?” and then used last initials for the rest of attendance. (I also don’t think “Kate” was the exact given name for all of them, but it was what they all went by.)
Oh that’s so cute! 😊
Also, hell yeah for naming yourself! Naming yourself can feel awesome.
Hell yeah it does.
Though I have to admit, despite it feeling good at first, I’ve never quite found a name that really “fit” me.
All my favourite names for me were gifts from others, and include associated positive memories. It always felt weird to choose my own name when I did, and after a couple of legal name changes (married. mistakes were made) I’ve ended up back with my legal name at the time of my birth.
Still love those nicknames people have given me with care though.
It should be more societally accepted for people to choose their own name, without getting weird looks or roundabout accusations of a felony. Taffy isn’t any weirder a name than Gerald, and so what if a few people decide to name themselves “Ghostbusters 2 on DVD and Blu-ray”?
“No, you see, it’s SPELLED ‘Ghostbusters 2 on DVD and Blu-ray’ bit It’s pronounced ‘Cat who lives in the barn loft.’”
Taffy isn’t really a weird name for a generation who grew up on heroines named Buffy and Rory.
Did you name yourself Yumi? storytime! …storytime???
Ugh I’m an Ashley and wanted to punch someone every time they were all “LOL LIKE THE ASHLEY’S FROM RECESS”
Yes, thank you it was the most popular name I was born >.<
Whenever I see that name I always think about Ashley from the first Pokemon Movie. 😊
BTW got any tasty jokes? 😋
Last year at my school, I worked with three different Ashleys in one grade level. One was Ashley two last names, one was Ashley one last name. And the other was no-E Ashly. And that was only the Ashleys I knew about!
A name with a common pronunciation but an uncommon spelling?
Why would you do that to your child?! You’re just dooming them to a lifetime of correcting people.
(Sorry to all the Kaetlynnes and Makenzeighs of the world. This isn’t about you, it’s about your parents.)
I feel your pain. Movies and songs make things difficult sometimes. One little kid this year at my school is Bruno. We have to restrain ourselves regularly. My daughter’s name is from the same movie. It used to be unusual and unknown, but not any more!
I also have an Eileen this year. Guess what – she tends to be slow. Whenever I say Come on, Eileen, I have restrain myself from singing it.
Of course, my name crops up in numerous songs, so I’ve spent my life with people singing at me. Oh, yeah, like I’ve not heard THAT before.
I am the Willis age so there were lots of Jennifers ans Melissas in my schooling. Now I’m an English teacher in Asia and have been inundated with Elsas and Annas.
Holy crap, Frozen is already 9 years old…
Heathers seedlings
Huh.
So she never really liked Billie since the beginning?
Why’d she keep it all the way to college?
What here makes you think she didn’t like it?
It doesn’t feel like she chose the name because she identified with it or anything, just that she realised these girls wouldn’t let her be Jennifer, and she had to say *something*.
Because at that point it was too late, as “Billie” was basically now more or less her official brand name recognized by everyone.
Note that this head canon is subject to revision in light of new evidence to the contrary.
Probably for the very reason we see in this strip. There are a lot of Jennifers around, so a nickname like Billie helps you stand out. Don’t wanna end up as an Other Rachel.
How do we know Other Rachel’s first name isn’t actually “Other” and her last name is “Rachel”? Maybe everyone just calls her by her full name cause that’s what she prefers.
She very specifically requested to not be called Other Rachel anymore.
I like when people call the not-other Rachel “Tall Rachel” to highlight how arbitrary it is. More people just happened to know and/or like one than the other.
Of course from a real-world perspective it’s also because she’s a prominent secondary character and Other Rachel isn’t but, y’know
In (the cult classic musical comedy show) Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, there’s a group of friends with two Joshes, one of them is just “Josh” and the other one is “White Josh” =D
That has big Regular-Sized Rudy (Bob’s Burgers) energy.
Sealab 2021, Debbie and “Black Debbie” (who is a bit salty about it, and rightly so).
So Bille has been in Jennifer’s Body all along.
^ D’oh! Billie
*Daryl Stuermer guitar solo*
Don’t Lose My Number?
Oh, Billie
Billie don’t you lose my number
‘Cause you’re not anywhere
That I can’t find you
Not the first time I alluded to said song; I’m sure it won’t be the last. 😉
I believe that this now makes no fewer than nine different Jennifers who have appeared or been mentioned in the comic to date.
wait really? freshener?
