Popular and Unpopular Names

[Jennifer Piersol]

Well... Jennifer was the #1 girls' name in the '70s (thanks, Cindy)...
and boy, don't I know the effects of that.  I lived in a small town of
14,000 (now about 21,000 ten years later) in high school, and once had
an algebra class with 2 other Jennifers.  We ended up being Jen, Jenny
and Jennifer (I was Jennifer).  Not to mention that I dated a guy
whose SISTER was named Jenifer... but then again, his name was the
same as my DAD's name, so I guess I can't throw stones at him for
weirdness.  Anyway, you can imagine that with me growing up with a
name like Jennifer, I wanted my kids to have names they didn't have to
share with everyone.  I got to name the first kid Virginia Dare
(Virginia being my mother's name, Dare being my great-aunt's first
name and my sister's middle name).  While I occasionally see other
people (usually not kids) named Virginia or Ginger on television, I
haven't met one in person yet.  This is a good sign to me.  However...
I'm anxious that HP will spawn an interest in "Ginny", which is a
shortened form of Virginia, so who knows what Ginger's school days
will be like.

Then, the second baby came and Chris got to name her.

Allison.

Poor girl.  I like the name - that part doesn't bother me.  But my
poor little Allie-gator is going to have the same problem that I did
when I was in school.  She's already met 2 other Allies... and she's
only a year old.  We're trying to console ourselves with the idea that
if we can manage it, we'll get everyone to call her Gator, and she'll
stand out a little.

But of course, she'll probably hate that name... oh well.

We called Allie "Allie" in utero, because we'd decided to find out the
sex ahead of time... and we freely published her name among relatives
so as to avoid the situation we encountered before Ginger was born. 
We absolutely refused to find out the sex with her, and we absolutely
refused to tell people what our chosen names were in advance... and we
were richly rewarded by my younger sister deciding to name her new pet
cat Ginger.

So now our first born has the same name as my sister's cat.

But if anyone should be punished for naming their children, it should
be my great-great aunt.  She was infatuated with Commodore Perry, so
she named her son Clarence *Commodore*.

Clarence Commodore Spitznagle.

But we always called him Uncle Bus.

-Jen, who wishes JKR read these boards and would use that name in her
books... ;)