What's In A Name?

My mom told me that if I was a boy I was going to be named Sean Lindon but I turned out to be a girl  (thankfully) so they went with Ashley Autumn. According to my mother, she got the idea for my name from Ashley Abbott, a fictional soap opera character on The Young & the Restless.  There's nothing wrong with Ashley. It's a perfectly fine name. I actually like it on it's own. But then I'm reminded that I was named Ashley when all mother's of the mid-80's were naming their little girls Ashley too. This lead to there being at least one, if not two, Ashley's in every class I ever had up until high school. I was even good friends with another Ashley for a time in elementary school. We were forced to both write out our last names on every piece of paper after the teacher kept getting our work confused. I've always hated the popularity of my name. Everyone knew at least 5 different Ashley's at a time. I was never just Ashley. I was Ashley S. or Ashley with the glasses. If you scrolled through one of those Nokia brick cell phones of the early 2000s the first page or two would be filled with the all annoying name.

My first job was working in the bakery at Panera Bread. So of course I had to wear a name tag along with everyone else. The thing about wearing a name tag though is everyone who comes in contact with you (and can read) will most likely make some comment about your name. I remember an older gentleman asking if my parents liked Gone With The Wind. I gave him a confused look and he took his coffee and was on his way. I had never seen Gone With The Wind. Actually, I still haven't seen it (sorry Katie!). I just don't have any interest. But I now know that there was a character named Ashley in it. So years later I finally understood his comment.

No matter what your name, you will without a doubt pick up some nicknames along the way. Some of course you welcome and others you wish you never heard. The most popular nickname I have is Ash. Pretty standard. Most people go by the first half of their name. Only my girlfriends and the occasional relative call me this though. Dustin has never once called me Ash. He's got his own list of nicknames for me which have nothing to do with my name and I plan on keeping them all between the two of us. My dad's side of the family also used to call me Smash and/or Smashley which always made me laugh as a kid. It was kind of silly but also kind of bad ass. The not so fun nickname a fellow classmate called me was Ashtray. Oh man did he think he was clever with that one.

I remember playing a "game" at camp once. We all sat indian style in a circle on the floor of the cabin and went around telling each girl what name we all thought suited her better than her actual name. I'll never forget one of the girls saying I looked like a Claire. Claire?! Was she just looking at her peace sign mood ring when she came up with this theory? I still don't think I look like a Claire. Do I?

I feel like the name Ashley was associated with "cool", snotty/bratty girls. Maybe not so much now but that's how I felt growing up. I wasn't ever in that crowd. I didn't want to be. I wasn't part of the stereotype for Ashleys.

My mom always told me how much she hated her name. Still hates it. I don't dislike mine to that extent but I do wish I had a name that was on the rare side. Something unique but subtly so. It's crazy how our parents bring us into the world, give us a name they love (or maybe one they feel obligated to give us), and bam we are for the most part stuck with it forever. That is unless you're cool enough to be called something completely different or legally change it. And I am just not.

Just for fun I threw my name into these various search engines to see what came up first:
Google: Ashley Furniture
Google Images: Ashley Tisdale
Pinterest: Ashley Olsen
Tumblr: Lots of Beyonce GIFS (huh?), more Olsen and Tisdale & even Ashley from Mass Effect which should make Dustin happy.
Urban Dictionary: "A bad ass motherfucker who won't take no shit off of nobody." Is this even a sentence?
Wikipedia: English origin. Originally a surname that is now used as a first name.