As a former child care professional I have run into many kids who have been saddled with silly names. I remember one little girl named “Ceili” but who pronounced her name Kayleigh. I felt like asking her parents “Do you think the rules of prononciaion don’t apply to you?, She is going to be spelling her name to people and correcting pronunciation for the rest of her life.”
Also there is the whole outbreak of last names as first names, Tyler, Taylor, Hunter, Jordan, etc.
What do you think of these phenomena Does it help a kid to feel special to have a unique name. Is it just trendiness? Does anyone out there have a unique name and have to spell it for everyone? Does anyone have any really egregious examples?
“Ceili”, pronounced “kay-lee”, is a real word…it’s a traditional Irish dance. Kinda silly as a name, though…did she have a sister named Flamenco & a brother named Texas Two-Step?
I saw all kinds of freaky names when I worked at the Department of Social Services. My favorite was “Latrina”. Every time I saw it, I thought of “latrine”, heh heh. The best freaky name ever is “Fanchon Stinger”, a news anchor in Detroit.
The last-names-as-first-names thing makes me want to hurl. I also decry the use of place names (such as “Dakota” or “Brittany”) as names.
I would also like to mention the importance of matching the ethnicity of first & last names. This is not important if you do not have a vividly ethnic last name, but if you do, you need to stick to ethnically neutral first names or ones that match. If your last name is Jaworski, you should no more name your child “Kevin” than someone named O’Reilly should named their child “Stanislaus”.
Oh, & one ore thing while I’m ranting…it’s spelled “Sean”, not “Shawn”. I always wonder if people who name their kids “Shawn” think that Sean Connery’s name is pronounced “Seen”.
I knew a Tawana and Amaya.
I agree, pronunciation is important. No one ever got my last name right in school.
Thank God its a real easy one now.
Theres no more John and Marys!
My son is named Sterling.
Stella, once on the Tonight SHow, Ed McMahon did call him Seen.
I saw in the paper once a couple who had named their daughter “Carrion”.
I don’t know if I agree with this. “John Smith” wouldn’t strike anyone as anomalous, thought “John” is from the Hebrew and “Smith”, of course, is Anglo-Saxon. Whether such formations are seen as natural is, I suppose, mostly a function of time, but in an immigrant country such as the U.S. or Canada I don’t feel that, to take your instance, “Kevin Jaworski” is all that peculiar (though “Kweise Jaworski” might be a stretch).
In college I dated a girl who showed me her yearbook. In it were the twins (pronounced “la-mon-ja-lo" and "a-ron-ja-lo”): Lemonjello and Orangejello.
A friend of mine worked with a woman named “Vagina.”
Coming soon to a kindergarten near you - dozens of little Shaquilles. I knew of a kid named Harley Davidson Jones, that might be setting someone up for a troubled future.
Good lord. One of the things about American culture that I’ll never understand (along with mindless trashing of any pro football outside of the NFL) is the giving of names from freaking outer space. It’s a travesty. As if grade school isn’t hellish enough as it is.
I blame basketball, of course. 
There have been so many stars over the past decade with unusual names (many of whom, I remind you, were either born outside of the US or changed their names later in life, e.g. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) that Shaquille and the like have somehow become appropriate. Brr.
I should point out that extremely unusual spellings are just as bad. I don’t have a problem with “Shawn”, but the spelling of my first name has bugged me to no end. “Darrell. Two r’s, two l’s.” I’ve learned since that there are maybe twenty people in the universe who spell it like that, since everyone I’ve ever met spells it “Daryl” (or, rarely, “Darryl”). I never got teased about it, but having to constantly correct my teachers and relatives got tiring.
Matching ethnicity really isn’t an issue for me…of course, I live in Hawaii, where I run into people like Mary Jane Soriano and Ronald Chu all the time. We all come from somewhere.
Neither “John” nor “Smith” nor “Mary Jane” nor “Ronald” is vividly ethnic, in my opinion. I guess most people don’t think that “Kevin” is vividly ethnic. YMMV. My point was just that “Mary Jane Soriano” would be fine, but “Natasha Soriano” or “Meyer Chu” would be comically mismatched.
Ed McMahon is a moron.
I can vouch for that. My brother used to tell a story about running into those two kids when he worked in a hospital in Atlanta. Unless there’s another set of twins out there names Orangejello and Lemonjello.
