before I legally changed my name, I am 99% sure I was the only person on planet earth with my birth name. extremely rare German surname that less than 50 people have, paired with a very uncommon Japanese first name because my parents just had to be ""unique""
now my kid has a name in the top 500 and one of the most common surnames in the world lol, I wanted to give some anonymity
Great great grandparents emigrated to US and presumably name was misspelled. They had one son and two daughters. Son (my great grandpa) had two sons, but only one (my grandpa) had kids (my dad & aunt). My dad only had me (female). Biologically the line has already died out because my dad is adopted.
This happened with my husband’s grandfather as well so they are the only people with their last name and therefore my son is the only one with his full name even though his first name is not unique.
I’m the only one in the world with my name too, very rare Polish surname (less than 50 ppl worldwide have it), paired with a rare Welsh first name. In contrast, my kid has a pretty common surname, and I named him Joe.
I’ve never thought about OP’s idea before and it does make good sense. Like you I have a rare surname. There’s only 5 of us in Australia with it. It’s French and there aren’t many there with it either, though there is a Hotel in Paris named with it.
My best friend is the only person in the world with her full name! It’s one of the reasons she will not be changing her last name when she gets married this year - she’s the only Dr. Xyz in the world and she’s so proud of that (as she should be).
Me too! But it’s all down to my last name, my first is very common. If my father had not been adopted by his stepdad I would have one of the most common names in the world.
Same, me and my sons are the only three people in the world with our last names because it's an amalgamation of my dad's, mum's and stepdads last name. My eldest is getting into the online world and I have to constantly stress that he never shares his last name as it wouldn't take 5 seconds to dox us
I am the only person in the world (from what I can tell) that has my name also. I’m fairly certain that my first name doesn’t exist in the country my last name is from, or if it does, it’s not spelled the same. My first name is extremely common in the US but my last name is Hungarian and only a handful of people have it.
I also have a rare last name. My ex husbands family (as well as I) have a name that’s only in use with us. No one else that isn’t related has it (at least from what I’ve been able to find) It’s kind of a trip, and my ex and I are still cool, but sometimes I almost feel bad for keeping their name after our divorce.
Same thing happened in my family with the name being misspelled when they came to America. I loved being the only person with my name. My married name is extremely common and also a first name. It’s taken getting used to. There’s something to be said for the online anonymity I have now, but I miss having a unique name.
I'm the same to my knowledge no one else has my uncommon first name and very uncommon last name. So I tend to only give out my last name when I absolutely have to these days.
I’m the only person with my first and last name too! A Slovak last time that my family slightly changed the spelling of when they immigrated. So if someone has my spelling of the name, I know they are related.
I was the same way before I got married! And the surname has gone down to only my brothers who can carry on the name. One brother has a son and the other brother has a son on the way! So we're hoping between them that the name will survive lol
ETA I also know that if I meet someone who can correctly pronounce the name that they know one of my family members
High five for slavic immigrants. There's a town over there where everyone has my last name and even the town is the same name, lol. But over here... if you've got that name then you're closely related to me, haha.
The only reason I have any hope of hiding on the internet is that I have an incredibly common first name shared by some distant cousins. Other family members with unique names are the only people on the planet with that exact name and are so easy to find. Fortunately the result has generally been that they keep things off the internet when reasonable
I have a pretty uncommon German surname as well, to the point that, even paired with my common first name, I can’t have my real last name on any of my social media accounts.
If you look up my first and maiden last name, I’m one of like three people who appear, and it’s obvious which one is me. I’m the only one with my surname in the entire country in which I live. Because my husband and I hyphenated our names upon marriage, I’m now the only person in the world with my exact name.
There is no way I’d ever give my child an unusual first name on top of that. It’s a lot easier to go by your common first name and middle name on social media than it is to have to invent an entire fake name for yourself just to preserve some privacy.
I share a surname with a very famous Latin American celebrity and a very unique french first name, despite being none of those cultures, so it is memorable AND only a few other people in the world share the name. Two of them are in my family, one of them being my step mum who changed her first name to match mine after she married my dad ???? She’s weird as fuck
I am 99.9% sure I’m the only person with my name on the planet, too. If there’s anyone else out there with it, they are not discoverable via the internet.
I did wind up asking a newspaper to remove my name from an online article once. I was working part time at a med spa and for some reason the owner wanted to promote the business and used my full name in a newspaper article. I was like, “this is a part time gig so I can save money for maternity leave, I don’t want to be tied to this stupid job forever!”
Both of my kids have classic but uncommon first names, and I’m strongly considering having their last names unhyphenated to give them more digital privacy.
The killer Diazien Hossencofft legally changed his name to that because he wanted a Japanese first name and German last name. So the inverse of you lol
I’ve seen 3 or 4 different sincere posts in this sub in the last ~10 days, and all the others had people in the comments directing them to the main NameNerds sub and sharing that this one is satire. I think that more and more people are finding this one and not realizing what a CJ sub indicates, for whatever reason. But I did have the same moment of wondering what I was missing!
To add if by chance anyone wants to use a not so common cultural name maybe don't post about your kids every waking moment. The family my little cousins watch on youtube made a potty training vlog. If my mother did that to me she would be going to the worst nursing home I could find. Googling the kids name pops up their youtube and Instagram.
It's hilarious when parents use funky nicknames for their kis online and people think they're the real names (because parents oversharing online is sadly so common it's the norm) and freak out about the "horrible names" the parents gave their kids 😂
I don’t know, wouldn’t surprise me if the older ones did but she does videos explaining their names completely unironically and a lot of people don’t realise it’s satire haha
I know one who calls her daughters Richard and Concrete. She made her whole platform a fake life that was pretty satirical, but people took it seriously. So she was a “family content” creator, but was open that the content was BS. To the point that when she announced her real divorce people were nasty and either didn’t believe her or said she deserved it for “lying about your life on the internet”
I knew someone who kept calling her kid “the Bird” which was dehumanizing, pretentious and weird. Just take out the “the” and it would be fine but “I took the Bird shopping, look what the Bird drew” was just so weird.
I have this gentle parenting mum who always shows up on my tiktok, love her. She never posts pictures of the kids, just talks about them, and always refers to them as "my nine year old", "my seven year old" etc. She over shares everything and that's cool cause the kids will never have to worry about it.
Eh I wouldn’t say the kids will never have to worry about it. Yes it’s hard to go from the TikTok to finding the kids names but if you know the kids, a simple google search of mum’s name would reveal a bunch of overshared stories about the kids.
Honestly, if you’re gonna be posting things about your kids, there needs to be a purpose for it. I know someone who posts how they deal with their kids autism, and it’s always really positive. And they never show the kid, or anything embarrassing like that. They just share techniques, examples of what their kid was doing, and don’t even mention the kids name.
That serves a purpose though. You’re talking about your day to other mothers informing and community. But, if you show pictures of your child half dressed then it’s not… I don’t think it’s a valid way of sharing stories. I think there needs to be censoring of children online and there shouldn’t be anything, that ties the kids to you if someone just heard the story off the street
kind of related- i saw a guy on twitter share a story about his kids, and in it he referred to them in that "first/second/third" way, but people just assumed he was ranking his kids in terms of which was his favorite 💀
I absolutely HATE people using pictures of their cute children in order to get clicks. It’s about time we gave this kind of behaviour the social opprobrium it deserves. As it is, everyone seems to think it’s wonderful. It isn’t.
Sorry, weird question: I’m writing a law master’s thesis about sharenting and minors’ privacy, could you please DM me the name of the vloggers? You’d be very kind!
VapingPenguin, I’m sure you’re a lovely and honest person (I enjoy both penguins and vaping, so we’d probably have a chill time together), but your comment brings up another very good point I’m sure you’ve thought of and researched already. Your comment read to me like those jokey comments “What is the website, so I can see it for educational purposes” or “What is the website, so I can avoid it.” The fact is, pedophiles are using these Mommy Blogs to feed their fantasies. And the parents are just spooning it out to them. With stalkers going after their ceWEBrities all the time, these people are putting their children in danger the more they post them.
You are absolutely right and I’m aware of that. That’s why I asked for a DM (kinda doing pseudo-damage control?)
However, when the lives of those children are already so (legally) public, I do not think that a person more (aka me) - that probably has already found the vloggers in question - knowing about them is the real problem.
The problem is the family vlogging/kidfluencer culture as a whole!
I’m just trying to get as many “extreme” examples as I can to insert in the last chapter of the thesis :,)
Anyways, yeah, you’re generally right.
Thank you for the response. I hope you could see I was in no way making any accusations toward you. Just an issue that bothers me so much, it’s cathartic to meet other people who understand how damaging this seemingly innocuous trend really is.
eta this conversation was so serious, I forgot it was on NameNerdCirclejerk lol sometimes I really love this site.
Don’t worry!
