Why Australians hate made-up spellings

Sarah is spelled S-A-R-A-H. Not Sarrah. Not Sara. Not Sarra. And don't even get us started on Caitlin vs Kaitlyn vs Katelyn vs Katelin. Australians have very strong feelings about how a name should be spelled.

The American trend of "unique" spellings — think "Jaxon" instead of Jackson, or "Brynlee" instead of Brynley — just doesn't land here. We see it and think "that looks like you're trying too hard to be different". And we're not about it.

It's not that we're boring. It's that we have a very practical approach to names. If you spell Sarah as "Sarrah", you're going to spend the rest of your life correcting people. And that's annoying. Why would you do that to your kid?

So we stick to the classic spellings. Sarah is S-A-R-A-H. Caitlin is C-A-I-T-L-I-N. And don't even think about spelling it with a "K". We will judge you. Quietly. But we will judge you.