I think parents should give some thought as to how their child’s name is going to cause them to be perceived. Names do carry ‘weight’, albeit subconsciously. It’s highly unlikely anyone named Candi is ever going to get voted into the Senate, for example.
Oh now I feel like a bad bad mommy…Before my daughter was born I was torn with what to name her…Lilith? Raven? Montana? If she’d been born when I thought she would on Halloween…even Psyche? Much to the chagrin of my own mother, I finally settled on Kendall…but nicknamed her Katie, hoping she’ll claim Kenny when she’s older…I like semi-unusual names myself. Or maybe it’s that I like semi-unusual people 
My dad went to school with twins named Ivory and…Ovary.
Let’s see, I went to school with a Tshenna (pronounced Ta-sheena). When her mother had a second daughter, she told me the baby’s name: Essence Capri.
Don’t get me started. This is a pet peeve of mine.
I’m a teacher and I’ve seen tons of silly or stupid names. I think the worst are when people use a regular name, but spell it “creatively,” and then get mad when people can’t pronounce it or spell it.
Let’s see what I can remember…
Misty, spelled MissTee.
Lisa, spelled Liessa.
Allison, spelled Alasyn.
Christopher, spelled Kristofer.
Kristin, spelled Khrystyn.
Mike, spelled Miek.
Jack, spelled Jak.
Jordan, spelled Jordyne, mispronounced as “Jor-Dine.”
I knew a little girl with a name spelled “Casey”, but her parents pronounced it as “Cassie” and got really mad when people said “Casey” by mistake.
I call them the “gender-neutral” names. You have no way of knowing if the person is a boy or girl.
Although, if the name in question is actually a family name, I think it’s kinda okay. But it is a little silly lately.
I’ve also seen Dempsey, Briggs, Brooks, Brink, Davis, Gardner, Saunders, Cameron, Carson, and Stratton as first names.
And one kid named Nickel. I always wondered if he had a sister named Penny.
As for the “ethnically mis-matched” names, I know I’ve seen several, but two that stand out are Megan Garcia and Cindy Goldstein.
It occurs to me that I have a friend named “Diego Radzinschi”…
Does this remind anyone of the country-club Simpsons episode?
When Evelyn’s introducing Marge to the other members of the country club:
“KAHR-in, Gill-IAN, E-LYZE-abeth, Patri-cee-a, Raubert-A, Su-SAN, meet Marge.”
Considering that my name is Shawn, I really don’t have a problem with that spelling. What I have a problem with are people who think they know how to spell my name better than I do. Shawn is an Irish Gaelic name, and since Gaelic does not have its own alphabet, Gaelic words can have several spellings. Sean, Shawn, Shaun, and Ciann are all valid spellings.
As for Ceili, I think it’s a pretty name, and the word its taken from is not so much a dance as a gathering involving music, dancing and song. The Scots Highlanders had ceilidhs for weddings and births, and they would last days with hundreds of people from neighboring clans in attendance. I think giving a little girl a name that comes from such a joyful tradition is a good thing.
Looks like I made a mistake. I know that Irish names can have multiple spellings - my middle name is O’Neil (it was my mom’s maiden name), which is also sometimes spelled O’Neill, O’Neal, or O’Niall. None is more “correct” than another. I didn’t realize that “Shawn” fell under the same category. Sorry to offend, Kilt-wearin’ man…as penance, I promise to listen to fifty non-stop hours of bagpipe music.
& isn’t an American person naming their child Ceili like an Irish person naming their child Party?
Funny you should mention that…
My “good twin” Sean (seen here with his wife, Tricia) and I used to work together. When Ava, one of the girls we worked with, saw his name plate for the first time, she asked, “Why would anybody name their kid ‘Seen’?”
I thought it was funny.
Pete
Long time RGMWer and ardent AOLer
I have always thought that Shawn was the femenine spelling of Sean, but only because of the people I’ve run into who have had those names. I suppose if I were a kilt-wearin’ man I might have a different set of expectations.
I have known three people with the name Tisha. The first one pronounced it “Tih-sha”, the 2nd pronounced it “Tee-sha” and the third (who I currently work with) insists we call her “Tie-YEE-sha”
Then there are the Renees who insist we spell their name “Renée” or possibly “Reneé”
Award for most comical sounding name that you are going to think I made up but I didn’t: Topper Shutt.