Joyce mentioned knowing like 7 Jennifers at home or something.
Six Jennifers. Ours is the Seventh Jennifer, and these two more make nine.
oh riiiight (…they said as though they had actually just momentarily misplaced the memory of that strip rather than forgotten it entirely)
I remembered, but thought it was 3 or something – not enough to cover the rest of the jenniad.
I had one class in middle school where there were four Johns, three John Cs, and two John Campbells. Fortunately the other one had a different middle initial than me.
We had a substitute one day. We almost all got detention because he thought we were messing with him.
Apparently John is the third most common men’s name in America, so it kind of makes sense. Jennifer is actually the third most common women’s name too. So this all really adds up!
Oh right I forgot that kids are like that.
This is a interesting twist, in the original AU Ruth gave Walky his nickname to make it fair for Billie/Jennifer to make fun of him since he started calling her Billie to make fun of her. But here gave himself the silly name so she wouldn’t be mocked alone.
But the mockery is his fault, so he’s just solving a problem he caused.
Tbh that seems a little bit like blaming a small trench made with a plastic shovel for bringing the tide in. Kids just…do that.
Yes, kids are terrible and will latch onto any difference they can mock. I highly doubt they would’ve called her “Buttifer” and laughed off her correction as embarrassed backpedaling if he didn’t butt in.
Walky served that mockery opportunity up to them on a silver platter.
Oh you poor little brats. Haven’t you ever heard of a little someone named “Billie-Jeane”? Billie is an EVERYONE name.
I’ve heard of her, but she’s not my lover. She’s just a girl who says that I am the one.
A++
Then there’s Billie Jo…
Well given they’re like 5 and as of the sliding time scale this is 2009… actually probably yeah, MJ died a few months ago and people would be blasting his greatest hits in memorial. Of they’re anything like i was they hate the song and all his other songs bc old people won’t stop playing it
Sometimes I think about the fact that Sharkboy and Lava Girl are played by Taylor Lautner and Taylor Dooley respectively. Like what’re the ODDS? Same spelling and everything. I assume the director just had to use their last names.
😆 I love that movie! 😍
Wonder if there’s a kid in this school with a dream journal…
I had a French language class in High School, and we had two Lauries. Same first middle and last names, even though they weren’t related at all.
That’s BONKERS.
That’s a common spelling for Taylor. I feel for the Teylors/Taylers though xD it was a weird coincidence for the movie tho
Somehow I wouldn’t put it past Director Robert Rodriguez to have done this on purpose.
Taylor Lautner acted alongside Taylor Dooley, and later went on to date Taylor Swift
Which one gets to call their biography “Brave Little Taylor”?
What’s important is that this may not just be the origin of “Billie”. The implication here is that Walky started going by Walky as a show of solidarity. They both went by their last names turned nicknames and that connected them, even when they grew apart. So by going by Jennifer, she’s actually kinda severed that bond a bit.
Ooo! Good read, I didn’t even notice that!
Show of solidarity, but also guilt. That penultimate panel screams that he’s realizing what he did with his loud and obnoxious playing with her name at the start. Helped along by Billie’s very expressive glare at him.
So it might be fear, too.
Walky can be very perceptive, clever, and even empathetic when he’s motivated to be. He’s just usually more comfortable to slack off or be a smartass.
That glare? It made him uncomfortable. With the guilt and/or fear motivating him, he flexed his cleverness and solved the issue to make the situation comfortable again.
Oh yeah, I didn’t notice that. I tend to forget that Walky’s first name is actually David because of how long I’ve been reading multiple Willis comics with him going by the nickname Walky, and he’s rarely called himself by his real first name in any of them.
Yeah, I don’t think that had been spelled out before – even that there was a link between them both using their last name. I’d wondered if losing that bond was part of why her going back to Jennifer bothered Walky so much.
Aww, that’s actually really sweet and quick thinking by Walky here :3
Finally! THE ORIGIN STORY!
(Coming to MCU in Phase 8.)
I love the solidarity. I do think it’s interesting that, even with her going by “Jennifer” and trying to have a fresh start and all that, she doesn’t call Walky “David”, not that I can recall.
I think she did once around when she established on page that she wasn’t going by Billie anymore, thought it has been awhile I could be wrong.
