Popularity

Alyssa loves to hear the story about how Tom and I chose her name. She loves her name (I’m so glad for this, as a child I wasn’t all that enamored of my own, I’ve grown to liked it well enough but at ten? Not so much.) and has asked countless times for me to tell the story of how we came up with it.

So I tell her the story of how her dad was working third shift and would come home during his lunch, at around 2am each night. He’d come up and lay with me, often putting his head on my stomach. Alyssa always laughs when I tell her that she vigorously protested this position, often kicking him in the head.

One such night, about five months into the pregnancy, Tom asked me what I thought of the name Alyssa. I muttered sleepily that it was on my list. As far as he was concerned, that sealed the deal and Alyssa was her name from that point on.

When I agreed to the name Alyssa, I had no idea it was as popular as it was. I’d never met an Alyssa. The only time I’d ever heard it was when anyone referred to the actress who played Tony Danza’s daughter on Who’s the Boss? Yes, I suppose one could infer that we’d named our daughter after Alyssa Milano. Whatever.

So after Alyssa was born, imagine my surprise when I heard that one of my brother’s friends had a daughter a few years older named Alyssa. And then, suddenly my brother was dating an Alyssa (she later became my nephew’s mother.)

And! Yes, there’s an and. And, when Alyssa was eighteen months old, my cousin and his wife were expecting a daughter. My cousin told me that Alyssa was the only name in the whole wide world that his wife liked.

So yes, they named their daughter Alyssa.

When it came time to name Olivia, I wanted to name her Anna. But Tom nixed that idea when he connected the name to his ex-wife’s name. He didn’t want there to be any way for her to even imagine we’d named our child after her. So Anna was out.

I suggested Olivia during the sixth month of my pregnancy. Tom loved it. We went with it. This time, though, I was well aware of the popularity of this name. And I decided it didn’t bother me. I’d lived through a popularity surprise with Alyssa and it was fine. It ended up not being a big deal.

Expecting to meet other Olivias (or Alyvias, which, ugh! Seriously? It’s not even the same freaking name!) meant that I wasn’t bothered when it did happen.

As it’s turned out, we still know more girls/women named Alyssa than we do girls/women named Olivia. Just goes to show what I know about popularity.

Oh and for the record, Olivia was no more named after Olivia Newton-John that Alyssa was named after Alyssa Milano, no matter what my cousin Chet thinks.