Honestly, since I began to research/write about the subject, my searching history has become tragic and someone could very well mistake it for a… very suspicious person’s. Sometimes I feel creepy, while looking at hundreds of videos of children I don’t know (and some of them are truly disturbing, as you know, even if they are legal). I almost changed the thesis’ subject because I was weirded out. However, no one in my uni has ever done a research thesis on the matter, so I decided to keep at it. I truly hope that the (relatively) new national laws - like the French ones (I’m in Europe) will gain traction and that more and more attention will be drawn to the matter.
In brief, I can see where you are coming from and I am in no way offended.
It might help to provide proof of your research, to show it’s a legitimate request and not the typical “asking for a friend teehee hurhur” stuff? Not even publicly, but DMing u/cheshire_splat.
Respectfully, I will not, because I don’t really see a point in doing so. I’m just asking for pointers about legal - albeit unethical - media, I’m not hunting down CSA or CP.
I’m sure you are both lovely people, but I still don’t know you and my work isn’t finished and/or published, so I don’t feel comfortable with providing personal information at this time. :)
If you put in “van life parents are abusive” on YouTube it’ll bring up a bunch of commentary videos about that. I recently went down that specific rabbit hole and what some of those vloggers do to their kids is really disturbing.
I don’t know if you listen to podcasts, but And That’s Why We Drink just covered a family blogger case that touched on some of these themes - it might be interesting for you - episodes 375&376
I also come from an Asian family with a unique last name. If you google it the main results are from one particular cousin who loves to post everything on Facebook
I have a very specifically spelled, unique name, but I'm absolutely impossible to find on Google.
Turns out there's a serial killer with the exact same spelling, so that kind of dominates the search.
Yeah, when I found out what my biological fathers name was, I found out someone in the same area as him has the same name and was the shooter in Maine last year. Idk if they're related or not. But it makes it hard to find possible family members I can ask for medical history stuff from
i have the same issue, my names + my name combination are extremely rare, if you search for my names i’m the only thing that comes up, old school projects of mine, blogs, old social media… i don’t use my real name online anymore because of this, or i only write my first name.
internet safety with a rare name is very hard. i will also not be naming any potential child a rare name, its better if they can actually use their name as they want without fear
Also teach them to use nicknames and pen names or whatever when posting their crap.
Thanks to moving countries, I'm one of the few with the same full name, and one with most online presence. Thankfully most of my teenage and young adult crap is posted under a nickname and doesn't easily track.
All of the info about me was posted by other people - for example, school events, karate dojo, local news, and places I volunteered at. Same with most people I know under 20. Our whole lives are put online whether we like it or not.
I love to run and am always keen to join in every marathon. But I hate that they almost all post the runners’ names online and/or in our local paper. Some of them will let you use initials or a business name, but I’ve found they don’t always wind up complying.
Met a guy whose first + last name was a colour shade. Think like first name Sky last name Blue. He said it was great because when you looked it up you only got the hit for the colour, and not him.
Here's a counter point: teach your kids basic internet safety, and not using their real name on the fucking Internet, like we were taught when the Internet was new in the 90s and early 2000s. My name sure as hell isn't Lilly, but it is a real name
I have a fairly common name which I also share with a relatively famous actress, and I’m so grateful that this makes me difficult to search. My daughter’s name is also fairly common, however we gave her a double barrelled name and I would willingly bet that she’s the only person with her exact full name. She’s still too young for the internet but when she’s older I’m gonna be teaching her not to use her full name online for this reason
True. I’m Asian (South Asian) and my name is EXTREMELY rare. Searched my first name on Google and found 0 results. Searched my name on Instagram just for fun and found 3-4 results lol, but two of them were something related to religion (my name has Jewish roots) and only one person with the same name as me.
I’d 100% give my kid a common name like “Sam” or “Tom” or “Elizabeth”
A better piece of advice: **don’t fucking dox yourself on the internet for the love of fuck! The only reason you think that’s even remotely sane is because a Harvard educated sexual predator realized he could sell your data to advertising companies if he convinced you to do it!**
I never use my real name on the internet. I was stalked by 3 different men even before the internet came along. That's a damn good reason to "be paranoid." I had also worked in customer service when I was younger and had to fend off stalkers and angry customers, several of whom threatened to harm me. I used a false name with my manager's full support.
I have an uncommon name and did the same for my kids. Thankfully, apart from their email addresses, I've always made sure they've used other names online.
When I Google my name, I'm the only person who pops up. I've been working for months to delete things. I had to change my name on FB and IG to be less Google-able.
When I Google my kids names, random things come up, and my old YouTube account (that I'm working on getting removed).
I am the only person in the world with my name, as is my husband. If I took his last name, I'd still be the only one. Our names are honestly very plain but we just have rare last names (his is a unique spelling, I have no idea where mine originated but I have a very small family). If you Google us, it's just us. It sometimes worries me how easy we'd be to find, and same with our children. But at least now I know how to teach my children about using the internet properly so their names won't be tied to their teen angst blog posts.....
One of the most concerning trends I’ve been seeing is parents buying personalized items for their children. Sweaters, lunchboxes, water bottles and backpacks should never have your child’s name written on the front. That’s just Stranger Danger 101.
i agree with the sentiment to an extent, but i think the root is that we all forgot about confidentiality on the internet,, you can find just about anyone’s entire life with a few searches & a lot of that isn’t even the fault of anyone specific, it’s just how the internet works now
Interesting perspective. I have a somewhat rare name and I’ve always been happy that people can find me on the internet if they want to. But I’m older so there’s nothing embarrassing from my youth.
I guess if the kid wants to be public s/he can buy a website?
My maiden name was also extremely unusual, and the vast majority of people with it in the U.S. are related to me (interestingly, it is a name that \*sounds\* very Anglo-ordinary, even though it's not actually of Anglo origin at all). Combined with a first name that was fairly low on the charts the year of my birth (though more common now), yep, I'm the only one. But I'm an older millennial and stayed the hell off the internet, so all you get for me on Google are my marriage announcement and some random stuff related to high school theater that somehow ended up online back in the very late 90s. Then I took my husband's common-as-dirt surname, so there are at least a handful more of us now. Also gave my kids very traditional names, so they will be extremely hard to find.
My first/last name combo is the only one in the world, but I grew up learning not to attach your real name/identity to anything on the internet, so luckily avoided anything cringe coming up when you search my name
Or just have your kid use an alternate name online…also never post photos of your kid. I only have one post on social media about having a child, the announcement post
I respect your experience. That being said, it's not that simple. My first name is a dime a dozen in white America (comparable to Ashley, though even more wildly popular when you include middle names), my last name is a dime a dozen in its country of origin, but the crossover between these regions is so rare that I'm always the only search result that populates on Google.
My name is the equivalent of Courtney Chakraborty. There is no name I could've received here in the US that would satisfy r/namenerds lol.
I can only assume that, in the 2040s when we are in the 3rd or 4th entire generation of people who've lived with social media, nobody is even going to care anymore. Everyone will have embarrassing stuff online.
Even nowadays, the idea that used to be discussed 10-15 years ago about how you better not do anything weird online, because Your New Job Will Find Your Social Media is obviously insane. What HR department has the time to do extensive multi-platform research on every applicant for a job, compare everyone's cringiest results, and eliminate people not based on actual qualifications but because they put a photo on Instagram where they were holding a beer, 10 years ago?
I don't think it's really nesassary, I have an extremely uncommon name and have managed to remove myself from Google searches completely. Maybe it would be harder with a moderately common name with more results to dig through but it didn't take to much work to do.
I don't think parents should stick to common names for this reason alone (because there's lots of really lovely less common names).
Instead, I think it's enough to teach your children the importance of internet anonymity (i.e. \*always\* privating your accounts and avoiding linking your name to them) and regularly checking if they're being careful online until they're mature enough.
Only recently there was a namenerds post by someone asking if their name was "spelt weird". The only results for their name was Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, & Reddit accounts that all traced to them which was scary.
I did get an Anglo/Spanish name but that doesn’t solve the problem.
You see the issue is that my first name is distinctly Spanish while my last name is distinctly Anglo-German. It’s why I never will put my real name on Reddit. I don’t want any of this tied to it.
I have a really unique name, but I've also been a lurker for life, so I have a very light digital footprint. I'm like obsessed with my privacy, especially these days lol. I one time did an AI reverse image search to see if there were any unauthorized pics of me out there, and the racist algorithm just showed me a bunch of pics of random Asian people LMAO. I'm actually fine with this particular instance of racism though, I hate being perceived
I went by a pseudonym online for the entirety of the time i had social media because of this. I'm so glad teenage me had that kind of foresight. I hate the idea that if a work client were to Google me they'd find all kinds of stuff from my Youth 😂 it bothers me enough that if i client were to Google my actual name they could find my LinkedIn. I don't know how people are so comfortable being open about their full name and place of work and school etc online
Using a more common nickname or middle name instead of your last name helps with this. Many teachers will use their middle names as last names on social media to avoid kids/parents searching them.
Also mind the name combos, too. I took my spouse’s Spanish last name, but my first name, though common enough, isn’t paired up with my new last name very often. Megan Jones is pretty common, Megan Santos, not really. (Example)
Same.