I’ve skimmed through Jennifer’s post-timeskip reintroduction and I don’t think she did? By this point, Walky likes being called Walky and is called that by 99% of folks he knows, even casual acquaintances (which is what Jennifer is trying to be right now).
I think it was Dorothy who was calling Walky “David” for a little while after their breakup, as a way to mentally reinforce in her mind the fact that they’d broken up and weren’t getting back together.
Once, at least to his face. Then he objected and she stopped. (And he left looking sad, so she considered helping him get over her with a quickie, but Joyce stopped her.)
And knowing is half the battle!
“Hey, I’m Walky over here!”
I know this pain all too well. I was one of three Jeffs in my class in high school. We were all Jeff H. [I mean, presumably, we all still are… But you know what I mean]
The other two were Harvey and Hart. So, like, there wasn’t even a way for Hart to abbreviate his name.
Given the dominant element of my last name sounding like “Hog”, I wasn’t exactly about to start going by “Piggy”, as an insecure, fat, shy nerd in high school. But honestly? Looking back, I probably could have leaned into that. Made it work. But high school-Jeff was a very different person than current Jeff. It took a long time for me to cultivate any sort of personal confidence.
No one should go by Piggy until at least a year after you have read Lord of the Flies in class. Things did not end well for Piggy and people do not need to be encouraged.
😳
I met a 3yo yesterday. She introduced herself as Elsa. ❄️Actual name is Maud (not so old sounding in Dutch).
And then there’s Maude.
right on, Maude!
My 4 year old is routinely Elsa, the Brick Piggy, Little Red Riding Hood, Spiderman… She calls her big sister Doggy or Mum as often as she calls her by her name. (I’m Mummy, or Ho Ho aka Mummy Christmas, mainly, but sometimes I get to be my 7 year old 😏).
She spends her whole life playing and has a good imagination and a compliant big sister, with whom she’s “best friends forever” when they aren’t fighting 😉
Been learning mandarin on duolingo for a couple monrhs so I for curious about your avatar, here’s what my dictionary says:
彩〔-/綵〕
PY cǎi
1 colour; 2 applause, cheer; 3 variety, brilliance, splendour; 4 prize, lottery; 5 blood from a wound; 6 special skills employed in magic or opera to achieve a desired effect.
Nice =)
(Then again maybe yours isnt a Chinese character and means something different in Japanese or whichever Hanzi-using East Asian language you chose it from)
(And that’s all assuming I read the character properly, I’m a baby at this after all)
Sounds like her actual name’s Elsa
Well if we’re comparing experiences let me just say through out my high-school days I met 5 different Brandon’s at once and one of them ended up being one of my best friends at the time.
I was a bit like Walky during my childhood. Didn’t know when to be quiet.
Never had boogers on my hands though.
Best friends!
This is why I never wanted to name my kids a top 100 name. I’ve finally conceded to banning the top 16 and hoping my favorites don’t trickle up. I just don’t want to add to the army of Emmas and Jackson’s lol
Turns out I’m never having kids, so you can have the name I picked out: Sagan.
Insert the “stop naming your kids Michael” video here
You know what’s worse about having a similar first name?
Having a similar multiple first name – the ultimate jinx
Stories about people who have the same name!
A friend of mine is a refugee from Sudan. his first and last name are extremely common and like many people on the planet who come from non-bureaucratic, low-literacy countries, he never had an official date of birth so in France he’s registered as being born on Jan. 1.
It took SO MANY phonecalls and emails and official letters to untangle his identity from that of another refugee with the same name and date of birth living in the same city. It was a fucking nightmare. Bank account, social security number, employment office, even their Uber Eats rider accounts: everything was completely mixed up. The people in the various institutions i would talk to on my friend’s behalf would freak the fuck out and try their very best to get rid of us because they knew if they touched this case they would spend days sorting it out. (we managed to corner someone into helping him eventually, sent them a 10 page email with dozens of attachments. We harassed them for weeks until finally they did their job and fixed the bureaucratic botch-up.)
Oof. It really do be like that sometimes. I used to work in banking and then healthcare (durable medical equipment) AND THEN insurance (cars and houses) and even now that I work at a towing company I still run into situations that are just … boiling tar. Sticks to everything and burns. No escape. The complications JUST. KEEP. COMING. It’s like that Parks and Rec clip where you wipe, and you wipe, and you wipe and wipe and wipe, still brown! It’s as if you got a permanent marker down there. Sometimes it’s like there’s no bloody end in sight–or worse, all the ends, seen and unseen, seem to be the “bloody” kind. There have been darn near half a dozen occasions at my current job where the company owner himself had to intervene and cut losses, losing hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the table, just to GET AWAY FROM IT. Gnawing our own leg off to escape the bear trap in here.
