Apparently I was never destined to be a Jennifer. My mom had completely different names selected for me but then I was born and my dad was suddenly given the opportunity to bestow me with my forever name and that name was not Rebecca (my mom’s choice and my now sister-in-law’s first name) or Alena (my mom’s other choice that was a mash up of her grandparents’ names, Albert and Lena, that her own dad vetoed), it was Jennifer. Why? 40 years later, my dad has no idea (nor does my mom) as to how it came to be that he did the picking or why he picked it (beyond its popularity at the time). 

Growing up as a Jennifer of the 80s, I had to have my last initial tacked on to my name to distinguish myself from the 27 other Jennifers (another song you must hear – “27 Jennifers” by Mike Doughty) in my class, but I found the way to distinguish myself, eventually, by changing the spelling of my nickname, Jenny, to Jenni. Of course you can’t actually *hear* that difference when you speak my name, so to this day 30+ years later, people still don’t always spell it correctly, but Jenni-with-an-I is me through and through, so much so that Jenny-with-an-Y doesn’t even seem like it could possibly be me when I see it in writing.

While I didn’t love having such a common name growing up, I did like the story behind my middle name, Rae. It is a feminized version of Ray, short for Raymond, which was my maternal grandfather’s middle name (Clifford Raymond). Grandpa Cliff and I shared that middle name with pride and I knew that if/when I had a daughter of my own someday, I too would want to take my dad’s middle name (Thomas Lee) and give it to her with a feminine spelling.

Lucky me, I got to do just that! But even better, I also got to take my “Rae” and incorporate it into our presidentially-named-babies theme and create Raegan (instead of Reagan) Leigh when my first sweet girl was born. I love her name so much because it has pieces of me which includes pieces of my grandpa, but then it also includes pieces of her maternal grandpa, just like I wanted, and the layers and symmetry to that are just my favorite. 

But the poor girl has run into a similar conundrum as her mama because everyone everywhere spells her name wrong and it drives her nuts. While I understand her annoyance, I hope she’ll come to see how special her name is, even if other people can’t remember how she spells it and they assume hers is spelled just like the former president’s which clearly it is not. I trust that, in time, she’ll know the uniqueness that is her own naming story makes the confusion worthwhile. Will she continue the trend of oldest daughter naming the oldest daughter after the maternal grandfather into the next generation? Well, that depends on a whole lot of circumstances, so I guess we’ll see!

*Post 13ish/52. Math is hard.