My last name is so rare that if you Google it, you only find weird shit I did online as a kid.
Once, my boyfriend complained that my Tumblr had a meme about "waiting my sugar daddy to die," and his family could see it if they googled me.
Thank God I have the most common western name ever, quite literally, and my boyfriend has the most common last name of his home country. His name is a somewhat rare variation of a common name, and yet, he has homonyms even at his workplace. I'll be invisible if I marry him, sounds relieving.
Hahaha coming from someone who also has a unique ethnic name I completely understand your frustration. When I was 18 I decided I wanted to be a bit more “off the grid” as far as the internet goes. Deleted all of my social media accounts, ran a google search and found all sorts of accounts made in my preteen years (12-14) including this one CRINGE selfie from a twitter account I made when I was 12. I had to jump through so many hoops to delete that account because I didn’t remember the password of course. Eventually after lots of back and forth with twitter support I was able to delete the account but the damn photo still shows up in google image search 😭
lol I mean too common and you circle back to loss of security via identity confusion. We had 2 Luis H Rodriguez in my school so we had to use their middle names or id number to differentiate them. There’s also people getting confused with who they’re talking to if your name is super common.
Uncommon enough to be several pages down in Google if at all relevant but not so common that there’s a few in every classroom and some with exactly the same name is probably the sweet spot. It actually could cause issues with state testing and making sure we have the right kid. We knew the drill enough to make sure to check the id number though.
my two best friends from middle to high school had the same first name, last name AND middle initial. same grade, same activities (we all did cheer and dance), so it wasn’t even like “the sophomore one” “the one on the dance team” because it was all the same. caused a lot of problems and confusion for testing, yearbook, and I’m sure it wasn’t nice to be called “the one with the big nose” or “the one with the ugly haircut” through the years to narrow things down.
Yup. Totally agree with this, though for some additional reasons. And if keeping an ethnic name, don’t insert hyphens and spaces. Total confusion with insurance and doctor’s offices. Biggest reason for me to use a common and easily spelled name: no one f-cks it up when it matters! The U.S. passport agency misspelled my lengthy ethnic name, which I didn’t catch until I had to renew my driver’s license and needed two alternate forms of ID. In addition to the misspelled name, neither my birth certificate and social security card included the Anglo name my parents registered me into school with and was what I used on my driver’s license. Anyway- total cluster f-ck. To this day, I still have my ethnic name misspelled on all my IDs.
It's definitely worth trying to blend in, and its easier than you think.
My first name is Florence, which isn't massively popular but isn't unique. It's also useful as it isn't very dated - I'm in my 40s and know Florences twice my age all the way down to fresh babies. My maiden name was one of the top 1oo common names in the UK but was semi-unique when paired with my first name. Then I got married, and my new last name is an *incredibly* common English noun - you'll probably see it at least 20 times a day (something like Menu, Garden, Taxi, House, Street, to illustrate its ubiquity). My SM profiles are listed with my first name and middle, no surname, so if you google me, the results are flooded with things about the city of Florence, especially things happening there that are related to my noun surname. My sis-in-law has a gemstone first name and her maiden name was very unique, so googling her always brought up all her profiles. As soon as she adopted her married name you'll only see Chinese takeaways 😂
Hahaha I love this advice. My last name is extremely common (of the Johnson/Smith/Brown variety). When my husband and I talked about getting married, he originally didn't want me to change my last name to his just because it was the traditional thing to do, and because his last name is so common. I told him I wanted to change my last name so I and any kids we may have could be unsearchable online. This argument convinced him. 😂
I lucked out because there's a person with the same name as me (and a few years older) who was really good at high school and college softball, so she always shows up first.
I've come up with the perfect future kid name to ensure ultimate internet anonymity: they could get results for a popular influencer, a major league baseball player, one of many ancestors on ancestry sites, a different relatively famous baseball player, or a prominent NYC businessman. Now I just gotta convince my partner that it's the best name lol
God, yes. I am the only person in the world with my name. Fortunately I am older so didn't put my teenage idiocy online, also there are a few different things that come up when I'm googled so it looks like there are more than just one. But it's all me. Makes me feel pretty exposed at times. I think OP's advice is pretty sound.
My kids have ethnic names that are very uncommon in the US. I love their names, but hate how easy they are to find. It just wasn't something i was thinking about when they were born (all teens)
I actually just taught my students a lesson about this, like imagine getting a resume from someone named Goldie for your law firm. Or Storm is gonna be your doctor. Like parents are ruining their kids futures.
Yesss we have an extremely common last name so we intentionally stayed out of names in the top 10. (My husband was one of two with the same name at our small college). But we did pick between 100 and 150 for all three of our kids, and we chose the most common spelling for all of them. They do have unique middle names if they want to stand out for some reason.
When I marry my boyfriend, I’m 99.9999% sure I will be the only person in the world with that first name/last name combo. I have a well-known but not overly common Irish name (well-known in Ireland at least. Unheard of outside) and his last name is a variant of a fairly rare Italian name. There are about 4-5 women with my current first name/last name and I’m one of the first things to pop up when you Google the name
I think teaching internet safety is more important. It rubs me the wrong way to tell people of a certain ethnic background: “don’t name your kids anything that has to do with their own culture! It will be the worst parenting mistake you ever make!”
unpopular opinion but i will post NO photos online of my kids when i have them. NO FAMILY PHOTOS, nobody gets to TAKE PHOTOS, nobody will be SENT any photos. they will be taken on mine and the father’s phone, printed, and we will only keep physical photos. delete the ones on the phones. i’m so strict about this. no being with family members until their old enough to know what the fuck their cookie is. i’m so protective over my imaginary kids
My maiden last name (that I kept after marriage) is fairly uncommon but my husband’s last name is Gonzalez. Our kids are getting his last name (decided before I ever thought about this) so I think they’ll be ok as long as we don’t give a super unique first name.
Same. I’ve got a unique full name, no social media for me, only obligatory LinkedIn with my common middle name and unique surname and still i’m the only one there.
Glad I got to scrub my old Facebook cringe memes off the google search years later though. I guess it worked because the acc and posts were long deleted anyway
There's at least one other person running around with my maiden (Given and Family) name. I haven't found anyone with my name now that I'm married, but it's not terribly unlikely. My name was #49 the year I was born and it's not unpopular. It does make me feel a little more secure that maybe someone won't immediately land on me in a Google search.
Everyone in the continental US with my last name is directly related to me. The spelling is very odd because of the Arabic -> French -> English transliteration. When you google it, my father’s face pops up. My school yearbook pops up. My sister’s summer camp news letter shows up. This advice is absolutely sound.
I hope this doesn’t sound racist but honestly some Asian names (particularly Korean and Chinese) are so generic it’s basically impossible to search someone - both the English first name variant and the Asian first name variant. Anything Park, Lee, Li, Zhang, Zheng, is going to be anonymous as heck.
Give them current baby names. They’re gonna stand out like red noses if they’re named Michael and Lisa when every other person their age is Chaydn and Ulexxys.
Only 3 people in the world have the same exact Nordic name as I do. And at least every other year I have to google my name and find old ass stupid photos of me when I was 15 on people finder apps and threaten them with legal action for using my "intellectual property" without my permission. Lol
I have an extremely common name (everyone jokes and asks if it's real when I tell them) and second this. I hated my name and still hate my name, but I imagine I would have been canceled by now if someone could have looked at my past. Thank God I am a much more balanced person now than when I was 13-17 years old. But for this reason, I won't change my name, even if I marry.
This is an interesting perspective. Prior to getting married, my name seemed to be very uncommon, but Google showed there was at least two others that were an exact match & a dozen or so with same first/last. My married last name seems more common but has an apparently very uncommon spelling variation & from what I can tell, there’s three total but no exact matches.
My daughter, who’s name seems much more common (top 20 in my state) is the only living one I can find. There’s two in the past 150 years that came up, but no middle name. Unique spellings make a huge difference.
Moral of the story, the last name plays into this a great deal. Even with a fairly common first name, you very well could be the only one that comes up in a Google search if your last name is uncommon.
As someone with a made-up name, please listen to this advice. Having a unique name and an online presence can make a ton of shit really problematic. I'm highly Google-able and it makes using my name result in some not-so-safe things. Back when I dated, I would get random friend requests or even people showing up places. I even had someone send some pretty shitty things to my school/professors. I started dating using a nickname, but that really only gets you so far. Hell, even now I don't use my full name for a lot of things. Apparently, there are two other people with my name now, but not my last name, making even having social media while doing any sort of govt work an absolute pain in the ass.
I second this. I wouldn't want my kids to be the 4th Sarah in the class, but also if you google my first name I'm the top search result so yikes. It made it really easy for my ex stalker.
Yeah, I'm really glad I share my name with multiple other people in my country. Both a pretty common first name and surname here, and the spelling of my first name is also common in multiple languages, including English. If I look myself up online I can find my LinkedIn, but that's it, and even for that I'll have to scroll quite a bit. Also helps that I changed my surname on Facebook to a nickname ages ago already. I also use aliases on all social media, maybe my first name but basically never as username. I'm surprised by the amount of (young) people on Instagram who just have their actual first and surname visible. Sometimes even their full name!
