Tuesday, March 20, 2007

If this were 30 A.D., all my guests would be Mary

You know that "coincidence" of names on the ossuaries featured in the Jesus Tomb documentary? I thought of that as I was making the guest list for my upcoming bachelorette party:

- Four of the 20 women -- including myself -- are "Amy" or "Aimee." That's 20 percent. (One of the Amys is Rich's brother's wife. Ha!)
- Two of the 20 women are named Lisa -- 10 percent.
- Two of the 20 are named Vanessa -- 10 percent.
- We have a Jenna and a Jennefer. Close enough -- we'll call that 10 percent.
- We have a Meg and a Meagan. Ditto -- another 10 percent.

In other words, only eight women have "unique" names, and believe me, they're not names like "Esmerelda" or "Rainbow Moonbeam."

Apparently, all generations have a dearth of uniquely-named people, which is why no one should get their skivvies bunched up over the so-called Jesus Tomb.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Very cool! An excellent real-world exercise.

-Rich

Talia said...

Surprised you don't have any variations on Melissa/Missy. That was another popular one for our age bracket.

It's funny, in a way: When I was a kid I HATED my name(s.) Both my given name and my nickname were spelled oddly (years before that was a trend) and I never could get a little license tage for my bike, or pencils with my name on them. Though spelled differently, I had to endure years and years of Mork and Minde jokes and Minde just didn't have that cool, elite sort of cheerleader feel a nice Ashley or Elizabeth or Heather would have provided.

As an adult, I don't think about my name so much, but for all of those years of daydreaming of another moniker I can't imagine being anything else now.

Enough of my ramblings though. This is one "Martha" who needs to go make her boys some dinner.