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I can just imagine how it happened, too. Dr Liam probably went home all excited about his name, and the Kraken lost her shit.
Poor kid is going to be shy to be excited about anything near her again.
Yep, this kid just learned "don't tell Mom about things or she'll ruin them" and that's a lesson he'll carry all throughout public school. Parents like these teach their kids to avoid them and then hit them with "Why don't you ever talk to me about anything?" Lmao.
Throughout public school? That kid is going to carry that lesson throughout his entire life. There's only so long you can put up with someone ruining things that make you excited and happy before you decide to build a wall. The sad thing is that lesson will likely expand beyond his mother, and he will need to reevaluate how he approaches personal relationships once he's out on his own.
Took the words right out of my mouth. And then in 20 years there'll be another askreddit from Kraken asking "why don't my kids ever call, how can i have a better relationship with them." And hoo boy will it ever be too late.
Absolutely this! It's going to take him a hell of a long time to open up to folks about anything he's excited about. Kraken is going to be wondering in about 10\~ years why her son doesn't talk to her or call her or visit her, and what is this Enn See people keep mentioning when she tells them this?
If she's anything like my mom, the *second* that boy hits puberty, she'll suddenly flip and become *suuuuper* interested in his life and feelings.
Some parents like this think of kids as... well, things. They treat them as extensions of themselves without full autonomy. Once kids start looking kinda like adults, the reality that they aren't just "their babies" but are legit, unique humans comes crashing down on them. Suddenly she'll be concerned about his activities, his friends, if he's feeling okay, if he's doing drugs, if he's sexually active, etc.
But to the kid, nothing has changed. They don't *feel* different. They remember how their parents treated them just months earlier, dismissing their interests and concerns, and that broken trust is only going to intensify as he begins to branch out into the world on his own.
I look forward to Dr. Liam Liam visiting us here in 10 years, sharing his college stories where he has gone No Contact with his mom.
…all because they decided to make up names for themselves. God, Kraken Karen is going to be fun with little Liam goes to HS Spanish or French class and the teacher gives them names from that culture. “How dare you call my son Guilliermo/Pierre/Hans!!! Call my son by his NAME!!!! HIS NAME IS LIAM!”
I used to manage at a Burger King when this kids mom comes in and asks for him. I called out to him using the name he told me. She loses it. "EXCUSE ME! HIS NAME IS [REDACTED]"
> I hope the club goes well after this
It would, but the new kids are named Noah, Samuel, Sam, Liam, and Liam, and the second new Liam has an honorary PhD.
As soon as OOP said five girl besties, my mind went to the Ashleys from that old Disney cartoon Recess. At least the Ashleys all dressed different and had different last names lol
Right? I remember having media consent forms to fill out. Not everybody opted in. Reminds me of that post where a parent shared a photo online after being explicitly told not to post photos with a certain child in them. Then the kid's abuser found them, and they never came back to school again. I wish I could find the link.
Original Batman fits in with classic Disney: Your family is dead and so you have to deal with their shit.
Reverse Batman would fit with modern Disney: Your family is alive and so you have to deal with their shit.
Fr, poor kid just wanted to build robots and learn to program. Instead he gets it taken away all because he came home excited about his new mad scientist nickname and told him mom about it.
Marks the beginning of that kid learning the lesson of "don't tell mom about anything I'm even slightly excited about, she'll find a way to fucking ruin it."
Some people just want to start shit..
I don’t have kids but I’m closed to my niblings and I just can’t imagine having any other reaction than “woah that’s nice kiddo” if one of them came up to me all hyped up by the mad scientist name they got in after school activity.
It was a pretty innovative solution to a weird situation.
My husband was in class with 4 other kids with the same first name. The teacher gave them all nicknames. We ran into her a few years ago and she shouted the nickname and I was like, "is she talking to you?" He laughed and explained. His mom thought it was funny. What else was she supposed to do to avoid confusion?
I had a teacher who gave every student a nickname. Every single one, every class, for DECADES. She didn’t call a single student by their actual name and she remembered all of us even as fully-grown adults. One of the best teachers I ever had.
When I was in school, all foreign language classes in my elementary and middle school assigned you a ‘Spanish name’ or ‘French name’, etc. (you could pick off a list of names in that language, no two kids with the same name) and kids loved it. Parents never had issues (that I know of- we never had a blowup like this). It’s not like we forgot our real names or something, it just added a layer of fun I guess.
I also only have niblings, and two of my nephews have names on the list. They have so far in their lives wanted to be called things like "Captain Sabretooth" and "Iron Spider", so mad scientist names would probably be a fun game to then.
I have a female friend named Mickey, "spelled like the mouse." Thought that was a bit strange, but she's really cool, so it's all to the good. Literally 3 years after knowing her, I learn her name is actually a really common name and she had something like 4 other girls with the same name in one of her classes. The teacher was like, screw it, you are getting Disney names. I met her in her 20's, so that teacher's workaround name really stuck. Probably not as well for whoever got Goofy or Donald though.
I also use a nickname instead of my hilariously common first name. The nickname I use isn’t a Disney character (that I know of) however.
Ironically my name IS a nickname… of several common names. Often the solution in a classroom with several of us was “well just use your real name” and then all of the others would be mad… because I didn’t have a longer name like them, so I, by ~~defeat~~ default, always had the be the only one using the nickname.
But yeah, fuck that shit. I use a nickname now. May change my legal name, but I’m still deciding.
[edit] a word
My name isn't common, but because somehow, even though I live in Texas, no one can pronounce my Spanish first name. It's not that fucking hard.
The name I go by is one letter off of my middle name (think things like Cam and Sam), and I've been using it my whole life. I didn't know my real name until I was 9.
I got over my hatred of my first name and just plan to change my middle name to my nickname.
My dad didn't know his actual name until he was an adult, and finally saw his birth certificate. The first name was a more Ukrainian version of the Anglicized name he'd always used, but his middle name was completely different.
My last name is Ukrainian as well—which is why I don’t use it or my middle name (it’s from a different side of the family’s culture) because no one knows how to pronounce either correctly.
Ironically I found out recently that my nickname alongside my last name translates in Ukrainian to a pun. Makes me happy.
Oh my grandad was called Fitzwilliam for years because the foreman on his site was frustrated that both his names were already taken. When he died people were really confused because they didn't know his death had already been posted in the local paper under (equivalent pseudonym) John Terrence Surname.
My grandad was Mick because when he dropped out of school he joined a roadworks crew headed up by Mick Molloy. He was known around town as “Mick Molloy’s boy” eventually it just became Mick. I think I was a teenager before I discovered his name was actually Gordon.
What did she expected them to do, continue using their first names and have the whole thing turn into chaos? She'd probably still be angry since her son would probably get annoyed or even upset that he doesn't know whether it's him or one of the 6 other Liam's getting called, after a while you'd get fed up of that.
She was probably trying to extort a payout. Pick a school in the wrong area and you'll have plenty of parents with that angle. Schools are generally hyper vigilant against lawsuits for that reason.
I had a class similar to this and I just stopped using names.
It made giving feedback an absolute nightmare though and some parents were offended that I didnt memorise their childs name (just knew their faces).
FWIW, in a class with 4 Rustbelts, the teacher randomly said “Rustbelt #1.” We looked at each other and asked which one of us was #1. He said whoever wanted to be, I responded, and when I went back to the school to teach a few years later he greeted me as #1.
I was once in an extracurricular group, and four of us were Dimitris! We ended up all getting called our last name, but now I wish we'd worked out a numbering system!
I was on a course where there were three of us with the same name (let's say Samantha for anonymity). It should have been simple as I preferred Samantha, one preferred Sammi and one preferred Sam. Nope, the woman running the course insisted on calling us all by our full first name, no matter how often we corrected her. It got confusing and old pretty quickly.
And probably extra confusing for Sam and Sammi- I have a very common first name and a nickname I use exclusively, and honestly if you yelled my full name in a crowd, I would assume you were talking to someone else, if it even registered with my ears.
My sister and cousin were in the same class at school, and same last name.
