regshoe

Your Stevenson story reminded me of a girl who shared my first name in middle school but hated me so much that her parents agreed that she could legally change the spelling so that it would no longer be the same as mine.

In my defense, I had never done anything to earn the girl's enmity except have the poor manners to transfer into her small, Catholic middle school in the seventh grade, which, to be fair to me, was my parents' idea altogether. I was almost immediately unpopular, and I think she didn't want her name associated with mine, even though it was still pronounced the same (and also there were at least three other girls in the class with the same name, so...).

Anyhoo, I guess I can relate to Stevenson's story. As a high school teacher at an all-boys school, I think one of the (many) benefits of being childfree is that I don't have to try to find a boys' name that won't have negative associations for me, assuming I had a boy. Lol! I have colleagues who have lamented this very situation in their own, more prolific lives. ;-)