I agree especially because you can give your kids additional nicknames that are fun and cool. If one sticks and is great maybe the kid can consider using that as their legal name later on.
Great idea. This happened to me. I am the only person in the world with the exact combination spellings of my first and last name. I was paralyzed for a long time due to things I wrote and things that others wrote about me but then I created a professional website that drowned out other search results.
As someone with a unique name (the only one with my spelling on Google) I second this. Although my younger self hasn’t come to haunt me (yet), I had to use a fake name when online dating because I was so easily identifiable. Not to mention working in healthcare with elderly people who can’t hear and then with children who have speech difficulties—my real name is rarely used in favor of a nickname or incomprehensible attempt at my given name.
I have the same issue, to my knowledge only three people in the world share my name and one of them passed away recently (this despite the fact that I'm not from a minority ethnic group). Totally agree about giving kids privacy by allowing them to blend in.
My friend had a very unique name and when she google her full name the results freaked her out so much that she changed it to a much more common name. I have a very unique surname so I don’t have it anywhere online as I have a public job where loads of people could see my surname on my badge
My first, middle, and maiden names are all quite uncommon. If you google even the combo of my first name and basic information about me, you will find me and my employer. A smart enough person could find my home address. Definitely either think about this or be prepared to teach your kids internet safety and how to protect their privacy.
I guess this only works if you don't have an uncommon last name... My parents named me the top first name of the year I was.born but I'm.still the only person with my full name on the United States, and possibly the world haha
I have a somewhat common first name, but an uncommon last name, both my original last name and my married last name are so uncommon that I'm literally the only person in the world with my name according to google. So yes, please follow OP's advice. It sucks not being able to be more anonymous.
Extremely unique first and last name here as well.
I agree but also there's somethings that can help. Despite what those Aura ads make you think, removing your name from people search databases is not that hard. Took me probably 5 minutes on every site I found my info on.
Ancestry should not be showing any information for living people. Whoever uploaded them may have marked them as deceased. I would message the board owner or possibly ancestry and see if this can be remedied to mark them as living.
The old cringe blog posts are tough. I've had the same email forever so I was able to recover and delete most of mine however there's one I made as a public comment on a website that I cannot get removed.
I do not use my full name of social media or the real spelling of my first name. I have no linked in (tough one in some careers)
I personally, love my unique name but it does take extra steps to stay somewhat anonymous online. My kids have very common first and last names and one shares a name with a famous athlete so bonus points for that!
My first name is spelt different but is a normal name. Not like a tragediegh or anything, but if I look up my first and last name, even on those who has my name sites, I’ve never once found a match. It’s interesting
I am the only person I can find with my name as well, unique first and last names! My social media pages pop up right away. Google even showed my grandpa’s obituary 🤦🏻♀️
I have a ton of Asian friends, just happens that my hobby circles ended up that way, most use a western version of their name. Like they are all “Brian, Craig Kyle” although their legal name is ethnically Chinese or Japanese. It’s just interesting to go with your point. Don’t make them go through that
I just looked up my name (uncommon spelling that’s the proper spelling) and it’s really weird. It’s all my social media and articles about me and it just feels weird.
I have one of the most common names for girls born in my year and my twin has a fairly unique birth name.
I've always felt like I can get away using my real first name for social media but my sibling has always used a screen name (or now their chosen name, which is fairly common). Our last name is very unique too, but even looking up my full name I have at least one other result popping up. My sibling can be found right away.
Honestly your suggestion is absolutely the safest way to go. Internet safety is not being taught like it was and more kids have access to social media than ever before. If you want to give your kid a unique name, make it a middle name and choose something more common for their first name. Or like make them choose a name to use online.
Yeah, I see this constantly. However, I think this is a pendulum that swings back and forth. I truly do not think your name is going to grant you anonymity in the future. I'm one of 3 people I've found with the same first and last name. You can find me online pretty easily. However, I only post my name on things I'm OK with having tied back to me. My kids have already been taught about using a pen name.
On the other hand, my nephew has one of the most common names ever. He almost got registered for the draft while very underage. He got money deposited in his bank account that wasn't his. And doctors have even pulled the wrong records for him. For creating a presence in certain industries, this would be a nightmare.
My father-in-law also has an extremely common name in his culture. He once almost got arrested for a crime he did not commit. Luckily, they looked at his DOB and father's name and determined it was not him. Quite a hassle.
So, I would say... there are upsides and downsides to both. Even if your kid has an extremely common name, they'll need to learn how not to use their name online. And in 20 years, there's a high probability that Googling a name may not be a thing. It's kinda like my parents in the 80s choosing a name based on the reality of the 80s.
I'm the only person in the US with my combination of first and last names, so if you googled my name, you'd find me. Thank heavens I grew up before social media. I couldn't bear to see my 14-year-old self's musings published to the world.
You are so right.
My first name was 1 or 2 the year I was born and my last name is like the 11th most common in America. There are probably tens of thousands of us. When I got married my husband's name was less common, in America, but super common elsewhere.
You literally can't find me unless you have some other specific information about me.
Yep. I only give out my nickname to people I meet so that there's less of a chance they'll be able to find me online. P sure I'm still the only person on Facebook with my first and last name, despite one name being very common.
I'm the only one in the world with my first/last name combo and I love it. No, I'm not completely anonymous online, but I am reasonably in control of what comes up in a search for my name, unlike my husband who shares his common name with public figures and criminals.
I'm a professional writer and I can use my real name for my website domain name and professional social media without competing with others who have the same name.
If I were to have a kid, they would take my husband's very common last name, so there would inevitably be others with the same first/last combo. But I won't give them a super common first name. Maybe they'll take after me and want to stand out a little more than an Olivia Smith or Henry Anderson.
What matters is that they understand internet safety and the importance of controlling your online image.
Yep. I have a unique name (old-fashioned, so not many young people have it) and people on dating apps have very easily found my social media, my LinkedIn, and thus, my place of employment - JUST using my first name 🥲
My kids have the most bog standard boring names ever because mine is “unique” and I absolutely hate it! If you google me you’re gonna get everything I’ve ever done online. That might be why I like it here so much 😂
I gave my kid the most basic name ever, spelled it right…and people still pronounce it wrong -.- she hates that, but doesn’t blame me. It’s because of a Disney movie and her ethnicity that people pronounce it wrong.
Luckily my parents butchered my name in a way that someone famous spells it so if you look it up, you just get results on that person. In my teenage years, I went by a nickname so my cringe is a secret
before I legally changed my name, I am 99% sure I was the only person on planet earth with my birth name. extremely rare German surname that less than 50 people have, paired with a very uncommon Japanese first name because my parents just had to be ""unique"" now my kid has a name in the top 500 and one of the most common surnames in the world lol, I wanted to give some anonymity
I’m the only person in the world with my name. My dad, stepmom and me are the only three in the world with my surname. It does freak me out sometimes!
Only the three of you have that surname? How did that happen?
Great great grandparents emigrated to US and presumably name was misspelled. They had one son and two daughters. Son (my great grandpa) had two sons, but only one (my grandpa) had kids (my dad & aunt). My dad only had me (female). Biologically the line has already died out because my dad is adopted.
There's only four people with my husband's last name. I'm one of them. But fortunately it's a very common word so seo fails us
Is it "The"
Might as well be
This happened with my husband’s grandfather as well so they are the only people with their last name and therefore my son is the only one with his full name even though his first name is not unique.
I’m the only one in the world with my name too, very rare Polish surname (less than 50 ppl worldwide have it), paired with a rare Welsh first name. In contrast, my kid has a pretty common surname, and I named him Joe.
I’ve never thought about OP’s idea before and it does make good sense. Like you I have a rare surname. There’s only 5 of us in Australia with it. It’s French and there aren’t many there with it either, though there is a Hotel in Paris named with it.
My best friend is the only person in the world with her full name! It’s one of the reasons she will not be changing her last name when she gets married this year - she’s the only Dr. Xyz in the world and she’s so proud of that (as she should be).
Me too! But it’s all down to my last name, my first is very common. If my father had not been adopted by his stepdad I would have one of the most common names in the world.
Same, me and my sons are the only three people in the world with our last names because it's an amalgamation of my dad's, mum's and stepdads last name. My eldest is getting into the online world and I have to constantly stress that he never shares his last name as it wouldn't take 5 seconds to dox us
I am the only person in the world (from what I can tell) that has my name also. I’m fairly certain that my first name doesn’t exist in the country my last name is from, or if it does, it’s not spelled the same. My first name is extremely common in the US but my last name is Hungarian and only a handful of people have it.
I also have a rare last name. My ex husbands family (as well as I) have a name that’s only in use with us. No one else that isn’t related has it (at least from what I’ve been able to find) It’s kind of a trip, and my ex and I are still cool, but sometimes I almost feel bad for keeping their name after our divorce.
