Do Kids Actually Have “Weird” Names? A Teacher Explains What’s Really Going On
The first day of third grade, my clipboard has a ring from my morning iced coffee, the classroom fan hums so loud I have to raise my voice to call roll. I get to the last name: Xochitl Garcia. I pause only because I want to get the pronunciation right, having practiced it the night before from her mom’s voice note. A boy in the back row snorts, and I hear a girl next to him whisper “that’s such a weird name.” Xochitl, who’s been twisting the hem of her purple tie-dye shirt this whole time, just rolls her eyes and says “It’s not weird. You guys just can’t pronounce it.”
A week before that first day, a first-time mom emailed me, asking if I thought she’d made a mistake naming her son Blue. He’s starting kindergarten in our district this year, and she’d already had three different strangers comment that it was “too weird” at the grocery store. She said she picked it because he was born on their family’s blueberry farm, in the back of the car on the way to the hospital during blueberry season, but now she’s worried he’ll get teased nonstop.
I’ve been teaching at this small rural elementary school for 12 years, so I’ve seen this play out over and over. Ten years ago, I had a little girl named Siobhan that everyone thought had a weird name. Five years ago, it was a boy named Jagger that got constant comments. Last year, it was Marnie, a great-grandma’s name that the kids thought sounded odd. Every time, what happened? Within a month, no one thought anything of it. With Xochitl, I asked her if she wanted to tell the class a little about her name after roll, and she shrugged and said okay. She pulled out a photo of her grandma, who lives in Oaxaca, and explained that Xochitl means flower in Nahuatl, and her grandma grows roses and makes tamales for every family party. By Friday that week, when she brought in pan dulce for her birthday, every kid could say her name correctly. A couple of them even asked their moms to make sugar cookies with rose water after she talked about her grandma’s garden.
Blue started kindergarten with me this year, and on the first day, he brought a small jar of his family’s blueberry jam to share at snack time. By the end of the first week, the kids were all begging their parents to take them blueberry picking, and no one mentioned his name being weird.
That’s when it hit me, all those years ago, that “weird” never actually has anything to do with the name itself. It’s just kid for “I’ve never heard this before.” Kids’ brains are wired to sort everything into familiar and unfamiliar, and unfamiliar just feels off at first. It’s not that they’re being intentionally mean, most of the time. It’s just how they process difference when they’re little. When I was new to teaching, I used to shut that whisper down immediately: “We don’t say that, that’s rude.” What I learned is that just shaming the kid for saying it doesn’t fix anything. It just makes them think difference is something you don’t talk about, instead of something you can learn about.
Now, when I hear that comment, I don’t jump to scold. I just ask “What feels weird about it?” Nine times out of ten, the answer is “I never heard that name before.” Then I turn to the kid with the name and ask “Do you want to tell us anything about it?” If they don’t, that’s fine too – I just say “Yeah, it’s new to most of us, but that doesn’t make it weird. It’s just their name, same as yours.”
For parents who are worried their kid’s name is too weird, the best thing I’ve seen work is help your kid come up with a one-line answer they’re comfortable with, if they want one. It can be as simple as “It’s my grandma’s name” or “It means blueberry, that’s what my family grows” or even just “So what?” Let them pick what feels right for them, don’t force them to give a big explanation to every kid who comments. For teachers, one small thing makes a huge difference: text or email the family before the first day to ask how to pronounce the name, and if they have a nickname they prefer, don’t guess. I messed that up once, early on: a kid named Cian, I just assumed it was pronounced like Sean, and he stopped correcting me after a month, and stopped raising his hand in class for almost the whole year. That stuck with me. Taking two minutes to get it right right away matters way more than you think.
Last week, I saw Xochitl at the grocery store, she was with her mom and her baby cousin, who’s named Itzel. The cashier mispronounced Itzel’s name, and Xochitl jumped right in, smiling, and said “It’s EET-sel, like the water nymph! My cousin’s named after my tia.” She rolled her eyes a little when the cashier laughed and said “That’s a new one for me,” same way she did on the first day of third grade. It’s been three years, and she still gets that reaction sometimes, when we go places outside of town.
Most of the time, people don’t mean anything by it. They just don’t know. And kids don’t mean anything by it, either, when they call a name weird. It just takes a minute to get used to something new. I still have parents email me every month, worrying they picked a name that’s too different, too out there, too weird. I tell them what I saw with Xochitl, with Blue, with Siobhan: the kids don’t care as much as we think they will, once it’s just their friend’s name. There will always be someone who teases, of course. But more often than not, the weirdness fades as soon as the familiarity sets in. It’s not the name that’s weird. It’s just being new.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Do Kids Actually Have “Weird” Names