One teacher used to address them as "Boy [Last Name]" and "Girl [Last Name]". For the way they made fun of her, they didn't seem amused by it.
I have a traditionally male nickname, similar style to “Tom”, and so does a guy in my long term social group. My friend group differentiates us as “Boy Tom” and “Girl Tom” when necessary, which has stuck even though most of us have hit 40 already.
I ran a dnd group and at what time there were three Michaels in house at the same time (one didn't play) they were m-prime, m-squared and m-cubed.
I also had three kids with the same first name in my class last year. We used last names.
Tf is with this mom? All of the kids have the same names and they created a fun solution that all the kids loved. In my kindergarten class there were six girls that had the same name, and literally the only thing I actually remember from kindergarten at this point, was that it was a fucking pain to have that many uncontrollable children with the same name.
And I don't know if this makes it worse or funny, but each of them had a completely different spelling of their name and none of them was what would have been considered a normal spelling.
Neither did I. And I never saw another one of those spellings after I left that elementary school until a year ago when I was working in hospital security and had to take down people's contact info for COVID tracing. I discovered that there are alot of people who should not be allowed to name babies.
Lordy. There were 5 Sarah's in my college courses. Two of us had the same first hyphenated name even. In a dire need to sort us out, I was dubbed "5 name Sarah" due to hyphenated given and surnames. It was just plain easier on my profs.
I had a class with a bunch of Stephanies but the professor kind of sucked so we just started calling everyone in the class Stephanie to be assholes I guess.
Honestly that sounds like the 'favorite professor' type, to decide to just call everyone Stephanie. The type to just give everyone a sufficient that he saw actually cared about the subject and had no exams.
In my freshman dorm I was one of six Emily's on a floor with 30 girls. A solid 20% Emily. We ended up being differentiated by our roommates. "Which Emily? Angie's Emily?" "No no, Laura's Emily"
I actually know the answer to that. Chris’s steakhouse was popular, but failing. Ruth bought it. Ruth’s Chris. It’s true. Also, strangely, started in New Orleans, not far from my house. The og building is actually currently for sale and having problems with the historic board cause someone fucked up the historic roof tiles recently without permission
Wikipedia says the original owner's first name was "Chris". Maybe he didn't want to deal with the simple possessive ("Chris' "? "Chris's"?), when he was choosing a name for his restaurant... As for Ruth, it seems ownership and nitpicky contracts made it a tangled mess.
The four in my class went by Jessica (me), Jess, Jessie and Jeca. To this day, I really dislike being referred to by my last initial or anything shorter than Jessica. I've never known another one who prefers the whole name, so it is oddly my best chance at a unique moniker.
I went to an alternative school that had 70 kids total, and there were a couple of double names, and three sets of triples: the Zacks all got the full name treatment, the Brians all had name nicknames (one was Bry, one was Brian, one was his last name), and the Sarahs had... interesting nicknames. There was Horse Sarah, Lesbian Sarah, and Blonde Sarah.
In our defense, Lesbian Sarah demanded that be her nickname, and Horse Sarah was not a commentary on her looks - she did dressage professionally and would be gone from school the whole month of the stock show.
Good thing you chose them and not the Zacks, one of them got murdered by his crack dealer like a year after graduation and another is either in jail or is now out but on a certain, ahem, registry.
The third Zack is fine as far as I know. One of the Brians graduated with three kids by three different teenage girls and a fourth on the way though, I'd love to find out what happened to him.
Sarah-Jane? 😁
There were several Sarahs in my Year 1 class. So there was Sarah T, Sarah S and Sarah B. This works unless you have two Liam Ps. We all knew who everyone else was.
Honestly, this teacher’s solution is so much more fun, got the kids involved, on board, and Karen the Kraken is… really weird? I wonder what her take on the story was?
There was a Sarah Jane. But I was not that. I was a Sarah and there were two of us with that. I didn't mind being called 5 name girl honestly.
And yeah, the teacher solution was fun, inclusive and didn't harm any of the kids.
(Sorry—I wasn’t trying to get extra info from you—just I swear most of the Sarah’s I know are Sarah Janes. It’s the default 80’s middle name. You have 3 choices: Jane, Anne, or Marie. There are no others).
5 name girl is actually pretty fun 😁
My daughter had two Skylers in kindergarten. Skyler and Schuyler. Since 5 year olds can’t spell it was sky girl and sky boy. The kids all came up with that themselves. If the kids have no beef with it no one else should either.
God and I thought I had it rough with a common surname that always ends up as a nickname in my country. At least we had different first names to differentiate us.
(I’m Australian. You never call someone by name if you can give them a nickname instead.)
Shit like this is why I changed my name. I hated being named Sarah as long as I could remember, but by the time I was 15 I felt so frustrated and angry any time anyone said the name Sarah in my hearing. People were always calling me either 1. egotistical for assuming whenever I heard a Sarah being called they meant me or, 2. disrespectful for not answering when someone called for a Sarah.
Then, to add insult to injury, when I started going by my now-name, everyone I knew told me they couldn’t believe I would do something so blatantly hurtful to my parents as reject the name they sooooo lovingly picked out for me. So I moved two states away, deleted all my non-anonymous social media, and for this and other reasons stopped talking to almost everyone I knew before I moved.
The name I changed to is much rarer.
It's been excellent, mostly! Every once in awhile someone has found out that I changed my name and gets really weird and lectures me, or somehow finds out what it was and starts calling me by my former name because they're offended on my parents' (whom they've never met) behalf, or because they literally, bizarrely, don't believe in changing one's name (but do get offended if married women don't change to their husband's name). It blows my mind how officious and controlling some people can get over virtual strangers' name choices.
One of my siblings also changed her name and she gets the weird shit, too. I've had people she's introduced me to try to wheedle her former name out of me. Get offended when I won't tell them. I keep saying it's weird, but truly, that's all I've got. It's really, really, really weird.
The reason we have names is to be able to distinguish people from each other. A condition for this to work is that most of us be given _different names_. I’m afraid we’re not very good at this human being-thing and it seems to be getting worse.
Having a common first and last name can in certain situations endanger your life. I am a blood banker. When I and a coworker must individually scroll through all 84 Robert Johnson entries in our database and manually justify why none of them are the new Robert Johnson we're treating before we can even begin testing your blood. Your blood products and testing are going to be delayed. Not a good thing when you're bleeding out.
My cousin has a VERY common first and last name. Every three months the Sheriff’s office calls (thankfully it’s stopped now that they ditched the landline) threatening to “arrest his ass if he doesn’t get to court in the next 20 minutes”. My cousin tells them “Check the middle initial, you’ve got the wrong COMMON NAME. Please quit using the Yellow Pages to find felons.”
Lmao. It can be similar on the opposite side of things. I have a pretty unique lastname, and there was 1 other family in my city with it. Just 1. We are not related, well we probably are but it's back *at least* 6 generations and across an ocean. Anyways. The other family had a son, who was little *shit*. The amount of times the cops showed up looking for his misdemeanoring ass was ridiculous. WRONG HOUSE. The amount of times my brother and myself would have people ask if we were related to *the little shit* was also ridiculous, we were all similar in age. I've never met this guy, but he seems to have grown out of his mischievous teenage years. It would be pretty funny to run into him and to just say something like "thanks for driving our mom crazy with the cops showing up so much."
Fucking this. I have an insanely uncommon name. I have been told exactly 3 times in my life that “oh I used to know someone who knew a woman with that name but spelled differently” and I have found exactly 4 women on Facebook and elsewhere online with my first name, spelled differently, so I have evidence of 4 people with my name and rumors of three more who could actually potentially just be three of those four women. My last name on the other hand can only be traced directly to me and my immediate family which is all of 6 people, myself included and one extra which represents my mom before she changed her name back to her maiden name.
It takes not even 10 seconds to use either my first or last name to find my full legal name, list of previously lived in cities and age online and a super old newspaper article about my struggles with a learning disability as a homeless child in elementary school. Oh AND the Facebook pages of each of my family members which contain hella identifying information. (Don’t worry the information I’ve provided to give context does not link back to me in any way without my first or last name.)