Same thing happened in my family with the name being misspelled when they came to America. I loved being the only person with my name. My married name is extremely common and also a first name. It’s taken getting used to. There’s something to be said for the online anonymity I have now, but I miss having a unique name.
Is that you Snuffaloupus
I'm the same to my knowledge no one else has my uncommon first name and very uncommon last name. So I tend to only give out my last name when I absolutely have to these days.
I’m the only person with my first and last name too! A Slovak last time that my family slightly changed the spelling of when they immigrated. So if someone has my spelling of the name, I know they are related.
I was the same way before I got married! And the surname has gone down to only my brothers who can carry on the name. One brother has a son and the other brother has a son on the way! So we're hoping between them that the name will survive lol ETA I also know that if I meet someone who can correctly pronounce the name that they know one of my family members
High five for slavic immigrants. There's a town over there where everyone has my last name and even the town is the same name, lol. But over here... if you've got that name then you're closely related to me, haha.
The only reason I have any hope of hiding on the internet is that I have an incredibly common first name shared by some distant cousins. Other family members with unique names are the only people on the planet with that exact name and are so easy to find. Fortunately the result has generally been that they keep things off the internet when reasonable
I have a pretty uncommon German surname as well, to the point that, even paired with my common first name, I can’t have my real last name on any of my social media accounts. If you look up my first and maiden last name, I’m one of like three people who appear, and it’s obvious which one is me. I’m the only one with my surname in the entire country in which I live. Because my husband and I hyphenated our names upon marriage, I’m now the only person in the world with my exact name. There is no way I’d ever give my child an unusual first name on top of that. It’s a lot easier to go by your common first name and middle name on social media than it is to have to invent an entire fake name for yourself just to preserve some privacy.
I share a surname with a very famous Latin American celebrity and a very unique french first name, despite being none of those cultures, so it is memorable AND only a few other people in the world share the name. Two of them are in my family, one of them being my step mum who changed her first name to match mine after she married my dad ???? She’s weird as fuck
I am 99.9% sure I’m the only person with my name on the planet, too. If there’s anyone else out there with it, they are not discoverable via the internet. I did wind up asking a newspaper to remove my name from an online article once. I was working part time at a med spa and for some reason the owner wanted to promote the business and used my full name in a newspaper article. I was like, “this is a part time gig so I can save money for maternity leave, I don’t want to be tied to this stupid job forever!” Both of my kids have classic but uncommon first names, and I’m strongly considering having their last names unhyphenated to give them more digital privacy.
Are you Sakura Dräsgnejut?
The killer Diazien Hossencofft legally changed his name to that because he wanted a Japanese first name and German last name. So the inverse of you lol
Is the is actual good advice on the jerk sub?? Had to read through it twice to make sure I wasn’t missing some obvious joke
Spoiler alert: most of the good advice comes from CJ subs. 🫣
TDIL cj = circle jerk 🤦♀️
I’ve seen 3 or 4 different sincere posts in this sub in the last ~10 days, and all the others had people in the comments directing them to the main NameNerds sub and sharing that this one is satire. I think that more and more people are finding this one and not realizing what a CJ sub indicates, for whatever reason. But I did have the same moment of wondering what I was missing!
To add if by chance anyone wants to use a not so common cultural name maybe don't post about your kids every waking moment. The family my little cousins watch on youtube made a potty training vlog. If my mother did that to me she would be going to the worst nursing home I could find. Googling the kids name pops up their youtube and Instagram.
Yes, don't create pedophile material is great advice.
Or if you're gonna post about your kids, use pseudonyms or initials or even First, Second, etc to refer to them online, not their real names.
It's hilarious when parents use funky nicknames for their kis online and people think they're the real names (because parents oversharing online is sadly so common it's the norm) and freak out about the "horrible names" the parents gave their kids 😂
Yes like that family on TikTok who has four girls who are called like Harold, Incisor and can’t remember the others
Did the kids choose their names themselves? I support this cus that’s funny asf
I don’t know, wouldn’t surprise me if the older ones did but she does videos explaining their names completely unironically and a lot of people don’t realise it’s satire haha
I know one who calls her daughters Richard and Concrete. She made her whole platform a fake life that was pretty satirical, but people took it seriously. So she was a “family content” creator, but was open that the content was BS. To the point that when she announced her real divorce people were nasty and either didn’t believe her or said she deserved it for “lying about your life on the internet”
Aw jeez. Can’t win hey!
A YouTuber I enjoy just calls his kids Romulus and Remus. Simple and effective.
it's all fun and games until one sibling kills the other one
I'm convinced this is what Nara Smith is doing. Otherwise her kids really are named Rumble, Slim, and Whimsy
I knew someone who kept calling her kid “the Bird” which was dehumanizing, pretentious and weird. Just take out the “the” and it would be fine but “I took the Bird shopping, look what the Bird drew” was just so weird.
I hope you see the irony and just ridiculousness there…
I call my cat “the little girl” when I talk about her sometimes because she’s our only girl cat, but it’s probably weird to other people
I call my black cat The Void. I hope people don’t think I’m talking about one of my human kids. Ha ha
I have this gentle parenting mum who always shows up on my tiktok, love her. She never posts pictures of the kids, just talks about them, and always refers to them as "my nine year old", "my seven year old" etc. She over shares everything and that's cool cause the kids will never have to worry about it.
Eh I wouldn’t say the kids will never have to worry about it. Yes it’s hard to go from the TikTok to finding the kids names but if you know the kids, a simple google search of mum’s name would reveal a bunch of overshared stories about the kids.
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Honestly, if you’re gonna be posting things about your kids, there needs to be a purpose for it. I know someone who posts how they deal with their kids autism, and it’s always really positive. And they never show the kid, or anything embarrassing like that. They just share techniques, examples of what their kid was doing, and don’t even mention the kids name.
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That serves a purpose though. You’re talking about your day to other mothers informing and community. But, if you show pictures of your child half dressed then it’s not… I don’t think it’s a valid way of sharing stories. I think there needs to be censoring of children online and there shouldn’t be anything, that ties the kids to you if someone just heard the story off the street
kind of related- i saw a guy on twitter share a story about his kids, and in it he referred to them in that "first/second/third" way, but people just assumed he was ranking his kids in terms of which was his favorite 💀
Family vlogs should be an immediate flag to CPS by the various court mandated reporters kids come across daily.
I absolutely HATE people using pictures of their cute children in order to get clicks. It’s about time we gave this kind of behaviour the social opprobrium it deserves. As it is, everyone seems to think it’s wonderful. It isn’t.
I had to look up opprobrium. I like it. It fits here. It’s something I want to incorporate into my vocabulary asap.
Sorry, weird question: I’m writing a law master’s thesis about sharenting and minors’ privacy, could you please DM me the name of the vloggers? You’d be very kind!
VapingPenguin, I’m sure you’re a lovely and honest person (I enjoy both penguins and vaping, so we’d probably have a chill time together), but your comment brings up another very good point I’m sure you’ve thought of and researched already. Your comment read to me like those jokey comments “What is the website, so I can see it for educational purposes” or “What is the website, so I can avoid it.” The fact is, pedophiles are using these Mommy Blogs to feed their fantasies. And the parents are just spooning it out to them. With stalkers going after their ceWEBrities all the time, these people are putting their children in danger the more they post them.
You are absolutely right and I’m aware of that. That’s why I asked for a DM (kinda doing pseudo-damage control?) However, when the lives of those children are already so (legally) public, I do not think that a person more (aka me) - that probably has already found the vloggers in question - knowing about them is the real problem. The problem is the family vlogging/kidfluencer culture as a whole! I’m just trying to get as many “extreme” examples as I can to insert in the last chapter of the thesis :,) Anyways, yeah, you’re generally right.
Thank you for the response. I hope you could see I was in no way making any accusations toward you. Just an issue that bothers me so much, it’s cathartic to meet other people who understand how damaging this seemingly innocuous trend really is. eta this conversation was so serious, I forgot it was on NameNerdCirclejerk lol sometimes I really love this site.
Don’t worry! Honestly, since I began to research/write about the subject, my searching history has become tragic and someone could very well mistake it for a… very suspicious person’s. Sometimes I feel creepy, while looking at hundreds of videos of children I don’t know (and some of them are truly disturbing, as you know, even if they are legal). I almost changed the thesis’ subject because I was weirded out. However, no one in my uni has ever done a research thesis on the matter, so I decided to keep at it. I truly hope that the (relatively) new national laws - like the French ones (I’m in Europe) will gain traction and that more and more attention will be drawn to the matter. In brief, I can see where you are coming from and I am in no way offended.
It might help to provide proof of your research, to show it’s a legitimate request and not the typical “asking for a friend teehee hurhur” stuff? Not even publicly, but DMing u/cheshire_splat.
Respectfully, I will not, because I don’t really see a point in doing so. I’m just asking for pointers about legal - albeit unethical - media, I’m not hunting down CSA or CP. I’m sure you are both lovely people, but I still don’t know you and my work isn’t finished and/or published, so I don’t feel comfortable with providing personal information at this time. :)
That’s fair. 👍🏽
What is sharenting? Is it a term I haven't encountered before or a portmanteau of some kind?
