people: names

My middle name is the same as my father's first name. I assumed that this applied to everyone. When my friend Alan told me he didn't have a middle name I told him it would be the same as his dad's first name. Alan therefore believed he had the middle name Michael for many years.

There was a little girl in my kindergarten class named Candy Nye. When I heard people sing "for he's a jolly good fellow" I thought they were singing about her. ("which nobody CAN DENY")

I used to get mad at some people who went to my church because they named their son Brad and my brother's name was Brad as well. Since my brother was older, I thought it was rude of them to use his name, because he had it first. I was truly convinced everyone in the world had a unique first name and that this was some kind of law.

I knew that boys who were named after their fathers were called "Junior". Therefore, I figured the name "Minnie" was for girls who were named after their mothers. (mini)

When my daughter was three, I packed her clothes that were to small in a box in the basement.She found them and asked why they were in the box.I told her that they were to small and that I was giving them to goodwill. She started to cry and said "but goodwills a boy" I never laughed so hard in my life.

As a child I wondered why my name was Dean, and how my parents (and I) knew it was Dean, and suspected that there might have been a great mixup and my real name was something else entirely.
This was long before I started getting teased for an uncommon name.

In elementary school, we were told that one of our classmates had a new last name because he had been adopted. I always felt sorry for him that he had not had a family until then. I just found out (I'm 36) that his mom had remarried and his stepfather adopted him and gave him the new last name!

I used to believe that I was the ONLY person in the world named "Gina". I even argued with my sisters about it for a whole afternoon. Then I asked my mom and she told me the hurtful truth.

my girl's name is Caitlin, when she was very young her playmates couldn't pronounce her name and called her 'cake tin'

I speak french, so when I was child and my english teacher said "usually" I used to think that she said "You, Julie" So I always thought she would talk about me and I was very shy

When I was about 7, there was this paper-boy whose name was "Perumal". Later we went to live at another place and there was some other paper-boy. One day I was telling my dad something aobut this paper-boy and I kept calling him "Perumal". I used to believe that one who brings paper is called "Perumal", like one who gives medicine is called doctor!

I am not from a native English speaking country. While in 5th or 6th grade, I learnt the poem -" Jack and Jill". I used to belive that both Jack and Jill were boys. I realized that Jill is a girl's name when I was a senior in university.

We had first grade reader books that used the characters "Tom", "Dick" and "Jane" that described their family adventures. These were not uncommon names in the 50s, and I actually had brothers named Tom and Dick. For a while I believed that all families must have someone named Tom and Dick if they had boys, since those were the names in the reader book.

i used to get confused and think about the 'Alert' that was part of the caption on a coffee cup "Stay alert, its almost time for coffee", thinking it was some weirdos name. And that soemone was asking Alert to stay for coffee

I used to tell everyone my name was Nancy (it isn't even close). Later, when people would ask her how Nancy was doing, she'd just give them a blank stare and ask, "who?"
They always thought she wasn't all there or something, until the day she realized what I was telling everyone, and started setting them straight.

My younger brother couldn't pronounce my name right until he was about 4 or 5, he called me Shauya