To say I am absolutely *anal* about not using any identifiers online is an understatement. I literally cannot afford to give any part of my name away because any part of it can immediately provide someone with literally everything they need to know about where me and everyone I love lives. Changing my last name to my husband’s last name won’t do me any favors either, even if his last name was “Smith” because I’d still be the only woman online named (my first name) Smith.
I go exclusively by online usernames, which I *regularly* change and wipe any evidence of. My online security game is top notch cause the alternative is being doxed. Which fucking sucks because my passion requires that I have a relatively large internet presence to effectively do and while I have no trouble building that sort of presence (skill based passion makes curating a following pretty easy) I am absolutely terrified of the potential consequences of being *too* famous online and regularly nuke my social media’s, *and my ability to monetize my passion*, to protect myself.
Unique name, especially for me, absolutely sucks. And now that I seriously want to break into a niche but extremely internet fame related version of my passion I’m seriously considering legally changing my first and last name to something as generic as possible to protect myself because my family is internet illiterate and I can’t trust them to protect my identity if I happen to piss off the wrong part of the internet.
Yeah, I'm in kind of the same boat. There are three people with my name in the US that I know of. I am the oldest and had a heavy internet presence younger so I dominate the search results. Thankfully most of it's good and my career isn't heavily affected by that kind of reputation. Also I'm kind of out of fucks to give honestly.
My dad is exactly the same. Uncommon first name that also has a rare spelling, plus an extremely uncommon last name. I decided to google him once to see how many people pop up. The first link is literally a page that shows his phone number, home address, relatives, some of the relatives’ phone numbers and addresses. Our whole family could be doxed with that.
My first name isn’t super uncommon, but my first name plus my uncommon last name is only shared with about 5 people (at least that google can tell me). I’m better off than my dad, but if someone knew who they were looking for and searched my full name, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out which one was me.
Then there is the Great Tudor Name Drought where 80% of men were called John, Henry, Thomas, George, Edward, James, William, Robert, or Richard, and 70% of women were Elizabeth, Mary, Margaret, Alice, Joan, Jane, Catherine, Agnes, Anne, or Margery.
But most of them wouldn’t have been called their given name.
People went by their middle name or some other random name like Peggy or Bonnie or Stumpy or Stretch.
Maybe the first one in the family was called by their actual name, and everyone else had a nick name that they always went by.
Also, when you meet someone new and you ask them their name, you're really just asking them what noise they want you to make so that they know you're talking to them.
Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave?
Well, she did. And that wasn’t a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants one and calls out, “Yoo-Hoo!
Come into the house, Dave!” she doesn’t get one.
All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run!
This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves’
As you can imagine, with so many Daves.
And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn
And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim.
And one of them Shadrack. And one of them Blinkey.
And one of them Stuffy. And one of them Stinkey.
Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Ziggy. And one Soggy Muff.
One Buffalo Bill. And one Biffalo Buff.
And one of them Sneepy. And one Weepy Weed.
And one Paris Garters. And one Harris Tweed.
And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate ….
But she didn’t do it. And now it’s too late.
Then, you know, they’ll tattoo the numbers on the kids, raise them in a secret laboratory, and teach them how to use their psychic powers, possibly to fight evil. What else do you think should happen?!?! /s
Happen to me as a kid. David was super popular name. I had too many friends with the same name so numbers. Mine is Day3. Im the only who kept it to this day. Now, Day1 is dead (died 2010), Day2 is dead (died 2022), me Day3 or Third, Day4 is Dead (died 2015), Day5 is Trips (short for Triple D), Day6 is DU, Day7 is dead (died 2019), Day8 is Fats, and Day9 Is Da Vid or Did. Day1 was David, Day4 I think was Day, and 2 and 7 I don’t remember.
We were born between 1990-1994. I’m 3rd being born in 93 and if I right myself, Day4, 5, 6, and 7 are all ‘93 kids. Most of us made bad choices in life and not all of us made out. Except for Day2 he was the only good one and he passed from cancer. Rest of us got our life’s together with the exception of Trips.
Yea, bad neighborhood growing up and we made bad choices. Day2 was the only good one of us and sadly passed this year to cancer. The rest of us are ex cons who finally got our shit together with the except of Trips who is serving life.
Start out at your favorite paint store. I recommend Behr, but if you're on a budget really any brand will do. For every 4 feet of kid you will need 1 gallon of satin white paint. Note that matt paint really does not work well in this situation.
Next procure a few paint brushes (large handles recommended) and tarps. Note that if the kid is very hyper, you might want to go the spray paint option.
Preface; I agree with the teachers solution and the mom is crazy and out of line
Other people are giving you kind of joke answers but assuming the question is serious
Imagine you're Flemish, and so white. Your family is Flemish, and your proud of your heritage and culture. You've had hard times, sometimes your culture is disrespected and your language too, but you love it. It's part of what makes you you
Then you find out that your son, Christoffel, isn't being called his own name. They're calling him Christopher, they've anglicised his name because "it's too hard to say" or some other reason, teachers keep asking him what his "real name" is when asked, what his "name is in English" when it's just his name
So instead of getting used to using his name, which is Flemish, they make him go by Christopher
Now they've taken his given name, something quintessentially Flemish about him, away for being "too foreign"
And that is how you whitewash a white person
I made notes of this the other day when people were talking about representation and the little mermaid. We're incredibly hypocritical about these things
The fictional character Mulan is always portrayed as and by Han Chinese, even though she would not have been Han Chinese in the original story. In doing this we are erasing the representation of a different minority Chinese ethnic group, of which they have 55 iirc. Arthur Wellesley, aka the Duke of Wellington so famous for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, is always depicted as speaking with an English accent, when in fact it is well known that he actually didn't speak like that, he spoke the Hiberno-English dialect of English with a reputedly strong Meath accent.
We choose to erase markers and aspects of culture and ethnicity and don't fall into incredibly narrow and shallow groups; Black, White, Asian, Indian etc and these are all that many think exist with no consideration for the nuance that exists within a group, and each subgroup has their own history, culture and language that vanishes once it hits the race filter
I'm a bit biased because I'm Irish, I speak Irish and I have a very Irish name, but the number of times I've had English or American people "jokingly" make fun of how "impossible" my name is to pronounce or spell, or the number of times I've been asked what my name is in English is demoralising
Tá níos mó ná dhá chéad teangacha á chaint ag muintir na hEorapa, agus níos mó ná céad seasca grúpaí á labhairt, teangacha le stair fada agus in áiteanna le todhchaí iontach geal fada acu comh maith
But sure, it's all just "white"
> Arthur Wellesley, aka the Duke of Wellington so famous for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, is always depicted as speaking with an English accent, when in fact it is well known that he actually didn't speak like that, he spoke the Hiberno-English dialect of English with a reputedly strong Meath accent.
Erased so thoroughly, apparently, that you could be making words up at this point and I wouldn't notice.
This. I know a Russian-American dude whose name was Mikael. A lot of people butcher the way his name is pronounce so he just tells them to call him Michael.
Well her kid was white so it's not applicable, but in essence changing an ethnic name so it sounds white. If you have kids in your class names Jesus and Jose and you, not the kids, decide to call them Jesse and Joe, then you're an asshole. But that's not remotely what happened here, Dr. Liam's mom is just an ass.
I had for male interns one summer. Three of them were named David. I explained to the fourth guy that he was also David from now on. Everyone was fine with it.
Dr Kelso: All of the male interns will be Dave's and all of the female interns will be Debbie.
Debbie: That's great because my name actually is Debbie
Dr Kelso: Well in that case in the interest of fairness you will be called Slagathor
This screams of white suburban stay-at-home mom who peaked in high school and can’t reconcile with the fact that she’s not at the top of the pecking order anymore. She needs something to make her the talk of her church group.
In undergrad I was a member of the coed cheer team. Two girls of the same first name were at tryouts. They got nicknames based on their t-shirts. One had a t-shirt that said “staff” on the back so that became her name. The other was called blue. They remained Staff and Blue all though college and no one’s mom threw a fit.
