Ask Lemmy

My name came from a Catholic saint that was on the calendar the day I was born, along with a feminized version of my French grandfather’s name.

Family name (one character) is said/written first, then the given name (two characters for me... and I assume for most people).

Same here. My Chinese name was given to me when I was a kid upon enrollment at a [Chinese] school. Unfortunately, when my dad’s employer sent him to work in the UK we didn’t know anyone who spoke Mandarin. 王 is my given surname and quite common. My maiden name is famous in some parts of the world, not in America.

It’s not too late to change your name, you can have mine if you want.
^_−☆

Hebrew. Notably not a Torah/Old Testament name. It also exists in other Asian languages with different meanings, and is an opposite gender name in most other languages. I've never met one personally.

I like the ambiguity it lends me.

I got a odd religious name that I've since dropped for my Anglo name. It's been a drag my whole life having a weird fucking name. So many people asking the same five or so questions everytime I meet someone. When I meet people with the regular name, no one gets a view into my history and my hippie upbringing, which I felt sort of immediately put me on the back foot with more conservative types. It's certainly ruined a few job applications. I've had a few hospital stays where every person who came made the same dumb small talk about the name FOR A WEEK. My last surgery the change of name forms had gone through and no one asked me why I'm called Andrew, which tbh was glorious.

e: Note I'm a white guy with Irish/Brittish DNA.

Hebrew. I'm named for a character in the old testament. I've met lots of people who share a first name with me.

Boring English name. It’s fine.

I met someone with my same first and last name when they called my name to come up to the podium at the airport gate and two of us showed up.

I'm a Norwegian with a pretty common nordic first name. My last name is a very rare one, and it denotes a very small area where my family is from.

I'm English. My name is derived from an ancient Greek word that has been anglicised.

First name is ultimately derived from Hebrew, it's one of the most common names in the English-speaking world, and variations of it are similarly popular in basically every place where Abrahamic religious have a foothold.

It's fine. I've met plenty of people with my name, I don't particularly like or dislike it, it is just my name.

My last name is kind of interesting. It's ultimately of Italian origin, but sometime after arriving in America someone basically decided that it sounded too Italian, dropped the vowel at the end, swapped out about half of the remaining letters, and created a new name that kind of sounds similar to the original.

Looking at it, you'd probably never peg it as an Italian name. Sometimes people look at it and try to pronounce it as if it were French, but that's not how we pronounce it.

I rather like my last name. I probably use it more than my first. It's got a nice ring to it, it's unique, there's rarely going to be anyone else around with the same name to avoid confusion, it's got some fun family history to it, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't exist anywhere in the world outside of my family.

Unfortunately, my family is pretty uncreative with male names, if you look at the top 100 names in the US from the last 100 years, my entire family tree can basically be found in the top 10 or 20. I'm aware of at least one other person with the same first and last name as me and there's probably a good handful more, and there's a solid chance they have the same middle name as me too.

I rarely see the extended family so not a huge deal.

From what i learned mine comes from latin meaning nobleman

I have an extremely Jewish name despite being a worthless, filthy gentile. I like my name. Not crazy about the backstories.

I worked with a lot of Japanese in the past, and if they anglicized their name they would pick one that sounded like their Japanese name. Ryu became Leo, Haru became Harry. We had a Tommy (I can't remember his Japanese name, it was similar to Tommy).

Or just pick one. Names aren't that important in the US, unless you belong to some weird family dynasty.

My first name is Hebrew, it was supposedly the name of the father of David. My last name is Italian, apparently it was once a derogatory term.

I kinda wanted to choose an English name for simplicity here in the US, but like... I didn't pick one when I was younger and I think its kinda too late to use one now. Idk what name to even choose.

It's never too late if you want to. It just might be harder to settle on one now.

My family came to the US Irish, when it was bad to be Irish, so they picked a Scottish surname to avoid the repression that Irish immigrants were facing. My given name was a tribute to my mother's friend who died when she was young.

All in all I'm not disappointed by what I was named. There is/was a somewhat famous person with whom I share it.

I've also had plenty of nicknames and I haven't been mad about any of those either.

Name is pretty much as Porguguese as it gets. And there are many people who share it. It's not quite on the same level as "Smith" in the west. But it's high up there. Coupled with an almost stereotypically common first name in Portuguese, there are probably thousands of us.

I don't hate it. I used to. In fact being the only kid with a weird name in a rural high-school on the Canadian prairies, I quickly anglicised my first name by dropping the "o" from Paulo to Paul. I somewhat regret that, but what's done is done. It's been so long now, adding the "o" back would be weird for everyone.

Germanic/Nordic name. I'm an American. The name sounds like it comes from my European heritage, but it has no family history, just randomly selected. And my spelling is less common in America, which has led to a lifetime of having to spell it out or correct when it has been mistranscribed (literally, people would read it from a paper and transcribe it wrong when typing it).

Now that I live in the Netherlands, at least there are no transcription errors. People are less unfamiliar with my spelling here

My first name is Indian, and my second name is Polish. I live in the UK.

I have 7 names and i never met someone with my "callname" (its one part of a double name) but i got close to meeting one.
I am pretty sure that my name is unique throughout history as the names are partly eurobean, partly jewish but also some rare.

The reason i have so much names is simple: my parents wanted their children to have choices as every child hates their given name
So we got a few legit ones we could choose from.
My older siblings got less and then gave me as much as possible because they thought i was going to be the last child. My younger sibling got "just" 6

We also had a few rules for the names:

• first name had to start with the first letter of my mothers last name (we got our fathers last name)
• we had to have a name that starts with the first letter of my fathers last name
• we all have the name of the "next best" (higher birthrate) deceased family member

For me its pretty fun to introduce with my full name as the faces stop getting more shocked after the fourth.
Its especially daunting for people who have like 3 and think they have a lot

I personally embrace having a lot of names
I use it to get a positive first impression
I haunt people with the idea that if they are mean to me i only react when they either call me by full name or that i assign a different name on each weekday that they have to use
Also i can annoy people filling out lists with "how much name do you need? just the first or complete or what?"

It has its drawbacks because in case my name gets shortened in databases it gets mostly shortened to the first and then i see others with 3 names or something where the complete name is in there

Also with bureaucracy even when its fun its taking time which is less bad for me because i got used to it but still a drawback.

But at least other people only reacted positive to the amount of names as long as they did not have to write them down

Extant in Latin and roots in Proto-Indo-European presumably. I've met many with my name.

First name - ultimately biblical in origin and very common at the time of my birth: I went through my entire educational career as one of five with this name (specific people changed, but there were almost always 5 of us).

Middle name: ultimately Germanic in origin. My dad's middle name too. It has royal connections. I basically never use it.

Last name: the name of a village 30 miles from where I was born. If you look in the village churchyards in a line between the two places, the gravestones show that they moved along about one village per generation. My branch of the family are not great travellers. But, hey, I moved to the next county, so...