How it Feels to Share a Name

There are three Allison Hansens at Davis. They all spell their name the same way. There are two seniors and a sophomore. The seniors are good friends, although the sophomore doesn’t know them.

If someone has a common name like John, Allison, Sophie, or Jake then they probably know what it is like to have a name mix up. It is very easy to confuse people’s names, especially if they are friends with more than one person that has the same name. Sharing a common name with someone can be very difficult. Mix ups can happen, you could be blamed for something someone else did, or it could just be difficult to identify people.

Even teachers occasionally have a hard time. There can be multiple people with the same name in your class. Then when the teacher tries to call on one they could get them mixed up.

It gets hard to differentiate people that have the same names, especially if your friends have the same name.

“We don’t really have a way, because we both go by Allison and Alli, so it’s just kind of, whoever is there we try to work it out by just looking at them,” Allison B. Hansen said.

Some names are really common, and some names are not. If you have a common name, then you understand some of these struggles. It can be difficult having a common name, but everyone seems to figure it out.