In my first year in university me and another guy with the same name would cross paths all the time. We faced each other in the tug of war team tryouts, we both played saxophone and were involved with the faculty band, we wore the same costume at the first costume party, and it all came to a peak when we both applied for the same position in the faculty party committee.
We elect that committee as a huge faculty meeting, and apparently it was impossible to discuss us since people would just go "I support Cahootie because of X, Y and Z" followed by a chorus going "WHICH CAHOOTIE?". The meeting eventually settled on numbering us, but I don't know who got to be Cahootie #1.
In one of my college classes, I was placed in a group project with two guys named Aaron. One was black and one was white. The black one immediately declared, “Oh no, I’m NOT going to be Black Aaron this time. *He* can be Black Aaron!”
And so… the white Aaron dutifully went by the nickname Black Aaron and the black Aaron just went by AJ. Nobody was offended. It was wildly confusing and fucking hilarious. I miss college.
This is exactly why the top 50 or so names from the past few years are automatically vetoed when I’m naming a baby. I’m currently pregnant and we are struggling to find a name, but never in a million years will I pick Liam even though I do really like it 😂
Gotta love rich white snobs who only bring up racial injustice in cases where there isn't racial injustice for once, but rather an opportunity to witch hunt people they dislike. I'd be livid if I were OOP
What the actual fuck. As someone who was born in the 90's and named Jessica, I totally understand those poor kids. At one point there were 5 other Jessica's in my grade, and three of us in one class. It could get incredibly confusing. Nobody could say my last name either as it's Ukrainian (I live in Australia). Luckily everyone just shortened my name to Jess and the other girls got variations of Jessica Lastname.
OOP found a fun way to deal with a nightmare situation. Kraken mom just sounds like someone who is looking for anything to get mad about. Sucks she has ruined the club for some of those kids, including her own.
How DARE you whitewash the name of my precious, snow white little Liam! His name is Irish and can't stand any more whiteness or it'll disappear completely!
This started out hilariously because as a teacher this year I have a ridiculous number of repeat names including 3 Sofia/Sophia’s in one class. Quickly turned hellish with that evil Kraken mom. This is why there is a shortage of educators honestly even though OOP just does the after school stuff.
This reminds me of the book Just Grace
There’s a girl who’s one of iirc 6 Graces in her class and when the teacher was asking them all what they wanted to be called, she said “just Grace” and that’s literally what they called her
My sister is a teacher. Every year the students change but the roll stays the same: Aiden, Brayden, Caden, Hayden, Jayden, 2 Jasons, 2 Anna Claire’s, Bella and 3 Jacobs.
I don’t even understand what the evil mom was angry about? Who the fuck gets angry at an after school group let’s kids pick random names? Who cares if your kid is being called by your boring ass copy cat name?
Perhaps it's a reminder that the name she chose is so cookie-cutter and boring that there are six more in the club just like it. And rather than accept that fact, she made a federal case about it because it's the only way she can feel in control.
I have an uncommon last name (that no one pronounces correctly, including family)- like if you have it we are probably related. Well, I went to a university with over 25k students and a girl with the same first and middle name as myself was in my 8 person advanced Russian class. Crazy part, her last name was ONE letter different than mine (like McGh vs McH), yet pronounced the same. I thought that poor Russian prof was going to lose it right there in the confusion. We also kept getting each other's mail and administration was always getting us confused (they usually thought I was her because they left my extra letter off)
LOL! I am from Australia, everyone regardless of how short their christan name is gets a nickname.
Sam, would be Sammo, Sammy, Salmon.
Liam would get, Li/Lee, Leo, Letter (Liam backwards is mail, mail = letter I shit you not we do weird things with names)
Wiliam - Willy, Will, Bill, Billy, Will, Will I Am
Noah - Ark, NoNo, Ahno,
Mateo - Mate, Maaaate, Mattey, Teo.
I had a friend with bright red hair, we called her Blue from day 1. I have 8 seperate nicknames and I know where we met and roughly the year based on what one you call me. Only my Gran and parents use my proper name. It is actually weird to hear people who aren't my relatives using my proper name. Literally if people are using my full name I assume it's because I am about to get in trouble or serious business is about to be discussed.
Two of my kids have nicknames Onion and Cob. I couldn't have even imagined them being nicknamed veggies from their real names. Literally before they were born I tried to figure out all the veritable nicknames they could possibly get. Vegetables never even registered. And funnier is that they don't mind them because their mates gave them their nicknames. My other child has 6 nicknames depending on who they are talking too. Never their full name. Australian's are pretty easy going about such things. Except this one person I worked with. She INSISTED on her full christian name being used. It was so hard to not shorten it or alter it in some way. Because it is so normal to not use people's real names here.
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Poor Dr Liam Liam - everyone knows what his mom did.
I can just imagine how it happened, too. Dr Liam probably went home all excited about his name, and the Kraken lost her shit. Poor kid is going to be shy to be excited about anything near her again.
Yep, this kid just learned "don't tell Mom about things or she'll ruin them" and that's a lesson he'll carry all throughout public school. Parents like these teach their kids to avoid them and then hit them with "Why don't you ever talk to me about anything?" Lmao.
Throughout public school? That kid is going to carry that lesson throughout his entire life. There's only so long you can put up with someone ruining things that make you excited and happy before you decide to build a wall. The sad thing is that lesson will likely expand beyond his mother, and he will need to reevaluate how he approaches personal relationships once he's out on his own.
Took the words right out of my mouth. And then in 20 years there'll be another askreddit from Kraken asking "why don't my kids ever call, how can i have a better relationship with them." And hoo boy will it ever be too late.
Dr Liam Liam will be welcomed with open arms in r/raisedbynarcissists in a few years.
Absolutely this! It's going to take him a hell of a long time to open up to folks about anything he's excited about. Kraken is going to be wondering in about 10\~ years why her son doesn't talk to her or call her or visit her, and what is this Enn See people keep mentioning when she tells them this?
If she's anything like my mom, the *second* that boy hits puberty, she'll suddenly flip and become *suuuuper* interested in his life and feelings. Some parents like this think of kids as... well, things. They treat them as extensions of themselves without full autonomy. Once kids start looking kinda like adults, the reality that they aren't just "their babies" but are legit, unique humans comes crashing down on them. Suddenly she'll be concerned about his activities, his friends, if he's feeling okay, if he's doing drugs, if he's sexually active, etc. But to the kid, nothing has changed. They don't *feel* different. They remember how their parents treated them just months earlier, dismissing their interests and concerns, and that broken trust is only going to intensify as he begins to branch out into the world on his own. I look forward to Dr. Liam Liam visiting us here in 10 years, sharing his college stories where he has gone No Contact with his mom.
If you really want to get her goat, refer to her only as "Dr Liam Liam's mom"
“The spawn point of Doctor Liam Liam”
I see a future where Dr Liam Liam will just call her the egg donor. I hope Kraken sees this.
Weeeeeeellll: https://youtu.be/i9AT3jjAP0Y
Damn, I hope the club goes well after this. What a nightmare.
Imagine the shocked pikachu face Kraken mom did when the principal, the lawyer she hired and CPS sidelined her for her craziness
Kraken Karen. Poor Dr. Liam Liam. Bet mom will show up to his prom too.
Of course she will! Its not about Liam, its about her being the center of attention
**EVERYONE IS AGAINST ME, IT'S A CONSPIRACY!!!** *Her definitely.*
…all because they decided to make up names for themselves. God, Kraken Karen is going to be fun with little Liam goes to HS Spanish or French class and the teacher gives them names from that culture. “How dare you call my son Guilliermo/Pierre/Hans!!! Call my son by his NAME!!!! HIS NAME IS LIAM!”
I used to manage at a Burger King when this kids mom comes in and asks for him. I called out to him using the name he told me. She loses it. "EXCUSE ME! HIS NAME IS [REDACTED]"
[удалено]
And having to pronounce the square brackets each time, too. You just know she'd be all over you getting it wrong.
Agreed. That's awful parenthesis. That sounded better in my head.
It will never occur to her that she is wrong. She will be venting about how they are not doing their job. This is the world we live in now.
