re that last post: as someone who has non-ethnic weird fucking name syndrome, i've been fascinated by the idea of common given names since kindergarten there was an alisa and an alyssa in the class; at first, we tried using the [given name+first letter of surname] system to differentiate. that, for some reason, didn't work out, and while it was definitely the simpler method, we opted for the extremely complex "[given name][1, 2]" system. the thing is, we made sure that we all were basing the [1, 2] system on how many s's there were in the girls' names. so, "alyssa c" was "alyssa 2," and "alisa [cannot remember surname]" was "alisa 1," this had nothing to do with alisa 1 being better than alyssa 2 or the fact that alyssa 2 transferred into the school in that year, while alisa 1 had been with us in preschool. ANYWAY, i thought this was so cool when i was 5 & i still do? like, all names are so much fun to think about. your surname and given name are super common? do you feel like you're less of an individual because of that, john smith? or do you see it as an advantage, maría garcía? what's it like to know that your name is technically super common, zhang wei, if you're the only zhang wei in your community? hey, muhammad and muhammed, your names have slightly different spellings in english and your surnames are different; does that affect how you feel about each other? joe, what's it like to know "joe shmoe" is a term we use when we mean some totally random person?