It was hilarious. I went from utterly gobsmacked, to slightly agreeing to gobsmacked again to laughing out loud.
You see, I know it is wrong to judge a child by its name but I was judging my own children by their names before they were even born.
I chose names that would shape my children into the responsible, professional, hard working adults that I wanted them to be. All whilst they were still a bump in my belly.
We went through many names in our search for perfection. We discarded names ending in ie or y partly due to the scally pronunciation that occurs in our local area. We discarded names that could be shortened to more common sounding variants. I love the name Victoria but you would have never found me screeching “Vickkkkkyyyyy” in a manc accent across the playground.
I have dealt with CV’s many times within my working life and on occasion when we had a particularly large amount of applications I may have been tempted to remove some applications based on their names. Instead a quick proof read and I could usually discard them anyway. My boss would never have invited such poor grammar and sentence structure to an interview.
Choosing Elizabeth’s name was fairly easy. I wanted a regal name that could be used throughout her whole life, she was Beth as a baby, Elizabeth as she is now and if when she is middle aged and a mum herself she wants to be Liz then she can. She could even be called Betty when she is a Nan. It was a name that would look good on a CV.
If we were having a boy we initially chose Vincent. I love the shortened version as Vince but one mention of Vinny and I was shuddering. We finally settled on William with Will or Liam as the shortened versions. There would be no Willy or Billy here.
Except we didn’t have a boy. We had another girl. Throughout pregnancy we were having a little girl called Samantha. Sam for short. I can’t remember exactly when we changed our minds but it was pretty much right at the birth. This was no Samantha. Out of nowhere we decided on Alison. I am glad we did. Although she is a complete tomboy and Sam would more than likely have suited her, we love the rarity yet old fashioned reliable nature of the name Alison. It suits her personality and temperament very well. She stands out from her fellow class mates and I have yet to meet a child her age with the same name yet it is a normal name, an old name and a trusted one. Yet again a name that will see her through her childhood and her professional years well.
Do I judge other peoples kids on their names? No. I might just judge the parents for giving their kids an awful name though.