Sierra, Sierra, Sierra, Sierra

[Patri]

I reviewed the roster for my college classes, which start next week. One class includes nine girls, and four of them are named Sierra! What was going on 18-20 years ago that made Sierra such a popular name???

 

[T-Dot-Traveller]

I am not sure - but they were all in pre-school - when you joined TUG
LOL

 

[geekette]

Wow! Stay tuned for Dakotas and lots of surname as first name.

The first Sierra I knew was a character on a soap. I'm going to say As the World Turns. The next Sierra was a dog (super sweet Spitz).

I'm clearly old, zero in-person female human Sierras in my life.

How do you handle this, have everyone choose what to go by instead? Ha, yeah, "Call me CC", "I'll be Sierra B!" "You can't, I claimed Sierra B!" "I'll use my middle name, Jean Smith Turkowski" ...

 

[DaveNV]

How do you handle this, have everyone choose what to go by instead? Ha, yeah, "Call me CC", "I'll be Sierra B!" "You can't, I claimed Sierra B!" "I'll use my middle name, Jean Smith Turkowski" ...

My IT department at my hospital has ~100 staff members. We have FOUR people named Matthew. Luckily they each have a last name starting with a different letter, coincidentally letter A through D. So interoffice emails are signed "Matt B" or "Matt C" and so on. It's confusing on conference calls, where one will say "This is Matt," and somebody else will say "Which one?" Then the next Matt will say the same thing, and someone else will ask which one. It's almost comical sometimes.

Oddly enough, while I grew up as one of any number of David's in school, (sometimes multiple David's in one classroom), I am the only David in my department. I think last time I looked, in the entire hospital system there were only three David's on staff. I even have a stepbrother named David. What was once a very common name isn't common now at all. And there is nobody at work named Sierra - yet.

Dave

 

[Blues]

In high school I hung out a lot with a group of 4 of us close friends. About half the time a 5th member of the group joined us. When he did, 3 of the 5 of us were Bob.

ETA - which was part of the reason I was frequently called by my nickname - now my TUG handle.

 

[Cornell]

I graduated college in 1990. We had 17 Jennifers living in my sorority house.

 

[Passepartout]

Check the 'Baby Name Book' of the birth year. Or popular TV shows. Waaay back in the day, it wasn't uncommon to have multiple Jameses in darn near every class.

 

[geekette]

I grew up with lots of Mikes. Had I been born a boy, I woulda been one of them. Michael Victor, in fact.

 

[DaveNV]

Following on with multiple names: I mentioned above I was one of many David's growing up, and I have a stepbrother named David. I also have a sister named Linda, and a stepsister named Linda. Confused yet? Luckily, we didn't ever live in the same household. My step-siblings were older, so became "Big Dave" to my "Little Dave" (even though I outweighed my stepbrother by about 40 pounds), and my sisters became "Your Linda" and "My Linda", which was only confusing if a third party in the room didn't understand the dynamic. Between the family members, it all worked, in a weird sort of way.

Dave (no longer so Little)

 

[Hemlock65]

my niece was in a swim class with 6 kids which included 5 Mya’s

 

[amycurl]

If you want your child to have an uncommon name, name them something that was common in *your* generation. My mother knew no Amys, so that's what she.....and approximately 5 billion other mothers did. (See also: Cornell's "Jennifer" post, as well as Heathers.) There are *no* Heathers, Jennifers or Amys in my daughter's generations. NOT A SINGLE ONE. There are, however, plenty of Liams, and Noahs, etc. See the pattern?

I chose a name for my daughter that was relatively uncommon, although connected to a common name. Easy to spell, easy to pronounce. And we hadn't run into any other kids in her generation with that version of her name....until Jeff Bezos decided he liked it for the EXACT SAME REASONS. *shakes fist at Jeff Bezos* While my Alexa is highly functional--I can say things like, "Please make the pancakes, Alexa," and "Put the Christmas decorations in the attic, Alexa"--she is also *waaaaay* more expensive--and less compliant, LOL!--than the models most other people have.

 

[isisdave]

I carpooled to high school in a group of 7 boys, three of us Dave (1964). It wasn't that popular then, I don't think. We were, in order of age, Dave, Don, and Barnes.

I remember the time, about ten twenty years ago, I encountered my first bank vice president named Heather ....

