The Jenny Dilemma

I have a rule, which I am about to break, that I do not blog about friends or relatives, with the exception of my husband and son, who are used to my abuse, and thus do not hold a grudge when I liken them to minor superheroes with personal hygiene issues.

However, I am making an exception today, as this post may come in handy to others who are dealing with the same sort of thing – namely, the too-popular name. In our extended family, it is “Jenny.” You can’t tell someone that “Jenny is coming over tomorrow” in our family without then saying something like, “No, not that Jenny, the other Jenny. No, not that one. The other, other one.”

At lunch today, I, the woman who gets all red-faced and militantly feminist when anyone mentions sending their 7-year-old girl to “cheerleading camp” (don’t get me started), blithely said, “we have Dean’s Jenny, Drew’s Jenny and Eric’s Jenny.” What? They are the property of their boyfriends, brothers or husbands? Ewwwww.

We could append their first name with the first initial of their last name (Jenny L., say), but I'm sure all the Jennys out there remember having to put up with that all through school.

I say we let them pick new names. I think they deserve it after putting up with all the name-sharing confusion for all these years.

I tried to rename myself a while back after the name “Janice” was tainted beyond its already lace-doily-like prissy-ness through its nasal and annoying use in the TV show Friends. At first I tried Jane, because it was like my old name, but with a more urban, thick-black-bangs-across-the-forehead tint and yet a nice old-school Tarzan sheen to it as well. Unfortunately, that was a nonstarter. I guess I couldn’t pull that one off.

Then I tried Jan, but that was too close to Janice, and so the rest of the doily-name just kept rolling off my and everyone else’s tongue.

Since then I have renamed myself Storm Saxon. I just haven’t mentioned it to anyone else. And that seems to be working for me.

For our Jenny L., I suggest she change her name and start using it right away while she is still young, so that everyone gets the hang of it.

She could totally pull off Jane.

Bon voyage, Jenny. Or Jane. Or....Xena!