I loathe my given name and never use it. Most of my friends don't know that I am not actually called Jen.
My parents looked for names which were 'different' which only resulted in my older sister and me both being given names which we can't stand. My younger sister is totally convinced that she was given a name which is unisex because my mum wanted a boy, but older sister and I both know that if any one of us had been a boy the chosen names would have been Stuart Andrew, which hardly qualifies as unisex.
So all three of us dislike our names.
My daughters each have three christian names. My (ex) husband chose our first baby's first name for no reason other than that he liked it though, in fact, it was also my great grandmother's name. Our second daughter's first name, I chose and I guess it was after one of my flat mates in the late sixties. This daughter is expecting her first baby in January and I think the choice of names will be based purely on personal preference and what goes with their surname. Nothing to do with family names.
In some ways, I think it is a shame that we, for the most part, no longer have naming patterns but if we had, I might have been called something even more hideous than I am!
