New Xennial parents, are you spelling your kids’ names weird?

I kinda think you’re the kind of person who comes up with unusual spelling for normal names, or you’re not. I feel like the first time I saw the unusual spelling of names trend come up was in the very late ‘90s/early’00s. My thought at the time was that some parents are really not considering the fact that their kids are actual people who are going to have to live with these names. I was 2 months from turning 17 when my dad and stepmum had the first of my younger half sisters. My dad is a boomer, and my stepmum is either right on the tail end of being a boomer or right at the start of being Gen X. They wanted to use a particular name that can either start with a K or a C, but they didn’t want to use either of the commonly accepted spellings. The way they did end up spelling it (with a K) makes sense phonetically and has now become another accepted spelling to the point where it’s unusual in my corner of the world to see either of the original spellings. The younger of my half sisters has a name that’s always been considered quite normal both in terms of use and spelling. Said siblings are Zoomers, and the older one has a kid of her own now. The spelling she used makes sense phonetically, but is not how it’s normally spelled where I live. However, from talking to people from the US online, apparently the spelling my sister used is way more common there, and probably more so than the way I’m used to seeing it spelled here. My kids are 14 and 16, and they both have pretty common names. The whole ‘traditional’ names trend was happening when I was pregnant with him (lots of Jacks and Harrys among his peers). I went with a name that’s pretty uncommon to hear used for anyone below the age of 50 in Australia, although I’m told it’s still pretty common in the UK. It’s also my grandfather’s name. Even though it’s an uncommon name here for his generation, it’s not a weird or unusual name. My younger son’s name is probably slightly more common for his generation, but was probably slightly more common in my generation, and maybe even more so about 10-15 years before he was born. I’m pretty sure it’s a lot more common in the UK. I occasionally come across another person around his age with the same name, given I’m a teacher, but it’s infrequent enough I could count the number of students I’ve met with his name in the 8 years I’ve been teaching on one hand and still have fingers left over.