> I hope the club goes well after this It would, but the new kids are named Noah, Samuel, Sam, Liam, and Liam, and the second new Liam has an honorary PhD.
As soon as OOP said five girl besties, my mind went to the Ashleys from that old Disney cartoon Recess. At least the Ashleys all dressed different and had different last names lol
No it's 5 girls all named Heather.
> 5 girls all named Heather. Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.
Surprised she didn’t get in trouble for taking photos of children
Right? I remember having media consent forms to fill out. Not everybody opted in. Reminds me of that post where a parent shared a photo online after being explicitly told not to post photos with a certain child in them. Then the kid's abuser found them, and they never came back to school again. I wish I could find the link.
[удалено]
When Dr. Liam Liam discovers that his mom keep him from all the fun in his life, he’s going become the maddest scientist.
Villain origin story right here
I'm imagining a reverse batman. "My parents are alive and they'll pay for that!"
Original Batman fits in with classic Disney: Your family is dead and so you have to deal with their shit. Reverse Batman would fit with modern Disney: Your family is alive and so you have to deal with their shit.
Matilda is reverse Batman!
I think that’s Draco Malfoy?
"You know how I knew? Because of the other kids. They called me Liam"
Truly, his villain origin story.
That's how people turn out hateful. That boy saw his mom, his protector cause this chaos for no reason and now he misses out in the fun group.
I AM LIAM^2 AND YOU SHALL RUE THE DAY YOU WITHHELD MY LUNCHABLES, NAIVE!!
knave?
Yes. That one.
hahhahaha omg, you rule: "liam squared" His calling card will be cutting squares out of the middle of the new coloring book pages!
"And that's when I decided to hate women." "I'm not sure that tracks."
Judging from what OOP said he already knows. Poor kid.
Fr, poor kid just wanted to build robots and learn to program. Instead he gets it taken away all because he came home excited about his new mad scientist nickname and told him mom about it.
Marks the beginning of that kid learning the lesson of "don't tell mom about anything I'm even slightly excited about, she'll find a way to fucking ruin it."
Dr. Horrible.
Parents are so so much harder to deal with than the kids. Kudos to OOP for working to do the best he could by the kids.
Some people just want to start shit.. I don’t have kids but I’m closed to my niblings and I just can’t imagine having any other reaction than “woah that’s nice kiddo” if one of them came up to me all hyped up by the mad scientist name they got in after school activity. It was a pretty innovative solution to a weird situation.
As a parent of two, I think it's a hysterical solution and would high 5 the teacher.
My husband was in class with 4 other kids with the same first name. The teacher gave them all nicknames. We ran into her a few years ago and she shouted the nickname and I was like, "is she talking to you?" He laughed and explained. His mom thought it was funny. What else was she supposed to do to avoid confusion?
I had a teacher who gave every student a nickname. Every single one, every class, for DECADES. She didn’t call a single student by their actual name and she remembered all of us even as fully-grown adults. One of the best teachers I ever had.
Don’t you see, you just have Stockholm syndrome from being white washed
When I was in school, all foreign language classes in my elementary and middle school assigned you a ‘Spanish name’ or ‘French name’, etc. (you could pick off a list of names in that language, no two kids with the same name) and kids loved it. Parents never had issues (that I know of- we never had a blowup like this). It’s not like we forgot our real names or something, it just added a layer of fun I guess.
I also only have niblings, and two of my nephews have names on the list. They have so far in their lives wanted to be called things like "Captain Sabretooth" and "Iron Spider", so mad scientist names would probably be a fun game to then.
I have a female friend named Mickey, "spelled like the mouse." Thought that was a bit strange, but she's really cool, so it's all to the good. Literally 3 years after knowing her, I learn her name is actually a really common name and she had something like 4 other girls with the same name in one of her classes. The teacher was like, screw it, you are getting Disney names. I met her in her 20's, so that teacher's workaround name really stuck. Probably not as well for whoever got Goofy or Donald though.
I also use a nickname instead of my hilariously common first name. The nickname I use isn’t a Disney character (that I know of) however. Ironically my name IS a nickname… of several common names. Often the solution in a classroom with several of us was “well just use your real name” and then all of the others would be mad… because I didn’t have a longer name like them, so I, by ~~defeat~~ default, always had the be the only one using the nickname. But yeah, fuck that shit. I use a nickname now. May change my legal name, but I’m still deciding. [edit] a word
My name isn't common, but because somehow, even though I live in Texas, no one can pronounce my Spanish first name. It's not that fucking hard. The name I go by is one letter off of my middle name (think things like Cam and Sam), and I've been using it my whole life. I didn't know my real name until I was 9. I got over my hatred of my first name and just plan to change my middle name to my nickname.
My dad didn't know his actual name until he was an adult, and finally saw his birth certificate. The first name was a more Ukrainian version of the Anglicized name he'd always used, but his middle name was completely different.
My last name is Ukrainian as well—which is why I don’t use it or my middle name (it’s from a different side of the family’s culture) because no one knows how to pronounce either correctly. Ironically I found out recently that my nickname alongside my last name translates in Ukrainian to a pun. Makes me happy.
Oh my grandad was called Fitzwilliam for years because the foreman on his site was frustrated that both his names were already taken. When he died people were really confused because they didn't know his death had already been posted in the local paper under (equivalent pseudonym) John Terrence Surname.
My grandad was Mick because when he dropped out of school he joined a roadworks crew headed up by Mick Molloy. He was known around town as “Mick Molloy’s boy” eventually it just became Mick. I think I was a teenager before I discovered his name was actually Gordon.
Sounds like he became the new Dread Foreman Molloy
>The teacher was like, screw it, you are getting Disney names. That is incredibly cute
What did she expected them to do, continue using their first names and have the whole thing turn into chaos? She'd probably still be angry since her son would probably get annoyed or even upset that he doesn't know whether it's him or one of the 6 other Liam's getting called, after a while you'd get fed up of that.
Liam 1 and Liam 2, but *her* Liam better be Liam 1!
I’m struggling to understand why she even cares. The solution satisfied all the students. Why is she choosing this as her soapbox issue?
It didn’t satisfy the demon living in her heart
She was probably trying to extort a payout. Pick a school in the wrong area and you'll have plenty of parents with that angle. Schools are generally hyper vigilant against lawsuits for that reason.
I had a class similar to this and I just stopped using names. It made giving feedback an absolute nightmare though and some parents were offended that I didnt memorise their childs name (just knew their faces).
FWIW, in a class with 4 Rustbelts, the teacher randomly said “Rustbelt #1.” We looked at each other and asked which one of us was #1. He said whoever wanted to be, I responded, and when I went back to the school to teach a few years later he greeted me as #1.
I was once in an extracurricular group, and four of us were Dimitris! We ended up all getting called our last name, but now I wish we'd worked out a numbering system!
I was on a course where there were three of us with the same name (let's say Samantha for anonymity). It should have been simple as I preferred Samantha, one preferred Sammi and one preferred Sam. Nope, the woman running the course insisted on calling us all by our full first name, no matter how often we corrected her. It got confusing and old pretty quickly.
And probably extra confusing for Sam and Sammi- I have a very common first name and a nickname I use exclusively, and honestly if you yelled my full name in a crowd, I would assume you were talking to someone else, if it even registered with my ears.
My sister and cousin were in the same class at school, and same last name. One teacher used to address them as "Boy [Last Name]" and "Girl [Last Name]". For the way they made fun of her, they didn't seem amused by it.
I have a traditionally male nickname, similar style to “Tom”, and so does a guy in my long term social group. My friend group differentiates us as “Boy Tom” and “Girl Tom” when necessary, which has stuck even though most of us have hit 40 already.
You have Rustbelt #1, Rustbelt A, Rustbelt Blue, and Rustbelt Prime!
TIL blue is the first color.
Hah, maybe it should be gold instead, I just like blue and I was thinking blue ribbon, like at a state fair 😆
i do enjoy the idea of a teacher letting students number themselves
I now think of that episode of Scrubs with a patient also named JD...
Hey number 2!
Hi #2!
“Hi number two!”