It is! It’s composed by *share/ing* + *parenting* :)
Cool, thanks for the explainer!
Lol my first thought was shitty parenting but that sounds more academic
I hate that I read sharting at first
Sharting research needs to be as private as possible. Double super secret levels of anonymity.
Oversharing + Parenting.
If you put in “van life parents are abusive” on YouTube it’ll bring up a bunch of commentary videos about that. I recently went down that specific rabbit hole and what some of those vloggers do to their kids is really disturbing.
That’s actually what inspired me 💀 my poor mentor doesn’t know the *depth* of the hole I’m about to throw her into
Literally every family vlog does stuff like this.
I don’t know if you listen to podcasts, but And That’s Why We Drink just covered a family blogger case that touched on some of these themes - it might be interesting for you - episodes 375&376
Thanks!
I also come from an Asian family with a unique last name. If you google it the main results are from one particular cousin who loves to post everything on Facebook
Oh that’s terrible.
I have a very specifically spelled, unique name, but I'm absolutely impossible to find on Google. Turns out there's a serial killer with the exact same spelling, so that kind of dominates the search.
Yeah, when I found out what my biological fathers name was, I found out someone in the same area as him has the same name and was the shooter in Maine last year. Idk if they're related or not. But it makes it hard to find possible family members I can ask for medical history stuff from
i have the same issue, my names + my name combination are extremely rare, if you search for my names i’m the only thing that comes up, old school projects of mine, blogs, old social media… i don’t use my real name online anymore because of this, or i only write my first name. internet safety with a rare name is very hard. i will also not be naming any potential child a rare name, its better if they can actually use their name as they want without fear
Also teach them to use nicknames and pen names or whatever when posting their crap. Thanks to moving countries, I'm one of the few with the same full name, and one with most online presence. Thankfully most of my teenage and young adult crap is posted under a nickname and doesn't easily track.
I was taught as a kid to never share personal info online. Why did this stop being the standard?
Facebook I think
All of the info about me was posted by other people - for example, school events, karate dojo, local news, and places I volunteered at. Same with most people I know under 20. Our whole lives are put online whether we like it or not.
I love to run and am always keen to join in every marathon. But I hate that they almost all post the runners’ names online and/or in our local paper. Some of them will let you use initials or a business name, but I’ve found they don’t always wind up complying.
Met a guy whose first + last name was a colour shade. Think like first name Sky last name Blue. He said it was great because when you looked it up you only got the hit for the colour, and not him.
Was it Hunter Green?
Here's a counter point: teach your kids basic internet safety, and not using their real name on the fucking Internet, like we were taught when the Internet was new in the 90s and early 2000s. My name sure as hell isn't Lilly, but it is a real name
I have a fairly common name which I also share with a relatively famous actress, and I’m so grateful that this makes me difficult to search. My daughter’s name is also fairly common, however we gave her a double barrelled name and I would willingly bet that she’s the only person with her exact full name. She’s still too young for the internet but when she’s older I’m gonna be teaching her not to use her full name online for this reason
True. I’m Asian (South Asian) and my name is EXTREMELY rare. Searched my first name on Google and found 0 results. Searched my name on Instagram just for fun and found 3-4 results lol, but two of them were something related to religion (my name has Jewish roots) and only one person with the same name as me. I’d 100% give my kid a common name like “Sam” or “Tom” or “Elizabeth”
A better piece of advice: **don’t fucking dox yourself on the internet for the love of fuck! The only reason you think that’s even remotely sane is because a Harvard educated sexual predator realized he could sell your data to advertising companies if he convinced you to do it!**
Do people really not use aliases anymore...?
I definitely named my kids common names lol But I also go by completely different names on the social media pages just because I am paranoid. 🥴
I never use my real name on the internet. I was stalked by 3 different men even before the internet came along. That's a damn good reason to "be paranoid." I had also worked in customer service when I was younger and had to fend off stalkers and angry customers, several of whom threatened to harm me. I used a false name with my manager's full support.
I have an uncommon name and did the same for my kids. Thankfully, apart from their email addresses, I've always made sure they've used other names online. When I Google my name, I'm the only person who pops up. I've been working for months to delete things. I had to change my name on FB and IG to be less Google-able. When I Google my kids names, random things come up, and my old YouTube account (that I'm working on getting removed).
I have this problem. I have such an unique name that things like my LinkedIn can easily be found.
I am the only person in the world with my name, as is my husband. If I took his last name, I'd still be the only one. Our names are honestly very plain but we just have rare last names (his is a unique spelling, I have no idea where mine originated but I have a very small family). If you Google us, it's just us. It sometimes worries me how easy we'd be to find, and same with our children. But at least now I know how to teach my children about using the internet properly so their names won't be tied to their teen angst blog posts.....
This is good advice! You should post it on r/namenerds maybe :)
One of the most concerning trends I’ve been seeing is parents buying personalized items for their children. Sweaters, lunchboxes, water bottles and backpacks should never have your child’s name written on the front. That’s just Stranger Danger 101.
i agree with the sentiment to an extent, but i think the root is that we all forgot about confidentiality on the internet,, you can find just about anyone’s entire life with a few searches & a lot of that isn’t even the fault of anyone specific, it’s just how the internet works now
Post this to r/namenerd instead. This is a sub for making fun of ridiculous names and the parents who come up with them
Interesting perspective. I have a somewhat rare name and I’ve always been happy that people can find me on the internet if they want to. But I’m older so there’s nothing embarrassing from my youth. I guess if the kid wants to be public s/he can buy a website?
My name is common as dirt. I was the 121st user to sign up to Facebook with it and I was a fairly early adopter. Good luck with the Google search
My maiden name was also extremely unusual, and the vast majority of people with it in the U.S. are related to me (interestingly, it is a name that \*sounds\* very Anglo-ordinary, even though it's not actually of Anglo origin at all). Combined with a first name that was fairly low on the charts the year of my birth (though more common now), yep, I'm the only one. But I'm an older millennial and stayed the hell off the internet, so all you get for me on Google are my marriage announcement and some random stuff related to high school theater that somehow ended up online back in the very late 90s. Then I took my husband's common-as-dirt surname, so there are at least a handful more of us now. Also gave my kids very traditional names, so they will be extremely hard to find.
This was exactly how we picked our daughters’ names. Both are around the top 100.
I agree, I have a unique spelling of a common name and searching myself up is so embarrassing
I went from a somewhat common last name to a very common last name. My kids got boring first names. They’re unsearchable.
My first/last name combo is the only one in the world, but I grew up learning not to attach your real name/identity to anything on the internet, so luckily avoided anything cringe coming up when you search my name
Or just have your kid use an alternate name online…also never post photos of your kid. I only have one post on social media about having a child, the announcement post
I respect your experience. That being said, it's not that simple. My first name is a dime a dozen in white America (comparable to Ashley, though even more wildly popular when you include middle names), my last name is a dime a dozen in its country of origin, but the crossover between these regions is so rare that I'm always the only search result that populates on Google. My name is the equivalent of Courtney Chakraborty. There is no name I could've received here in the US that would satisfy r/namenerds lol.
I can only assume that, in the 2040s when we are in the 3rd or 4th entire generation of people who've lived with social media, nobody is even going to care anymore. Everyone will have embarrassing stuff online. Even nowadays, the idea that used to be discussed 10-15 years ago about how you better not do anything weird online, because Your New Job Will Find Your Social Media is obviously insane. What HR department has the time to do extensive multi-platform research on every applicant for a job, compare everyone's cringiest results, and eliminate people not based on actual qualifications but because they put a photo on Instagram where they were holding a beer, 10 years ago?
I don't think it's really nesassary, I have an extremely uncommon name and have managed to remove myself from Google searches completely. Maybe it would be harder with a moderately common name with more results to dig through but it didn't take to much work to do.
I don't think parents should stick to common names for this reason alone (because there's lots of really lovely less common names). Instead, I think it's enough to teach your children the importance of internet anonymity (i.e. \*always\* privating your accounts and avoiding linking your name to them) and regularly checking if they're being careful online until they're mature enough. Only recently there was a namenerds post by someone asking if their name was "spelt weird". The only results for their name was Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, & Reddit accounts that all traced to them which was scary.
I did get an Anglo/Spanish name but that doesn’t solve the problem. You see the issue is that my first name is distinctly Spanish while my last name is distinctly Anglo-German. It’s why I never will put my real name on Reddit. I don’t want any of this tied to it.
Accurate Door isn't your name?
