Do Kids Actually Have Weird Names? A Teacher’s Observation and Practical Tips
The air still smelled like new crayons and unopened glue sticks the first morning of second grade this year, my coffee mug leaving a faint brown ring on the edge of the attendance sheet. I worked my way down the list, calling each name loud and clear, until I hit Marlowe Van Dyke. A soft “that’s weird” drifted from the front row, where Jaxon was twisting the brim of his baseball cap. “That’s a last name, not a first name.” He said it loud enough for half the class to hear, and Marlowe’s ears flushed pink as she tucked a strand of dyed blue hair behind her shoulder and mumbled her presence.
A few names later, I got to Kaius Henderson, and another kid whispered to his neighbor “why is it spelled with a K instead of a C? That’s dumb.” I kept going, but I made a mental note to circle back to that moment, the same way I have every September for the last 12 years of teaching. I still remember being 10 years old, sitting in my aunt’s living room while my cousin Siobhan cried after a day at summer camp, where no one could pronounce her name and everyone called it weird. Back then, I agreed with them. It sounded strange, nothing like the Jennifers and Michaels I knew.
Over the years, I’ve watched the list of names on my attendance sheet shift pretty dramatically. Where I once had half a dozen Emilys and Jacobs, now I have Wrens, Atlases, Rumi, and Marlowe. Parents at back-to-school night often lean over and joke about “all these weird new names people come up with these days,” like it’s a new problem, like people haven’t been giving kids unusual family names or nature names for generations. What most people don’t stop to notice is that almost no one names their kid something random just to be fancy. Marlowe was named for her great-grandma, a one-room schoolhouse teacher in western Kansas who raised four kids alone during the Great Depression. Kaius’s spelling comes from his Greek great-grandpa, who spelled it that way his whole life. A few years back I had a little girl named Blue, named for the ocean her parents sailed on their honeymoon before she was born. Every “weird” name I’ve come across has a story, just like the most common name does.
The thing no one talks about is that the weirdness isn’t in the name itself. It’s in how we react to it. Kids don’t come out of the womb thinking certain names are weird – they pick up on that from the adults around them, from offhand jokes and side comments that make an uncommon name feel like a flaw. I’ve picked up a few small habits over the years that stop that dynamic before it turns into hurt feelings, and they’re way easier than you’d think.
First, the first week of every year, we do a quick name share. Instead of me just calling roll, we go around the circle, and every kid says their name, plus one quick sentence about where it came from. It doesn’t have to be fancy – it can be as simple as “my parents liked how it sounded.” That first day this year, after the snickering about Marlowe and Kaius, we went around. Jaxon, the boy who called Marlowe’s name weird, shared that his name is spelled J-A-X-O-N instead of the more common J-A-C-K-S-O-N because his dad picked it after his favorite college football player. No one had ever teased him about it, but it was just as far from the traditional spelling as Kaius’s K. When Marlowe shared her story about her great-grandma, the same group that had snickered a few minutes earlier went “wow, that’s cool.” No one thought it was weird anymore, because it had a context.
Second, if a kid says a name is weird out loud, I don’t just shut them down with “that’s not nice.” I stop and say, “What makes it feel weird to you?” Nine times out of ten, they just say “I never heard it before.” Then I say, “That makes sense – lots of names are new to you the first time you hear them. That doesn’t make them weird, just new.” That’s a whole lot more effective than scolding, because it doesn’t make the kid feel bad for asking, and it normalizes unfamiliarity for the whole class.
For parents who have kids with uncommon names, the biggest small thing I tell them is to stop joking about your kid’s name being weird in front of them. I’ve had so many parents say things like “yeah, I know it’s weird, but we just loved it” when introducing their kid to a new teacher or friend, and that little throwaway line makes the kid immediately think their name is something to be embarrassed about. Just talk about it like you would any other name. If someone mispronounces it, correct them calmly, don’t apologize for it. That confidence rubs off.
Last month, a new boy joined our class mid-year, named Oakley. When I called his name for attendance, a few kids smiled, but no one whispered that it was weird. We did a quick name share with him, he said it was after his grandpa’s favorite hunting dog, and everyone nodded and went back to their coloring. I still get that comment at parent coffee, about how kids these days have all these weird names. But in 12 years of teaching, I’ve never had a kid in my class think a name is weird once they know the story behind it. The weirdness isn’t the kid’s, and it’s not the name’s. It’s just our habit of turning anything unfamiliar into something wrong. I still don’t love every name I hear, but that’s not the point. The point is, the name belongs to the kid, and it’s our job to make them feel like it’s a good one to have.
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