Why Having a Common Name Sucks...

Amy Johnson. In 1977, 'Amy' was third in popularity - following 'Jennifer' and 'Sara(h)'. 'Johnson' is now the second most popular last name to 'Smith'. Combine the two and you have the name I share with at least 25,000 women in the United States. This causes issues in almost every aspect of my life.

In junior high, the principal called my house and informed my parents that I had cut gym class. Little did he know that there were 2 Amy Johnson's. The other one was a year older than me and in the class that ran at the same time by a different teacher. SHE WAS known to skip gym. MY parents got called. When my mom picked me up, she questioned me about it. Luckily we were doing swimming in gym and my hair was still damp to prove to her I was attending class. Little did I know this was not going to be the first time my name was going to get me in trouble.

In college, my mom called me to say that I was getting overdraft notices in the mail constantly and to stop spending money. I hadn't been. We investigaed and found out that a teller gave another Amy Johnson who came into the bank requesting a new ATM card my card encoder and my PIN. She and her new husband cashed out my account traveling thru Europe. My mom helped me to scramble and find all the pay stubs and cancled checks I'd collected that summer to prove the amount of money that was in my account legitimately. Talk about a pain in the ass!!

I've had salons call to confirm apointments that I never made...even my adding my birthdate to pharmacy records doesn't help sometimes...as 3/29/1977 can also leave another Amy Johnson to get confused with. I introduce myself in both business and social settings and someone always says "I know another Amy Johnson"...no kidding.

I am blogging about this because I'm convinced of another issue that is plaging me and I didn't even realize this until now. An 'Amy Johnson' is never going to win a contest. They will never pull "Amy Johnson" out of a hat and announce that she won the best concert tickets from the radio station. Why??? Because it would cause a nightmare for the radio station. They'd have to pay for someone to sit there and sift thru all the 'Amy Johnson's' who'd call thinking they'd won. "Amy Johnson" will never hear her name announced in a crowd saying she's won a new car...5 women will come running.

I have always thought that getting married would be a great thing for me - I could change my name to (hopefully) something less common and my issue would go away...however now I have my son...who when he was born, I THOUGHT I was naming a less common name...come to find out that 'Logan' was the 7th most popular name in 2005. Poor kid...he'll probably never win anything off the radio either...