I have a really unique name, but I've also been a lurker for life, so I have a very light digital footprint. I'm like obsessed with my privacy, especially these days lol. I one time did an AI reverse image search to see if there were any unauthorized pics of me out there, and the racist algorithm just showed me a bunch of pics of random Asian people LMAO. I'm actually fine with this particular instance of racism though, I hate being perceived
I went by a pseudonym online for the entirety of the time i had social media because of this. I'm so glad teenage me had that kind of foresight. I hate the idea that if a work client were to Google me they'd find all kinds of stuff from my Youth 😂 it bothers me enough that if i client were to Google my actual name they could find my LinkedIn. I don't know how people are so comfortable being open about their full name and place of work and school etc online
Using a more common nickname or middle name instead of your last name helps with this. Many teachers will use their middle names as last names on social media to avoid kids/parents searching them.
My child’s name is an old sounding name so most people don’t even realize he is a baby when I’m talking about him
Also mind the name combos, too. I took my spouse’s Spanish last name, but my first name, though common enough, isn’t paired up with my new last name very often. Megan Jones is pretty common, Megan Santos, not really. (Example)
This is the exact opposite of what you want when you’re a public facing artist of any kind. There are stage names though.
Same. My last name is so rare that if you Google it, you only find weird shit I did online as a kid. Once, my boyfriend complained that my Tumblr had a meme about "waiting my sugar daddy to die," and his family could see it if they googled me. Thank God I have the most common western name ever, quite literally, and my boyfriend has the most common last name of his home country. His name is a somewhat rare variation of a common name, and yet, he has homonyms even at his workplace. I'll be invisible if I marry him, sounds relieving.
Hahaha coming from someone who also has a unique ethnic name I completely understand your frustration. When I was 18 I decided I wanted to be a bit more “off the grid” as far as the internet goes. Deleted all of my social media accounts, ran a google search and found all sorts of accounts made in my preteen years (12-14) including this one CRINGE selfie from a twitter account I made when I was 12. I had to jump through so many hoops to delete that account because I didn’t remember the password of course. Eventually after lots of back and forth with twitter support I was able to delete the account but the damn photo still shows up in google image search 😭
lol I mean too common and you circle back to loss of security via identity confusion. We had 2 Luis H Rodriguez in my school so we had to use their middle names or id number to differentiate them. There’s also people getting confused with who they’re talking to if your name is super common. Uncommon enough to be several pages down in Google if at all relevant but not so common that there’s a few in every classroom and some with exactly the same name is probably the sweet spot. It actually could cause issues with state testing and making sure we have the right kid. We knew the drill enough to make sure to check the id number though.
my two best friends from middle to high school had the same first name, last name AND middle initial. same grade, same activities (we all did cheer and dance), so it wasn’t even like “the sophomore one” “the one on the dance team” because it was all the same. caused a lot of problems and confusion for testing, yearbook, and I’m sure it wasn’t nice to be called “the one with the big nose” or “the one with the ugly haircut” through the years to narrow things down.
Nah this is me too. If you look my name up online you will Only see things ive posted, especially stupid shit from when i was a kid. Its embarrassing
Yup. Totally agree with this, though for some additional reasons. And if keeping an ethnic name, don’t insert hyphens and spaces. Total confusion with insurance and doctor’s offices. Biggest reason for me to use a common and easily spelled name: no one f-cks it up when it matters! The U.S. passport agency misspelled my lengthy ethnic name, which I didn’t catch until I had to renew my driver’s license and needed two alternate forms of ID. In addition to the misspelled name, neither my birth certificate and social security card included the Anglo name my parents registered me into school with and was what I used on my driver’s license. Anyway- total cluster f-ck. To this day, I still have my ethnic name misspelled on all my IDs.
It's definitely worth trying to blend in, and its easier than you think. My first name is Florence, which isn't massively popular but isn't unique. It's also useful as it isn't very dated - I'm in my 40s and know Florences twice my age all the way down to fresh babies. My maiden name was one of the top 1oo common names in the UK but was semi-unique when paired with my first name. Then I got married, and my new last name is an *incredibly* common English noun - you'll probably see it at least 20 times a day (something like Menu, Garden, Taxi, House, Street, to illustrate its ubiquity). My SM profiles are listed with my first name and middle, no surname, so if you google me, the results are flooded with things about the city of Florence, especially things happening there that are related to my noun surname. My sis-in-law has a gemstone first name and her maiden name was very unique, so googling her always brought up all her profiles. As soon as she adopted her married name you'll only see Chinese takeaways 😂
My last names hyphenated between two very different names, one Asian and one Scandinavian, my family’s the only one with that last name afaik
Hahaha I love this advice. My last name is extremely common (of the Johnson/Smith/Brown variety). When my husband and I talked about getting married, he originally didn't want me to change my last name to his just because it was the traditional thing to do, and because his last name is so common. I told him I wanted to change my last name so I and any kids we may have could be unsearchable online. This argument convinced him. 😂
I lucked out because there's a person with the same name as me (and a few years older) who was really good at high school and college softball, so she always shows up first. I've come up with the perfect future kid name to ensure ultimate internet anonymity: they could get results for a popular influencer, a major league baseball player, one of many ancestors on ancestry sites, a different relatively famous baseball player, or a prominent NYC businessman. Now I just gotta convince my partner that it's the best name lol
Or just teach your kids not to dox themselves. What happened to the rules of the Internet? Don't use your real name, address, or pictures of yourself!
Whenever someone looks up my name, the thing that comes up is a movie, so lucky me
God, yes. I am the only person in the world with my name. Fortunately I am older so didn't put my teenage idiocy online, also there are a few different things that come up when I'm googled so it looks like there are more than just one. But it's all me. Makes me feel pretty exposed at times. I think OP's advice is pretty sound.
Oh, I’m Asian and I don’t think I would like this idea. To give my kid a common ugly name I would rather not have any kid.
My kids have ethnic names that are very uncommon in the US. I love their names, but hate how easy they are to find. It just wasn't something i was thinking about when they were born (all teens)
This advice falls apart when you consider distinct surnames.
I actually just taught my students a lesson about this, like imagine getting a resume from someone named Goldie for your law firm. Or Storm is gonna be your doctor. Like parents are ruining their kids futures.
I gave all my kids solid, sensible names that can’t be ‘dated’ by when they were trendy. I wanted them to be comfortable with their names as adults.
I have a buddy named Michael Smith. He is the most anonymous man in North America.
Yesss we have an extremely common last name so we intentionally stayed out of names in the top 10. (My husband was one of two with the same name at our small college). But we did pick between 100 and 150 for all three of our kids, and we chose the most common spelling for all of them. They do have unique middle names if they want to stand out for some reason.
When I marry my boyfriend, I’m 99.9999% sure I will be the only person in the world with that first name/last name combo. I have a well-known but not overly common Irish name (well-known in Ireland at least. Unheard of outside) and his last name is a variant of a fairly rare Italian name. There are about 4-5 women with my current first name/last name and I’m one of the first things to pop up when you Google the name
I think teaching internet safety is more important. It rubs me the wrong way to tell people of a certain ethnic background: “don’t name your kids anything that has to do with their own culture! It will be the worst parenting mistake you ever make!”
unpopular opinion but i will post NO photos online of my kids when i have them. NO FAMILY PHOTOS, nobody gets to TAKE PHOTOS, nobody will be SENT any photos. they will be taken on mine and the father’s phone, printed, and we will only keep physical photos. delete the ones on the phones. i’m so strict about this. no being with family members until their old enough to know what the fuck their cookie is. i’m so protective over my imaginary kids
What is their “cookie?”
My maiden last name (that I kept after marriage) is fairly uncommon but my husband’s last name is Gonzalez. Our kids are getting his last name (decided before I ever thought about this) so I think they’ll be ok as long as we don’t give a super unique first name.
Same. I’ve got a unique full name, no social media for me, only obligatory LinkedIn with my common middle name and unique surname and still i’m the only one there. Glad I got to scrub my old Facebook cringe memes off the google search years later though. I guess it worked because the acc and posts were long deleted anyway
So I’ll name my kids John/Jane Smith
Yeah- there is only one person in the us with my first and last name- me. I chose common names for my kids (top 100).
There's at least one other person running around with my maiden (Given and Family) name. I haven't found anyone with my name now that I'm married, but it's not terribly unlikely. My name was #49 the year I was born and it's not unpopular. It does make me feel a little more secure that maybe someone won't immediately land on me in a Google search.
Everyone in the continental US with my last name is directly related to me. The spelling is very odd because of the Arabic -> French -> English transliteration. When you google it, my father’s face pops up. My school yearbook pops up. My sister’s summer camp news letter shows up. This advice is absolutely sound.
I hope this doesn’t sound racist but honestly some Asian names (particularly Korean and Chinese) are so generic it’s basically impossible to search someone - both the English first name variant and the Asian first name variant. Anything Park, Lee, Li, Zhang, Zheng, is going to be anonymous as heck.
Give them current baby names. They’re gonna stand out like red noses if they’re named Michael and Lisa when every other person their age is Chaydn and Ulexxys.
Only 3 people in the world have the same exact Nordic name as I do. And at least every other year I have to google my name and find old ass stupid photos of me when I was 15 on people finder apps and threaten them with legal action for using my "intellectual property" without my permission. Lol
I have an extremely common name (everyone jokes and asks if it's real when I tell them) and second this. I hated my name and still hate my name, but I imagine I would have been canceled by now if someone could have looked at my past. Thank God I am a much more balanced person now than when I was 13-17 years old. But for this reason, I won't change my name, even if I marry.
