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by Maeve O'Connell (7th)

My name is Maeve. I haven’t met many people named Maeve in my life, about 3. You might wonder why some names are just so popular, why there are so many people named Sophia, James, and Emma in the world. I have the same problem with my last name, O’Connell.

Seriously, how many people do you know who have an apostrophe in their name?! The most annoying by far is that people don’t realize that it even has an apostrophe in it. Then again, having a common last name is also frustrating.

From year to year, they hardly ever change, it feels like some of them have been there forever. Though, there were so many people when our parents were kids who were named things that are considered almost outdated now. They’re named things like Amy, Jennifer, John, and Michelle, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with those names. They are simply the victims of the world’s opinion. Some parents might choose them based on the fact that they’re a family name, or that they have a meaning that they wanted associated with their kid, usually something good.

The thing about choosing family names is that due to trends of names in past decades, certain names will continuously be reused throughout the generations.

Some names will stay on the list consistently, like Mia, or Sarah, and others, which have stayed popular for a relatively consistent amount of time. The fascinating thing about names, is that as they get more popular, more people will name their children that, and then you end up with the annoying situation of having about 5 people in the same class who have the same name. You end up calling them by their last initials instead, which gets both annoying and confusing. It would be really annoying if someone had the same last name, and the same last initial as well, that would probably result in nicknames, which might drive the teacher insane.

What I, personally find so interesting, is that the same thing happens with pet names. Cats and dogs are consistently named and renamed everyday items, or everyday names. Buddy, Lucy, Max, Lily, Bear, Teddy, and Rocky are some of the popular dog names. Some of them are associated with certain genders, and others can be more fluid. There are, of course, some more cliche names, such as those classic names, like Spot. Let’s be honest though, who would really name their dog Spot nowadays.

Also, sometimes people will abbreviate their names to things like JJ, AJ, RJ, or other things like that and go by that instead. It makes sense if for instance you went by one of those and it was your first and middle initials, though I really don’t understand it when someone will do that when their middle names start with the second letter.

Nicknames are a common thing, at least for names with multiple syllables, for instance, if your name is Katherine, you might go by Kathy, or if your name is Elizabeth, you might go by Lizzy, or Eliza.

So, no matter what, the current popular names will always change. No matter what your name is, there’s probably someone else out there with the same name as you. Maybe when we all grow up, names that we have now will be considered “old.” That’s strange to think about.