Great simulpost, Johnny
Coldfire
Voted Poster Most Likely To Post Drunk
"You know how complex women are"
- Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
Great simulpost, Johnny
Coldfire
Voted Poster Most Likely To Post Drunk
"You know how complex women are"
BTW: Not an urban legend, but I seem to recall it happened in Sweden. The kids name was something like FERWFERWERTVTHRTYHET but was pronounced like some normal Swedish word.
Coldfire
Voted Poster Most Likely To Post Drunk
"You know how complex women are"
I went to the names site and studied the lists. WOW, in 1998 only 128 were named Yolanda!
Hey! That list is racist!! In wandering around my local two cities, I have run across scores of the following – which are not on the lists:
Latisha, Latish, Lawanda, Lajune, Lawendy, Tenishia, and so on.
Certain names should be forever dropped or made illegal to apply to some innocent kid, like;
Irving, Irwin, Bartholomew, Clyde, Clive, Bobby-Joe, Bruce, Sydney (for men), Buck, Bobby-Ray, Dieter, Francis (for men), Ezekiel, Moses, Noah, Joseph, Peter (ah, the implications in that one), and any female name beginning with La-.
Mom had a kid in her class named:
Hei Suk Um (Korean boy, if I recall) - pronounced “Hee-suck-um” Ooooh yeah.
I also had a professor Drydyk (yes, Dry-dick) in university…
And of course, a local lawyer here is called John N. Hiscock… still makes me laugh…
E.
ps: there is a law regarding child naming in Quebec - I think it came about when some parents wanted to name their daughter “Spatule” (spatula)… Hasn’t Cecil written on this topic?
“Semper Ubi Sub Ubi.” =-)
My old college roommate likes to speak of her mother’s friend, Nancy Ann.
I don’t know what her maiden name was, but she evidently married a guy with the last name Cyancy (SEE-ANN-SEE).
Nancy Ann Cyancy.
Sentinel,
You are right. I noticed a few very ethnic or minority names seemed to be lower on the actuarial list than I expected.
After thinking about it I realized the name list link above is based on applications for social security cards. My WAG is that most illegal immigrants don’t apply for social security cards.
“It’s like banging your head against a wall because it feels so good when you stop.”
The maiden name of one of my aunts was Barbara Abar. My dad used to tease her that backwards, her name was pronounced “rabba-rab-rab”. (I guess the extra “a” was silent…)
Nope. You may ruin your kids’ lives with whatever names you see fit. This is a free country, buddy!
And some people do it to themselves, of course. There’s a woman I’ve worked with named Michael – pronounced “Michelle.” This was her own idea, and a ridiculous one it was.
Catrandom
“Jaime” is pronounced like it’s spelled. Okay, for you Gringos, that’s roughly “High-meh.”
“Spatale,” with two A’s, is, so far as I know, an old Roman name. It’s in a poem by Martial, which I’ve admittedly only read in Peter Porter’s rather free translation, partially paraphrased here:
“The chap at the door of the public baths is a shrewd assessor; when he saw big-breasted Spatale coming, he charged her entry for three persons. She paid with pride of course.”
The kid, in Sweden I think, was named an arbitrary sequence of–over twenty?–characters, but called (the ordinary name?) “Albin” for convenience.
I’ve run into “Shayanne”/“Chayanne”/“Shianne” at times. “Cheyenne” is probably no worse than “Scott” or “Frank.” But if I were to name my child after a tribe or ethnicity, I’d be tempted to do “Vandal.”
Sentinel: Hey! Bartholomew, Clyde, Clive, Bruce, Sydney (for men), Buck, Dieter, Francis (for men), Ezekiel, Moses, Noah, Joseph, & Peter are perfectly respectable names (well, “Buck” takes some getting used to). I LIKE Bartholomew, Ezekiel, Moses, & Joseph; also Mordecai, Baruch, and Reuben.
(I wouldn’t name my son “Peter,” 'cos that’s my father’s name, & I don’t like him enough to name my child after him. I wouldn’t name my son “Richard” partly 'cos I associate the name with Richard Coeur de Leon, and since I’ve seen Lion in Winter, it makes me ill.) [But that’s another thread.]
I do find arbitrary spellings and meaningless “it sounds neat” names a bit annoying. But sometimes there’s a good reason for a strange name. I read a column or something once wherein the writer objected to (No Doubt singer) Gwen Stefani’s name on the theory that she was misspelling “Stephanie.” He managed to work up some self-righteous lather about this, all the while looking to me like an idiot for not recognizing it as a surname of (probably) Italian origin.
So watch out…
I’m a member of the Monarchist political party.
I was at Greg’s school today and saw that a little girl named “Emily” spells it “Emmali”. :rolleyes:
MaryAnn
“I don’t care if it’s the queen!”
For Nosmo King, Lemonjello, Shanda Lear, and the rest, check out snopes’s Funny names page
The Misanthropic Bitch has an interesting page on bad baby names, too.
Some of the creative spellings really get on my nerves. Like “Gennyphyr” for Jennifer.
Then there’s the good old soap opera names, like the local twins named Luke and Laura.
There was a man who managed a kit plane manufacturer somewhere near Vancouver, named Richard Hiscocks. And he went by Dick. Dick Hiscocks.
Jenn “cruel, cruel parents”
The cartoon is called “Detention” and its quite funny. I sometimes see it over my coffee and paper on Saturday mornings. I had the same thought when Spiritus wrote that . . . BTW did your friend get the gig ?
I read once that “Cheyenne” is what French trappers/explorers called a tribe they came across. ISTR that it was a derogatory term. Any info?
Funny names:
After the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, an FBI agent introduced himself as “Woody Johnson”. I was rolling! I thought, “What’s his partner’s name? Dick Morningwood?”
Two names I hear often on NPR are “Robert Wood-Johnson” and “Hugh Johnson”.
I used to know a girl named Trixie O’Rear (really).
I’m number 197 on the female list in 1970 on the Actuarial list. Which is surprizing, because I could never find any little bike licence plates with my name on it when I was a tyke. (all I wanted was a bike with tassels and a plate. Feh.)
I have a friend whose last name is Bell. I am not making the following up. Her Great-grandmother’s name was Annabell. So she became Annabell Bell.
I also have a coworker: last name Bell (she’s not related to the Annabell Bells.) She named her daugher Anna. Needless to say, she’s an annoying moron.
DON PEDRO: Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour.
BEATRICE: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born. -Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Sc: i
You don’t vote for king!
Actress Swoozie Kates was named after the bomber her father flew in WW2: “The Swoose” (half swan, half goose).
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
I used to work with a woman who had a son named Dante. I thought it was a bit weird that she put the stress on the second syllable, but I thought it was interesting that a woman who had dropped out of High School at 14 to have a baby would have picked such a literary name.
Only later did I find out she had no idea who Dante was, and the kid’s name was spelled Don-Tay
I once saw a shingle out for a smalltown lawyer’s office - his name was Robert P. Dickover. I would have changed that before I started my practice.
Along the lines of Mr. Hiscock mentioned above, I also know of a Mr. Glasscock (first name not Richard).