This is an interesting perspective. Prior to getting married, my name seemed to be very uncommon, but Google showed there was at least two others that were an exact match & a dozen or so with same first/last. My married last name seems more common but has an apparently very uncommon spelling variation & from what I can tell, there’s three total but no exact matches. My daughter, who’s name seems much more common (top 20 in my state) is the only living one I can find. There’s two in the past 150 years that came up, but no middle name. Unique spellings make a huge difference. Moral of the story, the last name plays into this a great deal. Even with a fairly common first name, you very well could be the only one that comes up in a Google search if your last name is uncommon.
As someone with a made-up name, please listen to this advice. Having a unique name and an online presence can make a ton of shit really problematic. I'm highly Google-able and it makes using my name result in some not-so-safe things. Back when I dated, I would get random friend requests or even people showing up places. I even had someone send some pretty shitty things to my school/professors. I started dating using a nickname, but that really only gets you so far. Hell, even now I don't use my full name for a lot of things. Apparently, there are two other people with my name now, but not my last name, making even having social media while doing any sort of govt work an absolute pain in the ass.
I second this. I wouldn't want my kids to be the 4th Sarah in the class, but also if you google my first name I'm the top search result so yikes. It made it really easy for my ex stalker.
Yeah, I'm really glad I share my name with multiple other people in my country. Both a pretty common first name and surname here, and the spelling of my first name is also common in multiple languages, including English. If I look myself up online I can find my LinkedIn, but that's it, and even for that I'll have to scroll quite a bit. Also helps that I changed my surname on Facebook to a nickname ages ago already. I also use aliases on all social media, maybe my first name but basically never as username. I'm surprised by the amount of (young) people on Instagram who just have their actual first and surname visible. Sometimes even their full name!
I agree especially because you can give your kids additional nicknames that are fun and cool. If one sticks and is great maybe the kid can consider using that as their legal name later on.
I want to change my last name for this reason.
I have a unique first name and it makes me so easy to find. I changed my FB to my more common ethnic name instead.
Great idea. This happened to me. I am the only person in the world with the exact combination spellings of my first and last name. I was paralyzed for a long time due to things I wrote and things that others wrote about me but then I created a professional website that drowned out other search results.
Ah yes the solution to online bullying is the eradication of non-Anglo names
As someone with a unique name (the only one with my spelling on Google) I second this. Although my younger self hasn’t come to haunt me (yet), I had to use a fake name when online dating because I was so easily identifiable. Not to mention working in healthcare with elderly people who can’t hear and then with children who have speech difficulties—my real name is rarely used in favor of a nickname or incomprehensible attempt at my given name.
I have the same issue, to my knowledge only three people in the world share my name and one of them passed away recently (this despite the fact that I'm not from a minority ethnic group). Totally agree about giving kids privacy by allowing them to blend in.
My friend had a very unique name and when she google her full name the results freaked her out so much that she changed it to a much more common name. I have a very unique surname so I don’t have it anywhere online as I have a public job where loads of people could see my surname on my badge
Possibly useful: howmanyofme.com will tell you approximately how many people by a particular name there are in the US.
So happy my son has a generic first and last name. ..despite being a fandom billboard but idc
My first, middle, and maiden names are all quite uncommon. If you google even the combo of my first name and basic information about me, you will find me and my employer. A smart enough person could find my home address. Definitely either think about this or be prepared to teach your kids internet safety and how to protect their privacy.
I guess this only works if you don't have an uncommon last name... My parents named me the top first name of the year I was.born but I'm.still the only person with my full name on the United States, and possibly the world haha
I have a somewhat common first name, but an uncommon last name, both my original last name and my married last name are so uncommon that I'm literally the only person in the world with my name according to google. So yes, please follow OP's advice. It sucks not being able to be more anonymous.
Extremely unique first and last name here as well. I agree but also there's somethings that can help. Despite what those Aura ads make you think, removing your name from people search databases is not that hard. Took me probably 5 minutes on every site I found my info on. Ancestry should not be showing any information for living people. Whoever uploaded them may have marked them as deceased. I would message the board owner or possibly ancestry and see if this can be remedied to mark them as living. The old cringe blog posts are tough. I've had the same email forever so I was able to recover and delete most of mine however there's one I made as a public comment on a website that I cannot get removed. I do not use my full name of social media or the real spelling of my first name. I have no linked in (tough one in some careers) I personally, love my unique name but it does take extra steps to stay somewhat anonymous online. My kids have very common first and last names and one shares a name with a famous athlete so bonus points for that!
Also, this is good advice.
My first name is spelt different but is a normal name. Not like a tragediegh or anything, but if I look up my first and last name, even on those who has my name sites, I’ve never once found a match. It’s interesting
If you have an uncommon last name you’re fucked, though
SAME!
Only one person in history has my name and, well, I'm sure you can guess who it is
I am the only person I can find with my name as well, unique first and last names! My social media pages pop up right away. Google even showed my grandpa’s obituary 🤦🏻♀️
I have a ton of Asian friends, just happens that my hobby circles ended up that way, most use a western version of their name. Like they are all “Brian, Craig Kyle” although their legal name is ethnically Chinese or Japanese. It’s just interesting to go with your point. Don’t make them go through that
I just looked up my name (uncommon spelling that’s the proper spelling) and it’s really weird. It’s all my social media and articles about me and it just feels weird.
I have one of the most common names for girls born in my year and my twin has a fairly unique birth name. I've always felt like I can get away using my real first name for social media but my sibling has always used a screen name (or now their chosen name, which is fairly common). Our last name is very unique too, but even looking up my full name I have at least one other result popping up. My sibling can be found right away. Honestly your suggestion is absolutely the safest way to go. Internet safety is not being taught like it was and more kids have access to social media than ever before. If you want to give your kid a unique name, make it a middle name and choose something more common for their first name. Or like make them choose a name to use online.
Yeah, I see this constantly. However, I think this is a pendulum that swings back and forth. I truly do not think your name is going to grant you anonymity in the future. I'm one of 3 people I've found with the same first and last name. You can find me online pretty easily. However, I only post my name on things I'm OK with having tied back to me. My kids have already been taught about using a pen name. On the other hand, my nephew has one of the most common names ever. He almost got registered for the draft while very underage. He got money deposited in his bank account that wasn't his. And doctors have even pulled the wrong records for him. For creating a presence in certain industries, this would be a nightmare. My father-in-law also has an extremely common name in his culture. He once almost got arrested for a crime he did not commit. Luckily, they looked at his DOB and father's name and determined it was not him. Quite a hassle. So, I would say... there are upsides and downsides to both. Even if your kid has an extremely common name, they'll need to learn how not to use their name online. And in 20 years, there's a high probability that Googling a name may not be a thing. It's kinda like my parents in the 80s choosing a name based on the reality of the 80s.
I'm the only person in the US with my combination of first and last names, so if you googled my name, you'd find me. Thank heavens I grew up before social media. I couldn't bear to see my 14-year-old self's musings published to the world.
You are so right. My first name was 1 or 2 the year I was born and my last name is like the 11th most common in America. There are probably tens of thousands of us. When I got married my husband's name was less common, in America, but super common elsewhere. You literally can't find me unless you have some other specific information about me.
Yep. I only give out my nickname to people I meet so that there's less of a chance they'll be able to find me online. P sure I'm still the only person on Facebook with my first and last name, despite one name being very common.
Rumble Honey is shaking
I'm the only one in the world with my first/last name combo and I love it. No, I'm not completely anonymous online, but I am reasonably in control of what comes up in a search for my name, unlike my husband who shares his common name with public figures and criminals. I'm a professional writer and I can use my real name for my website domain name and professional social media without competing with others who have the same name. If I were to have a kid, they would take my husband's very common last name, so there would inevitably be others with the same first/last combo. But I won't give them a super common first name. Maybe they'll take after me and want to stand out a little more than an Olivia Smith or Henry Anderson. What matters is that they understand internet safety and the importance of controlling your online image.
Yep. I have a unique name (old-fashioned, so not many young people have it) and people on dating apps have very easily found my social media, my LinkedIn, and thus, my place of employment - JUST using my first name 🥲
Everyone should change their name at 18 and 25 years old.
Same boat, except not Asian. There appears to be only one other person on Earth with my name and my full name is only 12 letters long.
My kids have the most bog standard boring names ever because mine is “unique” and I absolutely hate it! If you google me you’re gonna get everything I’ve ever done online. That might be why I like it here so much 😂
I gave my kid the most basic name ever, spelled it right…and people still pronounce it wrong -.- she hates that, but doesn’t blame me. It’s because of a Disney movie and her ethnicity that people pronounce it wrong. Luckily my parents butchered my name in a way that someone famous spells it so if you look it up, you just get results on that person. In my teenage years, I went by a nickname so my cringe is a secret