A teenage girl claims she despises the ‘granny name’ her parents gave her so much that it frequently leaves her in tears – and she’s too embarrassed to even say it out loud
A teenage girl says her ‘granny name’ has severely impacted her life – to the extent that she feels too anxious to introduce herself.
According to this teen, she’s sobbed over her name ‘so many times’, and can’t understand why her parents picked out such an ‘awful’ choice. She gets even more annoyed when people try and reassure her that it’s ‘not that bad’, including her own sister, who tells her that she’s at least got plenty of ‘nicknames to choose from’.
The girl admits she’s green with envy when it comes to other people’s names. She also gets frustrated when others complain about their ‘too common’ names online, despite them not being too bad at all in her eyes, raging that she would ‘die for a normal name’.
Taking to Reddit, the fed-up girl – whose name is Sharon – sighed: “People like to compare my name to Karen and online I see a lot of people say stuff like Sharons and Karens are SOOO annoying. My parents could’ve at least made the name look nice by replacing O with I (Sharin) or even Sherrin would be better.
“I’m literally a teenage girl with a granny name, how am I gonna live the rest of my life being named Sharon? And whenever I bring this up with my mum, she just says, ‘Okay then you can change it’ blah blah. But the thing is, I’ve lived so many years with the name Sharon, changing it randomly would be so weird and also I can’t think of any other names that would somewhat fit me since I’ve basically just accepted defeat at this point. I feel like my life is over bro.”
A number of fellow Reddit users were quick to let young Sharon know that her name wasn’t too bad at all, with one person remarking that they regarded it as ‘a very rebellious, punk, cool girl name’. Another reasoned: “Not that you’ll care, but I think Sharon is a good mix. It’s not trendy, but it’s not old either. I don’t know how old you are, but you could ask your friends to call you Shaari or Shar if it bothers you that much.
“When you meet someone new, use the new nickname. People will always be all over the place depending on what they’ve always called you but that can’t be helped. When you start college, use the nickname or your middle name or whatever you choose from day one. That will be better for your future.”
Another advised: “This may seem like the end of the world because you’re young but it’s definitely not. I know friends who hated their name growing up but ended up loving them when they hit 20. Find a way to make the name your own. Just seems like you associate it with something else that’s entirely irrelevant to you and then have a meltdown over it.
“You can always change the name when you get to an age you’re legally allowed to. But give the name a chance until then. Issues like this become smaller and smaller as you age. Names cycle through the generations till eventually out of style ones have been gone for so long they have a revival. Same with everything. Hope you learn to love it.”
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