I recently saw a comment where someone said they wish “Rae, Kay, Mae middle names ‘because they go with everything’” would be a naming trend to stop in 2024 (in re to a post).

Hot take: Rae, Mae/May, Kay are the modern day Marie, Anne/Ann, Elizabeth (and sometimes Rose), essentially “filler” middle names from the 90s.

I don’t disagree with the commenter on the post on this page if they’re noticing ever other kid has the same middle name, and if it’s not this one. If it isn’t the second one, it’s probably the third, and sometimes it’s this other one. It annoyed me then!

The comment made me think of this and I wanted to share that with yall.

What do y’all think?

(Note on flair: I really didn’t know what to call this. It’s not a rant or a story. Technically the comment was in the wild, within this sub?)

ETA: I may have not explained a bit of this well. What I’m trying to say is that when the same threeish middle names seem to be the middle names every other kid has they begin to feel “filler” when they don’t have any significance, ie, it isn’t a family name or an honor name, like grandma’s name was Marie or Mary, so the child’s middle name is Marie, which is a diminutive of Marie, and doesn’t necessarily mean anything, especially when the meaning isn’t something nice— ie Marie is a diminutive of Mary, which means bitter; I get most people don’t look up the meanings of names but, still? Ok, the real thing becomes, every other kid’s middle name is Marie, so if it’s not significant to you, it just feels filler. Growing up, I literally had people tell me their middle name was Marie, Anne/Ann, etc. “because [my] parents needed a middle name and thought it sounded good.”

It’s just when it’s insignificantly one of seemingly these set names that I’m saying I find interesting. Like, it fascinates me how we got here.

Moreover, it’s really cool to see this happening again, like exactly the same thing, essentially, literally only so many middle names, for precariously every other kid, it just with different names.