My parents didn’t pick out a name
for me until after I was born. As the first child, they chose not to find out
what gender I would be and therefore had not picked out names in advance (queue
the story my mom loves to tell of my dad jumping up and down yelling “it’s a
girl it’s a girl!”). I have been told that they were deciding between two names,
Erin Kathleen and Mary Catherine. I bet you can figure out which one they
picked. My parents have always told me that they mostly were looking at Irish
names for me, due to the importance of that to my dad’s family. However, when I
asked how they came up with the name Mary, I’ve been told it’s because of the
important Marys in my parents’ lives. My grandmother was named Mary, as well as
a close friend of both of my parents at our church and my mother’s good friend
in college.
I’ve told this story to other
people and I often get the comment that Mary Katherine was the name of a
character on Saturday Night Live in the late 90s and early 2000s. Her role was
the unpopular, socially awkward Catholic school teenage girl – not necessarily
someone you want to be named after. I’ve asked my parents about this, and they
always said that this was not their intention and that they weren’t thinking about
that when they came up with the name at all. However, I’m a little bit
skeptical of this because they’ve been big fans of SNL for as long as I can
remember and I know that they were both watching it for years before I was born.
I’ve always
been pretty content with my name, as I’ve never known any different. It’s
always seemed to fit me. I do remember wanting a longer, perhaps more
traditionally feminine name when I was younger, specifically I really liked the
name Ashley, but I think that had less to do with discontent with my name and
more with cousins and people that I looked up to who had those names. I do
sometimes wish that my name was long enough that I could come up with a decent
nickname for it. My friend did once jokingly call me “urine” in 4th
grade and Mr. Butler calls me “Er-bear” most of the time, but nothing serious has
ever really stuck.
However, the
one real grievance that I have about the name Erin, is the common male version,
Aaron. It can be a little confusing when you know other people with a similar
sounding name, but that’s not my real problem with it. The real problem is that
I assume that it’s common knowledge that the female version is spelled with an
E and the male with the A. Apparently, this isn’t true. I can’t tell you how
many times I’ve gone shopping and the sales workers write “Aaron” on the
whiteboard outside my dressing room.
Knowing someone else with a similar sounding name or the same name as you is so annoying! There are so many "Sophia's and Sophie's" out there that I always know someone who knows someone who is called Sophia. My parents always say that if they had known how popular of a name Sophia was they would have chosen a different name. Honestly, I never minded that my name was popular.
ReplyDeleteMary Catherine is the most Catholic name I've ever heard (but it is pretty). I think Erin suits you just fine, though. Either way, I think you got off pretty easy. I get how it kind of sucks that your name doesn't get any nicknames, but think of how easy it is to fill out forms! My full name takes up an impressive 26 letters, and even if you take out my middle name, it's still 17 letters (which yes, is horrible to bubble in on standardized tests). And I totally get your grievance about people mistaking it for the male version. Even if it's harmless, it's still annoying when people misspell or mispronounce your name.
ReplyDelete