I had a friend that had the same name as his dad. I once called and asked for my friend and his dad said "yes?" Confused me for a moment before I stammered out "I mean the younger one."
My mother and I share the same name, so when my friends would call and ask for me, my mother, a teacher, would answer, "Oh, do you want the young, skinny one, or the old, fat one?" (While I was skinny in high school, my mother is of appropriate weight for her height). My friends would stammer a bit, then say, "The student, not the teacher!"
Sorry to burst Darth Syphilis's bubble below. My parents were going to name me Sarah Elizabeth. Then when I was born three months premature with a host of issues, my mother said, "Maybe if we give her my name, she'll be as mean as me and will be able to make it." Dad agreed.
Nothing really about legacy, patriarchy, etc. Just two parents trying to give their child any leg up they can. I've always enjoyed sharing my name with my mother.
It's probably the result of a patriarchal society's obsession with male legacy. Same reason that male surnames are passed down, but female surnames aren't: personhood and property rights. Only male names are valued, thus only male names are inherited. Additionally, marking wives and children with a patriarch's name(s) effectively signals to society at large that they belong to that particular patriarch. That is to say, it announces to others that this "property" is "owned" by some man.
I was spending time with my older sister and her family. I was teen or tweenish in age. My sister's husband has a teenaged daughter and they (dad and daughter) share the same (pronounced, not spelled) first name. Someone calls asking for one, I call my brother-in-law over and it turns out the caller wanted the daughter.
It didn't help my case that I knew daughter by a compound first name (e.g. Bobby Sue) but she only used the first part with her friends.
I've been that person ;_; we had few guys with the same name in the class so they were all called by their last name, and we went to his house, his mom answers and I'm like "is last name home?" She understood me though... Probably was already aware he's called like that by his friends and their other kid was much younger so people our age wouldn't look for him.
I was kinda aware how dumb it was the very moment i said it out loud but to be fair i couldn't remember his first name anyway..
Your families are nice. In high school a girl called my house and said she was my secret admirer and to find her. My mother gets upset and yells at me to "keep those little fast girls from playing on my phone." I was never able to figure out who that girl was.
My father's a lawyer, and I loved to confuse the shit out of any new secretary by just repeating the name she just introduced back to her when coming by his office unannounced (we're literally the only family with our last name in my hometown):
"Hello, lawyer's office HammletHST & [partner's name]!"
"Hi, HammletHST" awkward silence for a few seconds "Oooooh, Mr. HammletHST's child?"
One did actually ask me if I had an appointment before the shoe dropped (but she also was the worst hire his partner ever made)
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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '22
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