How do you feel about your name, Robin?

“It took until I was living someplace where the name wasn’t so common to feel a connection to it, but now I think it suits me very well,” says Robin, a 23-year-old who lives in Alberta (but is originally from Ontario).

The year Robin was born, her name was the 139th most popular baby girl name (and 394th most popular baby boy name) in the United States. In the most recent U.S. rankings, though, Robin wasn’t among the top 1,000 for either gender. (I can’t find similar rankings for either Alberta or Ontario.)

How did Robin get her name?

The decision to name me Robin was actually a last-minute one. My mother was 100% certain she was having a boy and planned to name me Adam – which didn’t really seem appropriate when I turned out to be a girl. My mother is of First Nations background and was sharing a hospital room with another First Nations woman who had given her children nature-inspired names to celebrate their heritage. My mother then decided to call me Raven, since I had a full head of black hair. My father, however, thought this was a little too “out there” and convinced her to call me Robin instead, since it was more common and also reflected his British/German background. I’m glad he won that one, even if it wasn’t for the best reasons, because I think you require a certain style to carry off Raven. When you’re short, brown-haired, and cheerful, Robin is a better fit.

What does Robin like about her name?

I was a tomboy as a child, so I appreciated having a unisex name from an early age. Even now, whether in paperwork or online, I enjoy not always being immediately categorized according to my gender.

What does she not like about her name?

The major downside to my name is that is that “Robyn” seems to have been a more popular spelling for girls when I was born, and nine times out of ten I either have to spell out my name or it gets automatically misspelled. It was also very common when I was growing up in Southern Ontario, and for most of my elementary schooling I was one of three in the class (along with a girl Robyn and a boy Robin) – I got teased for spelling my name “the boys’ way,” but as I said above, that was a plus for me.

Thank you, Robin!

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