What's in a name?

Thanksgiving yumminess

Back to the title of my post. I started teaching English to 4 classes of little 5 and 6 year olds at the beginning of November. Boy, is it draining! You can really see the difference between the two levels of schooling in the fact that CP is where they first start sitting at desks and start to get better at staying seated. Those little 5 year olds are constantly wanting to move, bite/push/hit their neighbor, cry about something and I find myself enjoying teaching the 1st graders a lot more than those kindergarteners. I do, however, miss the fact that the CPs can't read yet because it limits a lot of what I can do with them and I can't use a lot of material I already have prepared from last year.

Why don't I limit what ages I like to teach even further? Ok, I will. So, I taught 3rd-5th grade as an assistant. I found the 3rd graders too babyish sometimes as well as too exciteable and some of them were lucky they were cute. No, I'm not kidding. The 5th graders could be little punks and thought they were too cool for school. So, my favorite? 4th grade! Haha. No, but I seriously think I could handle 1st-5th grade kids. A lot of it also comes from experience, I'm sure. But, thank goodness I only have those 5 yr olds once a week for a half an hour per class because I would seriously go folle otherwise.

I digress as usual. Back to the point of my post. When I started learning the kids names, which could still take me a good bit as I only see them once a week and there are 100 of them, I noticed a large amount of them had pretty old-sounding names. Like, I'm talking mamie and papi old. It is a private school in a nice area of the city and apparently in those parts it's all the rage to be naming your kids the equivalent of: Pearl, Bea, Maude, Ignaceous and Ulysses. There are also some other "interesting" names that aren't necessarily old-sounding, but just "different." So, I have compiled a list for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Here are some of the more interesting names (and by interesting I mean some of them are from circa prehistoric times) of the kids I teach at the primary school:

Theophane
Blandine
Guillemette
Jaufret
Hubert
Clothilde
Berenice
Ludivine
Marthe
Constance
Josick
Helion
Leopold

Here are some more names followed by my personal translation I think to myself every time I call on them and what I fear I will one day say out loud:

Quitterie=Quincaillerie=Hardware Store
Auregan=Oregano
Callista=Clarissa...explains it all

...and my personal favorite: Anatole!!!

Because why wouldn't you name your child after a well-known 19th century writer?