Names

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 7 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I am incredibly special! There are a mere 7 people with the same name as me. I bet all of them have different middle names so that means that the chances are quite high that no one has the same exact name as me. There are 692,927 people with my first name, which came as no surprise to me since it was a rather popular name at the time I was born. I had three other girls with the same name as me in my high school math class one year.

My lovely last name is apparently quite rare. Only 3,240 people in the US have it. This again is no surprise, as before I met my husband I had no idea that my last name was even a last name. I don't really hate my last name but it sure is a bit of a thorn in my side at times. I can't complain to much as I could have kept my maiden name when I got married.

My maiden name was a good last name. According to the website 422,956 people in the US have it. It was also quite high in the alphabet and easy to spell. There was no confusion with pronunciation. When I got married I got a last name that is in the dictionary. It is pronounced differently depending on if it is a noun or a verb (we use the noun pronunciation). I always spell it for people because for some reason people do not understand that it is spelled exactly how it sounds.

My last name has greatly restricted my naming choices for my children. I had to keep to rather normal names that are spelled correctly. I just could not in good conscious name my kids some of the names I thought were totally cool when I was a teenager. It was bad enough that they have a tricky last name and then to add a weird first name, I just could not do it to them.

Sadly my in laws were not quite as conscientious as I was. My poor husband is the only person in the US with the name that is on his birth certificate. He has an awful and much hated family name saddled on him. The funny thing is that on his social security card his name is his nick name. So in reality he has two legal names. In the church and the military he is the name on his birth certificate but in other places he is his nick name. My husband tried to argue the military into putting his nickname on their records but being the military you can guess how well that went. He insisted that when we decided to name Harry Harold but call him Harry that Harold was on all his official documents. He did not want Harry to go through the same name battles that he has been fighting his whole life.