Have you taken a look at the birth announcements in your local paper lately? Mary and John have fallen by the wayside to make room for some of the worst names I have ever heard. I have heard women actually discussing that the spelling Keight is much “classier” than the boring Kate.
And the status names, such as Lexxus (yes, that is how they spelled it), Porsche, and such. Is there any better way to announce that in fact the parents are high school drop-outs than to actually name a baby Lexxus??
My beef is how they spell relativly normal names. Take Jamie for example. I’ve run into too many Jamie’s who spell it Jaime!
In my time as a newspaper photographer I came across all types of stupid spelling of kids names. I’m gonna go look up some of my old notes.
Stay tuned…
“If I pinch my nose with my fingers, close my mouth tight,
and blow real hard, I can make my ears bleed. It’s
not as cool as Superman’s X-ray vision, but it’s my own
special talent.”
NickyLarson, the couple of folks I know who named their kids “Jaime” had picked it up from Spanish-speaking friends. (Of course, in Spanish, Jaime is not pronounced JAY mee.)
Both my father and my sister were named Jaime (JAY-mee), so that spelling dates back to at least 1940. Granted, my grandparents were from Oklahoma, but they weren’t illiterate.
BTW-The spanish pronunciation is HI-mee, as in Jaime Escalante.
“Mercedes” was the daughter of Daimler or Benz, who named the car after her.
“Porsche” is the surname of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, who built the Volkswagen and Porsche cars; the latter named after him (like “Ford”). My thought is that some illiterate person heard the name “Portia” and misspelled it “Porsche”. Probably they reasoned, “Well, Mercedes is named after a car…” (not realizing it was the other way around).
I’m not sure, but I think “Jaime” is the Spanish spelling of “Hymie”.
“Cait” should have an accent over the “a” and in Gaelic should be pronounced “cut”, IIRC.
A long time ago when I worked on a production floor, there was a nearly illiterate woman who named her son after a word she saw in a magazine. The little boy’s name was pronounced PADGE-uh-muss. It was spelled P a j a m a s.
In Living Color had a sketch where a little girl was auditioning. The PA called, “Female Pajamas?” The mother replied curtly, “That’s Femahley Pahjahmay!”
Seems to me Whoopie Goldberg played a character named “Female” once. In Ghost? I don’t remember.