And I used to pride myself on being the place where the buck stops. I wanted to be THE FINAL PERSON someone had to talk to in order to get their situation fixed. It got me in trouble. Over. And Over. Again. Because call centers don’t care about RESULTS, just “handle time”: how quick can you get someone to HANG UP. It was disgusting. At least here, I generally leave people in better shape than I found ’em in. But even then, there’s always a chance we’ll hit another one of those cursed situations with no solution accessible that won’t take a hundred man-hours to resolve.
oh yeah, i’ve been in remote customer service for a few months as well. At least my job was for Apple, so if i couldn’t solve the problem there was a specialized technician i could bump the case over to (though i was highly encouraged to limit those to a minimum, as well as to end the call as quickly as possible.) So, i have an idea of the kind of pressure you’re talking about.
On the other hand, most of the people i’m talking about were all some sort of public servant (ok not the bank or the Uber Eats staff, and those were definitely among the least helpful and most blatantly dismissive), so that was kind of an extra layer of infuriating.
Been there, done that, Cyrus, for over ten years as a CSR for three different cellular providers. The only thing you didn’t mention was that as well as trying to keep calls under a certain time per call, you had to sweat out the customer response surveys, whereby even if you DID solve all their problems, they could still trash your reputation (and cost you bonus money). I don’t know how many times I got a survey that went something like “Bill solved all my problems but I still think the service/company itself sucks so that’s why I’m giving this call a zero.” And management didn’t care; a zero was a zero, whether it’s your fault or not.
yyyyep. makes some twisted sense though, because from the point of view of the company they pay you to represent them and their good name. Your job is to make sure the customer is happy not just with you as a person, but with the company.
Not that i’m defending them, but it’s the system that’s fucked up, not (necessarily) the individual companies or managers.
Going with the name stories, in college I joined a service organization which had over a DOZEN members named “Rob.” No Bobs, no Roberts, ALL of us went by Rob. So we were assigned adjectives. Short Rob, Tall Rob, Old Rob, Heavy Rob, Good Rob, Evil Rob, Black Rob…
But they called ME “Hack.” (Partly because I played D&D fighters a lot, partly because I wanted to be a writer but wasn’t very good.)
Damn. Not even Hack Rob, just Hack?
The Dungeon Master, also named Rob, was named Slash. Hack and Slash.
Slash also moonlighted as the lead guitarist of a Guns n’ Roses cover band, so that helped.
My brother in Christ i hate to break it to you but you and the other robs were rpg npcs. The dev thought It’d be a funny joke
now i want to meet Evil Rob.
I guess I’ll find nobody with my name. Its pretty rare. So I won’t have this problem.
You may have had the inverse need to have a common nickname to avoid sticking out?
I actually wanted to do this for my son, as we had picked a non-American first name and I remembered how cruel middle school was for some children. It reflected our family, while being something new in both of ours as we had enough of duplicated names.
However, there was another unusual name that I liked and his father loved, so we went with that one for the middle. My husband had very little input on the name of his first born (birthed by a previous partner) and kids sometimes like being unique in thay way (as long as name is easy to spell!), so it was important that my husband’s voice was represented. As it stands, it doesnt seem to matter how common a name is anymore, because the name diversity at his school makes me sad I was a 90s child.
When he’s older, if he wants a name change, we have a list of old alternative names if he wants to look at that as a statting point or he can find something completely new. I had a name change so I completely understand.
I’ve had a friend with a rather uncommon first name and his probleme isn’t that he’s been picked on while kid (you don’t need a name to be uncommon for that), but that he has no access to the relative anonymity we’ve all been given. He says he can’t quit a job with some boss’s anger, nor unionize, nor use social networks with his real name. And his name being uncommon, I’ve never thought of giving him a nickname – and it’s been strange using it when he asked it from us. It was strange that he didn’t want to create a new identity with that. I don’t know if that nick sticked.
Supervillain origin story
On one hand I am glad I never had to be Firstname L(astname), I think I actually never went to a school where there was another student with the same first name as me until university. On the other hand I never got a cool/fun nickname.
