Hannah Clague

It surpised me that every one of the students I interviewed claimed to like their name. Everyone seemed more or less comfortable with the fact that they are stuck with a name that's not their own. Yeah, I heard a lot of stories about being confused in classroom settings (most interestingly Hannah Butterworth's discussion of how being a Kid Who Shared Her Name made her unique from the Kids with Their Own Name, because Hannahs were the only ones called by there last initials), but no one seemed to have particularly strong feelings about the subject. Many people (Hannah Blauuw, Emily Feuka) saw their name as unique within their family and special because it connected them to their bloodline. They also generally seemed to disagree with my premise that names can or should represent identity:

Chris Salem said, "If you know someone because they’re named something, you’re knowing them the wrong way. You know someone by the way they look and the way they act. Their name shouldn’t matter."

Jessica Feathers said, "Just because I'm Jessica doesn’t mean I can’t be unique... It's just a name, not ideology."

Even though I tried to give them the space to admit thier grievances with their names, no one seemed to feel threatened by their name the same way I do. Maybe I just interviewed better, more enlightened people than I am, who hold a greater respect for their parents' aesthetic preferences. It made me wonder if I'm being a little selfish and selfindulgent, spending all this time and brainspace on on a flawed assumption that having a common name is some sort of prolem.

Orginally, I'd planned to have an equal number of male and female participants in my project. As such, I sent the exact same mass email to all the Chrises and Matthews in the @umich.edu address book as I did the Emilys and Hannahs. That email elicited a response from about ten women. Zero men responded. I was a little shocked by the disparity: so many Emilys and Hannahs were interested in participating in my project and excited about the topics I was addressing, yet absolutely NO men felt the same?! Every man I got to participate in my project is one I know personally, and could nag repeatedly until they agreed to show up for a shoot. I've thought about this over the last few weeks, and developed a few possible explanations for the marked difference in these two genders' interest in my project:

1. Blame it on collective identity: Women may be more receptive to getting random emails from other young women they don't know then men are repective to female strangers emailing them. I'd be interested to see what response I'd get if I rewrote the email from a male perspectice and signed by a male name. I don't think this is an issue of sexism as much as it's an instance of women wanting to help out another woman because of our shared gender.

2. Similarly, Hannahs want to help out other Hannahs: By far, I got the largest number of responses from women named Hannah (not all were appear on this site due to scheduling conflicts). I'm beginning to have a feeling that when you share an identity with the person trying to create someting in celebration of that identity, it increases the likelihood that you'll want to participate.

3. College-age women have stronger experiences relating to the commonality of their names than colege-age men. The problem with this conclusion is that common male names are more common than common female names. For example, the topmale name of 1995, Michael, made up 2.0592% of totale male babies born that year, while the top female name, Jessica, made up only 1.4544%. In Alabama that year, 671 Michaels wer born, and only 542 Jessicas. So, men may have to share there names with more people. But, does this create the expectation of that being the norm? Each name making up a larger percent of the population means that there are probably fewer male names in use than female; that there is more variety women's names. Think about how many boys are names after their fathers: John, John Jr., John III. It is far less often than girls are named after their mothers. Do men not mind as much that they have uncommon names because more people sharing fewer names is more of a cultural norm? Do women mind more because more female names in use creates a greater expectation of uniquness?

To round out this project, I'd like to leave you with a few direct quotes taken from the interviews on the previous page. Taking these ideas of uniquness and sameness one step past my own ideas exploded my preconceptions of the way people relate to their names and their identity. I learned so much from my interviews that I wanted to go back and rewrite my entire repurposing essay to include these other arguments, more diverse viewpoints. But, I decided, that piece is for me. I can't put other people's thoughts into my own head. It is much better that my peers speak for themselves: