6 much

"I want the much Jelly* has. Is that the much Jelly has?" SS3 asked, as her father poured orange juice into her cup at the Shabbos table.

"It's how much SS gets," said her father.

"I'll count it," she said, running her finger randomly up the side of the cup, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. It's 6 much. Jelly, count yours. Do you have 6 much?"

2 year old Jelly runs her own finger randomly up the side of her cup. "1, 2, 3, 6, 7. Yup, it's 6 much!"

Both children happily drink their orange juice.

*(Jelly = NL2, but as she was answering to "Jelly" for the year she was 2, I left that here.)

Ducklings

Someone mentioned to me recently that I can now officially call myself Mama Duck, since I have the same number of children as Mrs. Mallard in "Make Way for Ducklings." Since I haven't bothered making up blogger names for my children (I thought it would be too hard to keep track of who is supposed to be whom) I will now dub them Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack and Quack.

(Jack and Nack are the boys)

April, 2008: I can't keep track this way, so I'm re-nicknaming my kids. If you actually know them, you can probably figure out who is who just from the names I chose, but except for Jelly, don't ever call any of them any of these nicknames in real life. Not if you want them to answer, anyway.

January, 2014: Attempt to rename them failed, because the nicknames bothered me. Switching to initials and backdating the text to reflect that.

MY, my firstborn, a boy. age 10
CD, next in line, a girl, age 9
RM, girl, age 8
HT, girl, age 7
MM, boy, age 5
SS, girl, age 3
NL, (also called Jelly when she was 2), girl, very very 2
TT, the baby, almost 1

What's in a name?

I grew up using my English name. It was, while not exactly unique, pretty rare. 0.006% of females in the United States (7650 women) share my name, at least the way my parents chose to spell it. 63750 additional women have the same name with the more common spelling variant, but that is only another 0.05%, and still pretty rare. I really liked being able to identify myself by just my first name and having people instantly know who I was, since they probably didn't know anyone else by the same name.

Then I married into a family that, while giving their children both English and Hebrew names, calls their children exclusively by their Hebrew names. My husband wanted to call me by my Hebrew name. Now, I have nothing against the name Miriam. I really do like it. But it's just too common!

Do you know how many women in the US have Miriam as their legal name? About 84150, or 0.066% of US females. Which would lead you to believe that it is still pretty rare... except that when you only look at the Jewish community, it's more like 25%. (I'm making that number up completely, but it is much much bigger than 1, 2 or even 5%). Most families have a Miriam. Suddenly, Miriam isn't enough to identify me. Luckily, my last name isn't so common... there are only about 20 of us, nationwide.

Still, I miss feeling rare and special... but not enough to go back to using my English name more.

(Statistics supplied by Name Statistics.)