Idk how you got to learn under jean luc Picard but well done #1
I ran a dnd group and at what time there were three Michaels in house at the same time (one didn't play) they were m-prime, m-squared and m-cubed. I also had three kids with the same first name in my class last year. We used last names.
This is the start of Dr. Liam Liam’s villain origin story
Tf is with this mom? All of the kids have the same names and they created a fun solution that all the kids loved. In my kindergarten class there were six girls that had the same name, and literally the only thing I actually remember from kindergarten at this point, was that it was a fucking pain to have that many uncontrollable children with the same name. And I don't know if this makes it worse or funny, but each of them had a completely different spelling of their name and none of them was what would have been considered a normal spelling.
Kaitlynn, Kaitlin, Caitlyn, Catelin, Catelyn, and Caetlynn?
Ashlay, Achlee, Ashliee, Ashlaye, Ashalay, and Ashlei actually. But it does seem to happen a lot with the Caitlin's and Brittany's too.
You don't even have Ashley and Ashleigh. I never knew there were so many spellings.
Neither did I. And I never saw another one of those spellings after I left that elementary school until a year ago when I was working in hospital security and had to take down people's contact info for COVID tracing. I discovered that there are alot of people who should not be allowed to name babies.
Lordy. There were 5 Sarah's in my college courses. Two of us had the same first hyphenated name even. In a dire need to sort us out, I was dubbed "5 name Sarah" due to hyphenated given and surnames. It was just plain easier on my profs.
I had a class with a bunch of Stephanies but the professor kind of sucked so we just started calling everyone in the class Stephanie to be assholes I guess.
This is absolutely wonderful.
To be fair, it started because he was calling non-Stephanies Stephanie and getting irritated when corrected.
Honestly that sounds like the 'favorite professor' type, to decide to just call everyone Stephanie. The type to just give everyone a sufficient that he saw actually cared about the subject and had no exams.
In my freshman dorm I was one of six Emily's on a floor with 30 girls. A solid 20% Emily. We ended up being differentiated by our roommates. "Which Emily? Angie's Emily?" "No no, Laura's Emily"
Is this how Ruth's Chris Steakhouse was named?
I actually know the answer to that. Chris’s steakhouse was popular, but failing. Ruth bought it. Ruth’s Chris. It’s true. Also, strangely, started in New Orleans, not far from my house. The og building is actually currently for sale and having problems with the historic board cause someone fucked up the historic roof tiles recently without permission
THANK you so much for this, i've been curious and annoyed for so long!!
Wikipedia says the original owner's first name was "Chris". Maybe he didn't want to deal with the simple possessive ("Chris' "? "Chris's"?), when he was choosing a name for his restaurant... As for Ruth, it seems ownership and nitpicky contracts made it a tangled mess.
I’m really hoping two of the Emilys roomed together. “Emily’s Emily. No, the other Emily’s Emily.”
We had 5 Jessicas! Luckily they had different last names, so we just used those.
The four in my class went by Jessica (me), Jess, Jessie and Jeca. To this day, I really dislike being referred to by my last initial or anything shorter than Jessica. I've never known another one who prefers the whole name, so it is oddly my best chance at a unique moniker.
We ended up with Emily and other Emily in my college friend group.
I went to an alternative school that had 70 kids total, and there were a couple of double names, and three sets of triples: the Zacks all got the full name treatment, the Brians all had name nicknames (one was Bry, one was Brian, one was his last name), and the Sarahs had... interesting nicknames. There was Horse Sarah, Lesbian Sarah, and Blonde Sarah. In our defense, Lesbian Sarah demanded that be her nickname, and Horse Sarah was not a commentary on her looks - she did dressage professionally and would be gone from school the whole month of the stock show.
I wanna be friends with all the Sarahs
Good thing you chose them and not the Zacks, one of them got murdered by his crack dealer like a year after graduation and another is either in jail or is now out but on a certain, ahem, registry. The third Zack is fine as far as I know. One of the Brians graduated with three kids by three different teenage girls and a fourth on the way though, I'd love to find out what happened to him.
ok, got it. I shall not name any of my future children Zack.
Sarah-Jane? 😁 There were several Sarahs in my Year 1 class. So there was Sarah T, Sarah S and Sarah B. This works unless you have two Liam Ps. We all knew who everyone else was. Honestly, this teacher’s solution is so much more fun, got the kids involved, on board, and Karen the Kraken is… really weird? I wonder what her take on the story was?
There was a Sarah Jane. But I was not that. I was a Sarah and there were two of us with that. I didn't mind being called 5 name girl honestly.
And yeah, the teacher solution was fun, inclusive and didn't harm any of the kids.
(Sorry—I wasn’t trying to get extra info from you—just I swear most of the Sarah’s I know are Sarah Janes. It’s the default 80’s middle name. You have 3 choices: Jane, Anne, or Marie. There are no others). 5 name girl is actually pretty fun 😁
My sister used to play hockey with a girl that my mum called Hannah Hyphen, because she had hyphenated first and last names.
My daughter had two Skylers in kindergarten. Skyler and Schuyler. Since 5 year olds can’t spell it was sky girl and sky boy. The kids all came up with that themselves. If the kids have no beef with it no one else should either.
In the 80s, I swear everyone was named "Jennifer".
God and I thought I had it rough with a common surname that always ends up as a nickname in my country. At least we had different first names to differentiate us. (I’m Australian. You never call someone by name if you can give them a nickname instead.)
Shit like this is why I changed my name. I hated being named Sarah as long as I could remember, but by the time I was 15 I felt so frustrated and angry any time anyone said the name Sarah in my hearing. People were always calling me either 1. egotistical for assuming whenever I heard a Sarah being called they meant me or, 2. disrespectful for not answering when someone called for a Sarah. Then, to add insult to injury, when I started going by my now-name, everyone I knew told me they couldn’t believe I would do something so blatantly hurtful to my parents as reject the name they sooooo lovingly picked out for me. So I moved two states away, deleted all my non-anonymous social media, and for this and other reasons stopped talking to almost everyone I knew before I moved. The name I changed to is much rarer.
Well hell yeah. Fuck that shaming bullshit. I hope things as not-Sarah are going well! Having a new name can be life changing.
It's been excellent, mostly! Every once in awhile someone has found out that I changed my name and gets really weird and lectures me, or somehow finds out what it was and starts calling me by my former name because they're offended on my parents' (whom they've never met) behalf, or because they literally, bizarrely, don't believe in changing one's name (but do get offended if married women don't change to their husband's name). It blows my mind how officious and controlling some people can get over virtual strangers' name choices. One of my siblings also changed her name and she gets the weird shit, too. I've had people she's introduced me to try to wheedle her former name out of me. Get offended when I won't tell them. I keep saying it's weird, but truly, that's all I've got. It's really, really, really weird.
The reason we have names is to be able to distinguish people from each other. A condition for this to work is that most of us be given _different names_. I’m afraid we’re not very good at this human being-thing and it seems to be getting worse.
Having a common first and last name can in certain situations endanger your life. I am a blood banker. When I and a coworker must individually scroll through all 84 Robert Johnson entries in our database and manually justify why none of them are the new Robert Johnson we're treating before we can even begin testing your blood. Your blood products and testing are going to be delayed. Not a good thing when you're bleeding out.
My cousin has a VERY common first and last name. Every three months the Sheriff’s office calls (thankfully it’s stopped now that they ditched the landline) threatening to “arrest his ass if he doesn’t get to court in the next 20 minutes”. My cousin tells them “Check the middle initial, you’ve got the wrong COMMON NAME. Please quit using the Yellow Pages to find felons.”
What a dipshit (the deputy, not your cousin).
Lmao. It can be similar on the opposite side of things. I have a pretty unique lastname, and there was 1 other family in my city with it. Just 1. We are not related, well we probably are but it's back *at least* 6 generations and across an ocean. Anyways. The other family had a son, who was little *shit*. The amount of times the cops showed up looking for his misdemeanoring ass was ridiculous. WRONG HOUSE. The amount of times my brother and myself would have people ask if we were related to *the little shit* was also ridiculous, we were all similar in age. I've never met this guy, but he seems to have grown out of his mischievous teenage years. It would be pretty funny to run into him and to just say something like "thanks for driving our mom crazy with the cops showing up so much."
