Ben Affleck has dated more Jennifers than there are famous Rebeccas. It's time for us to rise up

The Guardian

26-06-2025

As someone from a big family who has a lot of procreation-aged friends, not a week goes by without the announcement of a new baby joining us. I love it, of course, and I'll always give the baby its first 'Like'.
My favourite part, however, besides the miracle of newborn life etc, is finding out what those people have called the child. I want to know all the names. I'll click on the baby announcements of people I know, people I don't know, and I'll definitely click on a birth announcement from a celebrity, even if I've never heard their name before. It might surprise you to learn that I am not in the habit of judging these names, though. This is for two reasons – one, I'm a bogan from regional Queensland, I've heard names you can't even imagine. And two, I have sympathy for the job!
I would personally find it really difficult to bestow a name on a tiny creature that you've just met. Do you want the name to be unique or normal? Classic? Classic like how – popular or old lady name from the 50s? What if it's the name of a sociopath? What if it's the name of a real estate agent? What does the name mean to you and your entire family, but also your ancestors? What does the name mean according to websites with lists like 500-top-cool-baby-names-for-boys-who-love-their-mamas? What if you named your child something equivalent to Skibidi Toilet without knowing? What is Skibidi Toilet? What if the name helps them get bullied? What if, even worse, the name has zero impact? And on and on.
So I don't judge my parents for naming me Rebecca. Even though my three brothers' names all start with M, and Rebecca famously starts with R. Even though it's so common and boring, they could have at least given me Ursula as a middle name and made me 'R. U. Shaw', an instant laugh. But I'll get over it.
This past week, I started to receive a few strange messages from people I know. Messages like 'Umm … did you secretly make a TV show?' with a photo of the credits of a TV show and the name REBECCA SHAW listed as co-creator. While I appreciate these people thinking highly enough of me to imagine a world where I made a TV show without talking and posting about it every second of my life, I unfortunately did not make a show, secretly or otherwise.
I can understand the confusion – the show in question is Adults, a new (very funny!) ensemble comedy that is described as a gen z vibes Broad City. That is a concept and project that it makes perfect sense for me to be involved with (except that I am old). But in this case it was not me – Adults was made by the bizarro world Rebecca Shaw, who I have encountered before. (In this case 'bizarro world' means she is funny, talented, works in a similar field but in America, and is far more productive.)
This is not my first encounter with a more famous Rebecca Shaw. For my entire adult life I have been sent photos of books in secondhand stores by the very prolific author Rebecca Shaw, who wrote a successful series of gentle novels called things like A Country Affair and Trouble in the Village. For a long time, when you Googled the name Rebecca Shaw, she was the main Rebecca Shaw. Then, for a time when you Googled Rebecca Shaw, her description (and the fact she had died in 2015) would come up but with a photo of me.
We all know that Juliet (from Romeo and Juliet) once asked, 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet', but it's easy for her to say – Juliet has a cool unique name. In my grade 10 maths class, there were literally FIVE Rebeccas. Then, my first girlfriend was Rebecca (luckily already went by Becky), and she went on to date another Rebecca. The overpopulation of Rebeccas would be OK if it wasn't in such stark difference to the conversely small amount of famous women named Rebecca. We do not have proper A-list representation and it is weird.
According to anecdotal evidence and my not continuing maths after grade 10, about 40% of white women with boring names born in the 80s are called Rebecca. Yet, can you think of a current A-list star that is named Rebecca? The other white-lady-no-imagination names in my cohort are ones like Sarah, Jennifer, Jessica, Rachel. I can name at least four currently very famous women with each of those names off the top of my head. Ben Affleck has dated more Jennifers than there are famous Rebeccas. Of course there have been some notable Rebeccas throughout history and in pop culture. The book Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Rebecca Romijn. Rebecca Black. Bec Hewitt. Bec Hewitt's wedding poem to Lleyton Hewitt. That's a thin list for such a popular name.
It just feels like at the moment, and actually maybe forever, Rebeccas are flopping. Instead of standing out, we have gone with infiltration into the population. We are everywhere you look … except on lists of celebrities and people with influence. We have a couple of exciting rising Rebeccas – for example, Rebecca Hall and Rebecca Ferguson are both extremely talented, very beautiful actors who are starring in more and more high-profile movies. Bizarro World Rebecca Shaw is obviously killing it. But we need more, to shore up the ranks. We need Rebeccas to rise up, to break out, to become stars. If it's too late for us, and it may be, we need a new generation of possibly powerful Rebeccas. So I'll keep clicking on your baby announcements, crossing my fingers for a Rebecca to pin my hopes on.
Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney