R437 Swedes usually look a little funny to me, tbh.
Oh, you meant the spelling of his name, didn't you?
Yeah, I thought "Robyn" was an unnecessarily silly way to stand out when I saw it back in the 90s and then later learned that it's a pretty standard way to spell the name in Sweden!
I've learned over the years to halt my immediate judgments of this sort. I worked with a guy called Steffan years ago and was annoyed by his name, but lo and behold, his parents are European immigrants and it's just a normal name to them.
I knew a girl in college named Aishling who said it was an Irish name and her parents are Irish, and I thought that's ridiculous; my family is mostly Irish and we use 'normal' names.
But over time I have realized that, oh, people who immigrate from Ireland now are immigrants and that is not the same as someone descended from Irish immigrants who came in the 1850s. And then I went to Ireland a few years ago and was humbled to learn that yes, Irish is a language in its own right and yes, Irish people today often name their children in their own language and what I have always considered "normal" names are anglicized names Irish people were pretty much forced to use when their country was assimilated by the UK, which tried to render the Irish language extinct. And that's pretty shitty, to tell people, hey, Miread and Síle and Caiomhe and Diarmuid are shitty names, so from now on you're Paul, David, John and Neal.
So you know what? I've been a judgmental idiot and I just accept people's names as they are given now.
Also, we're mostly stuck with the names we are assigned. Mine kind of annoys me because it's so common and I am one of many in any given room with the same name, but I wouldn't change it because it's part of my identity, and I imagine people named Willeiaugh and La'Dasha and Tweighla-Pearl probably feel the same way after surviving an 18-year gauntlet in school with it.
Names like Caden and Kayden and Khaeighdaa'eighn and Jaden do make my skin crawl for some reason, but waddayagonnado?