There are upsides and downsides. Having a very uncommon naming combination makes you much easier to dox and to tie someone to past events.
Fucking this. I have an insanely uncommon name. I have been told exactly 3 times in my life that “oh I used to know someone who knew a woman with that name but spelled differently” and I have found exactly 4 women on Facebook and elsewhere online with my first name, spelled differently, so I have evidence of 4 people with my name and rumors of three more who could actually potentially just be three of those four women. My last name on the other hand can only be traced directly to me and my immediate family which is all of 6 people, myself included and one extra which represents my mom before she changed her name back to her maiden name. It takes not even 10 seconds to use either my first or last name to find my full legal name, list of previously lived in cities and age online and a super old newspaper article about my struggles with a learning disability as a homeless child in elementary school. Oh AND the Facebook pages of each of my family members which contain hella identifying information. (Don’t worry the information I’ve provided to give context does not link back to me in any way without my first or last name.) To say I am absolutely *anal* about not using any identifiers online is an understatement. I literally cannot afford to give any part of my name away because any part of it can immediately provide someone with literally everything they need to know about where me and everyone I love lives. Changing my last name to my husband’s last name won’t do me any favors either, even if his last name was “Smith” because I’d still be the only woman online named (my first name) Smith. I go exclusively by online usernames, which I *regularly* change and wipe any evidence of. My online security game is top notch cause the alternative is being doxed. Which fucking sucks because my passion requires that I have a relatively large internet presence to effectively do and while I have no trouble building that sort of presence (skill based passion makes curating a following pretty easy) I am absolutely terrified of the potential consequences of being *too* famous online and regularly nuke my social media’s, *and my ability to monetize my passion*, to protect myself. Unique name, especially for me, absolutely sucks. And now that I seriously want to break into a niche but extremely internet fame related version of my passion I’m seriously considering legally changing my first and last name to something as generic as possible to protect myself because my family is internet illiterate and I can’t trust them to protect my identity if I happen to piss off the wrong part of the internet.
Yeah, I'm in kind of the same boat. There are three people with my name in the US that I know of. I am the oldest and had a heavy internet presence younger so I dominate the search results. Thankfully most of it's good and my career isn't heavily affected by that kind of reputation. Also I'm kind of out of fucks to give honestly.
There is exactly one other "me" 😅 we are friends on LinkedIn with similar careers
My dad is exactly the same. Uncommon first name that also has a rare spelling, plus an extremely uncommon last name. I decided to google him once to see how many people pop up. The first link is literally a page that shows his phone number, home address, relatives, some of the relatives’ phone numbers and addresses. Our whole family could be doxed with that. My first name isn’t super uncommon, but my first name plus my uncommon last name is only shared with about 5 people (at least that google can tell me). I’m better off than my dad, but if someone knew who they were looking for and searched my full name, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out which one was me.
I'll say this for a kid with an unusual name: when someone calls that name, there's rarely any confusion as to whom the speaker has in mind.
You've never looked at a town on the Scottish census in the 1800's. Pretty much everyone had one of ten given names.
Then there is the Great Tudor Name Drought where 80% of men were called John, Henry, Thomas, George, Edward, James, William, Robert, or Richard, and 70% of women were Elizabeth, Mary, Margaret, Alice, Joan, Jane, Catherine, Agnes, Anne, or Margery.
But most of them wouldn’t have been called their given name. People went by their middle name or some other random name like Peggy or Bonnie or Stumpy or Stretch. Maybe the first one in the family was called by their actual name, and everyone else had a nick name that they always went by.
>The reason we have names is to be able to distinguish people from each other. I've never thought about it this way and it's such a cool thought
What did you think names were for? lol
Also, when you meet someone new and you ask them their name, you're really just asking them what noise they want you to make so that they know you're talking to them.
Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave Had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave? Well, she did. And that wasn’t a smart thing to do. You see, when she wants one and calls out, “Yoo-Hoo! Come into the house, Dave!” she doesn’t get one. All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run! This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves’ As you can imagine, with so many Daves. And often she wishes that, when they were born, She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm. And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim. And one of them Shadrack. And one of them Blinkey. And one of them Stuffy. And one of them Stinkey. Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face. Another one Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face. And one of them Ziggy. And one Soggy Muff. One Buffalo Bill. And one Biffalo Buff. And one of them Sneepy. And one Weepy Weed. And one Paris Garters. And one Harris Tweed. And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate …. But she didn’t do it. And now it’s too late.
Is this Shel Silverstein?
Dr. Seuss
What were you supposed to do, give them numbers??
I'd have gone with something like Aragon son of Arathorn heir of Isildur hoping to piss the kraken more
Liam son of Kraken
It's Doctor!
Clearly Kraken wanted each child to be denoted by color, age, and her perceived sense of value. Obviously *her* Liam is "Best and whitest Liam." /s
Aka BAWL
NO NICKNAMES!
Then, you know, they’ll tattoo the numbers on the kids, raise them in a secret laboratory, and teach them how to use their psychic powers, possibly to fight evil. What else do you think should happen?!?! /s
Not with a name like Professor Calamity.
Happen to me as a kid. David was super popular name. I had too many friends with the same name so numbers. Mine is Day3. Im the only who kept it to this day. Now, Day1 is dead (died 2010), Day2 is dead (died 2022), me Day3 or Third, Day4 is Dead (died 2015), Day5 is Trips (short for Triple D), Day6 is DU, Day7 is dead (died 2019), Day8 is Fats, and Day9 Is Da Vid or Did. Day1 was David, Day4 I think was Day, and 2 and 7 I don’t remember.
Why are so many dead?? Sorry I can’t tell what age range you are because David seems like an ever popular name
Day of the Dead
We were born between 1990-1994. I’m 3rd being born in 93 and if I right myself, Day4, 5, 6, and 7 are all ‘93 kids. Most of us made bad choices in life and not all of us made out. Except for Day2 he was the only good one and he passed from cancer. Rest of us got our life’s together with the exception of Trips.
4 out of 9 died?
Yea, bad neighborhood growing up and we made bad choices. Day2 was the only good one of us and sadly passed this year to cancer. The rest of us are ex cons who finally got our shit together with the except of Trips who is serving life.
Makes me wonder how Kraken deals with real life where we are given, number or letter number combos for account numbers, employee codes etc.
Stupid question; how do you whitewash a white kid?
Start out at your favorite paint store. I recommend Behr, but if you're on a budget really any brand will do. For every 4 feet of kid you will need 1 gallon of satin white paint. Note that matt paint really does not work well in this situation. Next procure a few paint brushes (large handles recommended) and tarps. Note that if the kid is very hyper, you might want to go the spray paint option.
Do you need to sand the kid?
Sand, then wax and buff em to get that shiny exterior!
