I’ve met a woman named Vagina.
That’s no where close to being the weirdest place name in Newfie-land. How about Blow Me Down, Come by Chance, and Dildo? Seriously, you can look them up.
She was an American Olympic gymnast. I’m assuming she grew up in American. It doesn’t matter what it sounds like in Russia.
It sounds bad here, where she lived, trained, competed, went to school, had friends.
I think I read she was a 3yo when her family came to America.
Come on people. It’s bad. It sounds like 'nasty ’
You know I’m right.
Hey, good for her if she never got bullied or had a problem with it. I hope it was that way for her.
God knows those poor gymnasts had enough problems.
She wasn’t raised in some generic American community, however; she was raised in the Russian émigré and gymnastics communities, and I think you are not giving adequate consideration as to how insular, even isolated, both of those are. She probably had relatively little contact as a child with people who were not familiar with Russian names and nicknames. Now, as an adult, she is free to use her full name of Anastasia or some other nickname derived from it (Ana, Stasia, Stacy), or some other name altogether, but she apparently does not share your belief that she should not use a nickname common in her community because it sounds wrong in yours.
We don’t know if any of that is true. Not likely to find out.
But, hey whatever.
Ana/Anya/Anyusha/Annushka/Nyunka/Anek/Asya/… is kind of its own name, isn’t it? If you know Anastasia well maybe you can call her Nastka/Tyunka/Nastyushechka/Syusha/Taska/Tasik/any of many dozens of nicknames you can make up.
Honestly, I never even noticed Nastia’s name before. It sounds quite pretty to me, and it’s pronounced differently than “Nasty.” Then again, I am of Slavic extraction, so that could be a reason I never noticed it.
Once while perusing my company’s list of employees and other that have obtained a company ID number, I found someone with the first name Anal. The person was an employee of an airline from Indonesia. I’m sure I could find more like that.
Our Anastasia is called “Annie.”
~VOW
Yes, this. While plenty of (nick)names sound funny, at least to Messrs Beavis and Butt-Head, e.g., “Fanny”, “Nastia” does not really sound like “nasty” because one ends with an “i” and one ends with a “ya”.
There are 1000s of Beevis and Buttheads in Junior highschool.
I read in her Bio, online, She grew up in Plano, Texas. If that’s not middle America I don’t what is.
I’m sure we’ll never know if she was bullied for her name.
It’s, no matter. Sorry I brought it up.
Carry on.
Don’t apologize! 
Just remember:
This world is rough /
And if a [girl]'s gonna make it, [she]'s gotta be tough
Look them up? I’ve been to all of them. And more.
It was almost lost among the banter (and I’m not knocking banter; I’m a big fan a banter!), but thank you MollyCatherine for actually responding to my OP. That was a very useful link!
I’ve learned that there has never been a single year in the U.S. where at least five babies were named either “Focaccia” or “Foccacia”.
The “look them up” was addressed to all the people out there who don’t live in Newfoundland. So what are the other weird place names in NL? I know there’s more of them, but can’t recall any off the top of my head.
Oh, I just remembered one. Over in Labrador, there’s Sheshatshit, which is often spelled Sheshatshiu. Note: it’s not pronounced anything like what English speakers automatically think. But that’s a different kind of weird name than the ones in Newfoundland.