 

[stmartinfan]

My husband has a common last name and there was another person in his division with the same first and last name. So he started using the initials of first and middle names—RD—as his name professionally and became widely known by that. It worked well, except when we’d go to work or industry functions and someone would look at my name tag and say, oh are you RD’s wife? I would look at them blankly for a moment or two and then realize they were talking about my husband, since he didn’t use the initials in our personally life. I’m sure people thought I wasn’t too sharp to be so slow to respond to such a basic question!

 

[DaveNV]

In my high school (late 1960's) I knew a group of three girls who were named Jennifer, Heather, and Stephanie. They were inseparable best friends, who were always seen together. To this day, I couldn't tell you which of them was which. They all looked exactly alike, dressed alike, walked and talked alike, (kind of like the Patty Duke Show thingie.) Looking back, I'm sure there were differences, but at the time, nope - they were a trio with three interchangeable names.

Dave

 

[louisianab]

I used the Social Security database to trend my children's names before birth. Mine is very unusual and DH has one of the most common perpetually. In my own era, there were lots of Ashleys, Jennys, Amys, Jessicas and Sara(h)s. My sister Emily has 2 other Emily friends - they all use nicknames.

 

[b2bailey]

Growing up, people would ask me what my name was 'short for'.
Being a smart a*s I would say "Bonald" -- as in Ronald or Donald. Fast forward and I name my daughter Jenna. Only to have her be asked -- "what is that short for" History repeats itself, except she doesn't have a smart alec reply.

 

[Glynda]

My granddaughter was named Zoë in 2001. Since, I've heard so many people calling out for a Zoe everywhere I go. She'll be in college next year so I assume that will be one of the names of multiples in classrooms.

On using a name from older generations, be cautious. My mother-in-law had been reading Kipling's Kim just prior to giving birth to twins. A boy and a girl. She had been convinced that she was having two girls and had already named them. So starting over, she named my husband Kim and his twin sister, Karen. I went to high school with several guys named Kim. But my Kim has hated it all his life. It's no longer a guy name. Everyone who hasn't met him assumes he is a she. The mail comes to Ms. Kim. Callers refer to him as "she." And some who don't know me/us raise a little bit of eyebrow when I mention being married to Kim. It's gotten to the point that I write his middle (masculine) name as well as his first on forms, etc.

 

[geist1223]

In all my years of school from 1st Grade to Senior Year of High School I only had one classmate with same first name. Then he died in an accident.

 

[DaveNV]

In all my years of school from 1st Grade to Senior Year of High School I only had one classmate with same first name. Then he died in an accident.

Maybe that's why you were always the only one?

Dave

 

[WVBaker]

I found out in high school that if you're going to date multiple girls at the same time, it's best if they all have the same first name.

 

[Lydlady]

I just checked the 200 most popular names of the decade (not including 2019) and mine is #89 and DH’s name didn’t make the list.

 

[DaveNV]

I just checked the 200 most popular names of the decade (not including 2019) and mine is #89 and DH’s name didn’t make the list.

Hmm. I'm number 17. Some things never change, I guess.

Dave

 

[Patri]

I will use their last name initials with Sierra, unless any have a nickname. It probably beats having identical twins, which I did one semester. I never could tell them apart, but they were nice boys. Everyone gave presentations the same day, so one could not impersonate the other.

 

[CanuckTravlr]

In high school I hung out a lot with a group of 4 of us close friends. About half the time a 5th member of the group joined us. When he did, 3 of the 5 of us were Bob.

ETA - which was part of the reason I was frequently called by my nickname - now my TUG handle.

I can relate to this. I am also a Bob. In high school there were five Bobs in my class. We used to cover ourselves, if one of us hadn't done his homework. If the teacher asked a question addressed to "Bob", one of us who knew the answer would put up his hand or just answer the question, since we tended to sit clustered in the same area of the classroom.

In Grade 12, our English teacher came up with a solution to this one day. She rearranged our seating so that we each sat in a different row, diagonally across the classroom, from the left side of the last row to the right side of the first row. "There" she said, "now you will know exactly which one of you I am addressing when I am asking you a question!" I still get a chuckle out of it to this day.

 

[clifffaith]

I never met another Faith until I was 18, then I met two in one day and the second one was actually pissed I shared a name with her. As I mentioned in another recent thread, I kept my Irish maiden name when I married Cliff. We had a client with first name Faith, last name Cliff's. So of course first time Cliff goes to their house to install the window coverings I sold he introduces himself as Bruce (client's husbands name) to freak everyone out.