As a Katie, I am familiar with this problem.
jennifer fry, jennifer bacon, and jennifer ovens
And other sideways Jennifers from Wayside School!
I wish I could say this got better in adulthood but it doesn’t…
As a Michael who was always “Mikey” at home or “Mike” elsewhere, I still always put “Michael” on paperwork like a resume or officially signing up at work, because y’know that’s my actual name. So I start a job where there’s already a “Mike” there, and my everything says “Michael,” so the latter sticks. I’ve been Michael at work for 14 years, and nowhere else. Finally getting more “Mike”s now that I’m the last Mike standing, but it took a long damn time.
I had a social worker named Miguel who was “Michael” in his personal life because his family had a million Miguels, so there was a Miguel and a whatever Mike is in Spanish and a Mike and a Michael and a Mikey… In his professional life he was Miguel though.
So, the only one who ever liked the name Billie was Walky. Kinda sad.
Cripes how have I been reading Willis’ stuff for nearly 20 years and only just now realized both Billie and Wally go by their last names, unlike the rest of the main cast of any comic they’ve been in?
Headcanon: Guns’s full name is Jennifer Rachel Guns.
In my graduating class there were two Ben Johnsons and they even had the same middle initial, so we nicknamed them by their hair color since one was blonde and the other had brown hair
He used to be perceptive. Is this a Mike case where he got worse due to experience (golden childed) or just his spectrum kicking in ad that can be more noticeable with age ( meeeeee)?
This case doesn’t require much perception, it mostly requires ears. It more likely just got HARDER with time as other people picked up on social rules and started to say things with more subtlety while Walky didn’t due to his ADHD because you know, someone calling someone a name copier is a clear insult.
Walky’s still perceptive when he wants to be, but it’s work or it least acting on it is. He doesn’t want people to start expecting it of him.
Obviously this shows Jennifer has experienced personal growth and cast aside the crutch of the Billie name to become a more mature experienced adult, banishing Walky as well as other childish things to the Outer Planes of her soul.
Maybe Acheron or Limbo. Probably not the Nine Hells.
It’s an explosion of Jennifer’s in Indiana, ergo this is obligatory:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/countryside/
Damned autocorrect.
This strip reminds of how quickly kids can come up with incredibly stupid and silly things to make fun of other kids for.
Also it kinda sucks how some first names end up being so very common. There have always been multiple Daniels at every school I’ve gone to, and at work too.
I guess you could say all those parents who named their kids “Daniel” at the same time really… Danned it up.
Kids really will find the tiniest, pettiest thing about you and tear into you relentlessly over it for years on end.
One of my family lines is from a small German village in Bavaria. Custom is to name you after your godparent. The cemetery is full of Andreas, Johann and Heinrich. Almost exclusively. One of the three female names was Kunagunda.
My great grandfather Andreas had a brother Andreas. The older one was called “little” because he was shorter. They both moved to Wisconsin and lived in the same city, where the mayor shared their name. I think they did that to mess with genealogists.
my mom got in a fight with a girl that had the same name as her in her school days…and I mean a FIGHT, mom lost a tooth when she bit the girl hard enough that it got stuck in her arm. It was the other girl who initiated the fight but my mom finished it.
…Your mom sounds hardcore, and I am inwardly screaming at the thought of having a tooth lodged in my skin.
mom nom nom
I laughed harder than i should have
no such thing as laughing too much
unless you were in class or at a funeral or something
or if you’re a cartoon weasel
My 5th grade class had three Brittany M’s. Well, one was Brittany, one was Britnee, and one was Brittani, but unique spellings don’t help the teacher.
There were a couple more with a different last initial, too. Pain and Panic from Hercules were right.
I think I remembered that recently the most popular baby boys name was Oliver in a lot of States. And the most popular girl’s name was Olive. (It might have been in 2020). A moment of silence for those poor teachers in three plus years.
The most popular names today take up a much smaller percentage of total names than the most popular names one or two generations ago.
Before I was proclaimed Opus, my father and I had the same name and middle initial, which caused much confusion (still does 10 years after he died), and people tried to call me by my middle name. Unfortunately this was the same name as a popular comic strip character, who had a trope of misbehavior that I didn’t like. And yes I see the irony in getting named for another comic strip character 40 years later.
So your first name is Bartholomew?