Every year I scour the list of Australia’s top baby names, whose rankings are dominated by Charlottes and Olivias, Williams and Lucases. I’m desperately seeking Yvonne as a metric of self-affirmation. Is it popular yet? Will it ever be popular? Am I popular?
The data is not in my favour. Yvonne reached peak popularity in the 1940s and has steadily declined ever since. (When I introduce myself to a new person, the most common reaction is: “That’s my grandmother’s/great-aunt’s name!) Like the Triple J hottest 100, I look at this list of fashionably named babies every year and think: I’m too old for this shit.
Growing up, I didn’t hate my name. But I did find it a persistent and unshakeable nuisance, like a distant kazoo or a double space in a printed document. In kindergarten, I insisted everyone call me “Daisy” (rank: 27). I scrawled it on my worksheets; I corrected friends in the schoolyard; I was a tragicomedy during roll call. That is until a kindly Miss Ramos asked me to cease and desist because my performance piece as the Artist Formerly Known As Yvonne was confusing everyone – including me.
During icebreaker name games, where one would affix an alliterative adjective to their name, Anna became “Amazing Anna”, Bobby became “Brilliant Bobby”. Can you think of an English-language adjective that begins with Y, but sounds like an E? Please, let me know, because all my life I’ve defaulted to “Yoghurt Yvonne”, which scores me an immediate F in grammar and social competence.
As an Asian Australian child of the 1990s, the French-origin name neither harked to my cultural roots nor was it sufficiently plain-Jane for the white girl I wanted to be. My parents, Vietnamese “boat people” with Chinese heritage, decided against giving me a Chinese or Vietnamese name because it was “too difficult”. It was simply easier on paper, and in everyday life, to give me a white name.
As early as I can remember, I’ve been plagued with questions about how to pronounce Yvonne: Is it Ee-vonn or Err-vonn? In the film The Castle, there is a very minor character who shares my name (outrageously, according to IMDb her name is spelled “Evonne”), and protagonist Darryl Kerrigan’s pronunciation is how I’ve decided to pronounce mine. Ee-von. The two elegant European syllables rendered flat and reedy and nasal, in the same way a French “cabernet sauvignon” transforms to a plebeian “cab sav”. I’m no patriot but I find some anti-establishment home-turf pride in the Australian butchering of a French word.
But like Sheryl Sandberg (Sheryl – peaked in 1950s), I’ve chosen to lean in to the idiosyncrasy of my name. Because what else is there? It costs almost $200 to legally change your name in New South Wales, and I’m far too cheap for that. So the restaurant takeaway receipts made out to “Ewan” and “Ivan” line my fridge like trophies in a cabinet. I replay the moment my name bestowed trembling corporate power, in a previous workplace where I shared the same name as the global CEO and once received an email intended for her (less scandalously, the email was about the company’s photocopiers).
And I revel in a brief, shining moment in internet culture when high-schoolers yelled “Yvonne, my little croissant!” in reference to a viral video that, inexplicably, did the rounds in the 2000s. The Lucys (ranked 30) and Judes (91) of this world have Beatles songs; I have a catchphrase from the sketch-show spin-off of Mad magazine.
But most of all, as I search the list of popular baby names, I see no Yvonnes and zero instances of my 18-month-old daughter’s name. We are rare specimens, in this country at least. Her name comprises three letters and one syllable, and by Anglo Australian standards it’s mildly ethnic, which means it has already been mispronounced more times than mine has in a lifetime. But I look at her sweet face and I whisper her name as she falls asleep, and I think – I’m so glad you’re not a Daisy.