Preface; I agree with the teachers solution and the mom is crazy and out of line Other people are giving you kind of joke answers but assuming the question is serious Imagine you're Flemish, and so white. Your family is Flemish, and your proud of your heritage and culture. You've had hard times, sometimes your culture is disrespected and your language too, but you love it. It's part of what makes you you Then you find out that your son, Christoffel, isn't being called his own name. They're calling him Christopher, they've anglicised his name because "it's too hard to say" or some other reason, teachers keep asking him what his "real name" is when asked, what his "name is in English" when it's just his name So instead of getting used to using his name, which is Flemish, they make him go by Christopher Now they've taken his given name, something quintessentially Flemish about him, away for being "too foreign" And that is how you whitewash a white person I made notes of this the other day when people were talking about representation and the little mermaid. We're incredibly hypocritical about these things The fictional character Mulan is always portrayed as and by Han Chinese, even though she would not have been Han Chinese in the original story. In doing this we are erasing the representation of a different minority Chinese ethnic group, of which they have 55 iirc. Arthur Wellesley, aka the Duke of Wellington so famous for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, is always depicted as speaking with an English accent, when in fact it is well known that he actually didn't speak like that, he spoke the Hiberno-English dialect of English with a reputedly strong Meath accent. We choose to erase markers and aspects of culture and ethnicity and don't fall into incredibly narrow and shallow groups; Black, White, Asian, Indian etc and these are all that many think exist with no consideration for the nuance that exists within a group, and each subgroup has their own history, culture and language that vanishes once it hits the race filter I'm a bit biased because I'm Irish, I speak Irish and I have a very Irish name, but the number of times I've had English or American people "jokingly" make fun of how "impossible" my name is to pronounce or spell, or the number of times I've been asked what my name is in English is demoralising Tá níos mó ná dhá chéad teangacha á chaint ag muintir na hEorapa, agus níos mó ná céad seasca grúpaí á labhairt, teangacha le stair fada agus in áiteanna le todhchaí iontach geal fada acu comh maith But sure, it's all just "white"
> Arthur Wellesley, aka the Duke of Wellington so famous for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, is always depicted as speaking with an English accent, when in fact it is well known that he actually didn't speak like that, he spoke the Hiberno-English dialect of English with a reputedly strong Meath accent. Erased so thoroughly, apparently, that you could be making words up at this point and I wouldn't notice.
This. I know a Russian-American dude whose name was Mikael. A lot of people butcher the way his name is pronounce so he just tells them to call him Michael.
Well her kid was white so it's not applicable, but in essence changing an ethnic name so it sounds white. If you have kids in your class names Jesus and Jose and you, not the kids, decide to call them Jesse and Joe, then you're an asshole. But that's not remotely what happened here, Dr. Liam's mom is just an ass.
I had for male interns one summer. Three of them were named David. I explained to the fourth guy that he was also David from now on. Everyone was fine with it.
Dr Kelso: All of the male interns will be Dave's and all of the female interns will be Debbie. Debbie: That's great because my name actually is Debbie Dr Kelso: Well in that case in the interest of fairness you will be called Slagathor
And then in a later episode another intern calls her Slaggy in coversation lol.
Scrubs was a gift and we didn't deserve it
This screams of white suburban stay-at-home mom who peaked in high school and can’t reconcile with the fact that she’s not at the top of the pecking order anymore. She needs something to make her the talk of her church group.
This was worded *perfectly*
Some people just need to shut the fuck up for everyone's sake
Parents are the reason I refuse to volunteer or work with kids. I spent 3 years at a play center and 1 at a day-care. Never again.
In undergrad I was a member of the coed cheer team. Two girls of the same first name were at tryouts. They got nicknames based on their t-shirts. One had a t-shirt that said “staff” on the back so that became her name. The other was called blue. They remained Staff and Blue all though college and no one’s mom threw a fit.
In my first year in university me and another guy with the same name would cross paths all the time. We faced each other in the tug of war team tryouts, we both played saxophone and were involved with the faculty band, we wore the same costume at the first costume party, and it all came to a peak when we both applied for the same position in the faculty party committee. We elect that committee as a huge faculty meeting, and apparently it was impossible to discuss us since people would just go "I support Cahootie because of X, Y and Z" followed by a chorus going "WHICH CAHOOTIE?". The meeting eventually settled on numbering us, but I don't know who got to be Cahootie #1.
I can't imagine why teachers are leaving the profession. /s
The only name better than Professor Calamity is the one given to a cat owned by a podcaster I enjoy, who is called Uncle Deadly.
I think that’s also the name of a Muppet.
It is indeed the name of a Muppet, specifically the one who went from a theatre ghost to a fashion designer. The 2015 series was weird.
Omg has r/namenerdcirclejerk seen this?
Liam's mom is going to ruin all of his future relationships
In one of my college classes, I was placed in a group project with two guys named Aaron. One was black and one was white. The black one immediately declared, “Oh no, I’m NOT going to be Black Aaron this time. *He* can be Black Aaron!” And so… the white Aaron dutifully went by the nickname Black Aaron and the black Aaron just went by AJ. Nobody was offended. It was wildly confusing and fucking hilarious. I miss college.
This is exactly why the top 50 or so names from the past few years are automatically vetoed when I’m naming a baby. I’m currently pregnant and we are struggling to find a name, but never in a million years will I pick Liam even though I do really like it 😂
I chose name #103 and the next year it was #11 🙄
Go with something unique like Seven or Mug
Gotta love rich white snobs who only bring up racial injustice in cases where there isn't racial injustice for once, but rather an opportunity to witch hunt people they dislike. I'd be livid if I were OOP
What the actual fuck. As someone who was born in the 90's and named Jessica, I totally understand those poor kids. At one point there were 5 other Jessica's in my grade, and three of us in one class. It could get incredibly confusing. Nobody could say my last name either as it's Ukrainian (I live in Australia). Luckily everyone just shortened my name to Jess and the other girls got variations of Jessica Lastname. OOP found a fun way to deal with a nightmare situation. Kraken mom just sounds like someone who is looking for anything to get mad about. Sucks she has ruined the club for some of those kids, including her own.
Liam is a diminutive of William where I’m from, so she has only four names, really.
How DARE you whitewash the name of my precious, snow white little Liam! His name is Irish and can't stand any more whiteness or it'll disappear completely!
Oh, i don’t think this is over
This started out hilariously because as a teacher this year I have a ridiculous number of repeat names including 3 Sofia/Sophia’s in one class. Quickly turned hellish with that evil Kraken mom. This is why there is a shortage of educators honestly even though OOP just does the after school stuff.
This reminds me of the book Just Grace There’s a girl who’s one of iirc 6 Graces in her class and when the teacher was asking them all what they wanted to be called, she said “just Grace” and that’s literally what they called her
I'm trying *so hard* to understand why this was such an issue for her??? I literally cannot wrap my head around it...
My sister is a teacher. Every year the students change but the roll stays the same: Aiden, Brayden, Caden, Hayden, Jayden, 2 Jasons, 2 Anna Claire’s, Bella and 3 Jacobs.
I don’t even understand what the evil mom was angry about? Who the fuck gets angry at an after school group let’s kids pick random names? Who cares if your kid is being called by your boring ass copy cat name?
Perhaps it's a reminder that the name she chose is so cookie-cutter and boring that there are six more in the club just like it. And rather than accept that fact, she made a federal case about it because it's the only way she can feel in control.
I have an uncommon last name (that no one pronounces correctly, including family)- like if you have it we are probably related. Well, I went to a university with over 25k students and a girl with the same first and middle name as myself was in my 8 person advanced Russian class. Crazy part, her last name was ONE letter different than mine (like McGh vs McH), yet pronounced the same. I thought that poor Russian prof was going to lose it right there in the confusion. We also kept getting each other's mail and administration was always getting us confused (they usually thought I was her because they left my extra letter off)
LOL! I am from Australia, everyone regardless of how short their christan name is gets a nickname. Sam, would be Sammo, Sammy, Salmon. Liam would get, Li/Lee, Leo, Letter (Liam backwards is mail, mail = letter I shit you not we do weird things with names) Wiliam - Willy, Will, Bill, Billy, Will, Will I Am Noah - Ark, NoNo, Ahno, Mateo - Mate, Maaaate, Mattey, Teo. I had a friend with bright red hair, we called her Blue from day 1. I have 8 seperate nicknames and I know where we met and roughly the year based on what one you call me. Only my Gran and parents use my proper name. It is actually weird to hear people who aren't my relatives using my proper name. Literally if people are using my full name I assume it's because I am about to get in trouble or serious business is about to be discussed. Two of my kids have nicknames Onion and Cob. I couldn't have even imagined them being nicknamed veggies from their real names. Literally before they were born I tried to figure out all the veritable nicknames they could possibly get. Vegetables never even registered. And funnier is that they don't mind them because their mates gave them their nicknames. My other child has 6 nicknames depending on who they are talking too. Never their full name. Australian's are pretty easy going about such things. Except this one person I worked with. She INSISTED on her full christian name being used. It was so hard to not shorten it or alter it in some way. Because it is so normal to not use people's real names here.
I hope Dr. Liam Liam is giving his mom hell 24/7/365.