True, but the main criterion in the OP was “What they hell were mom and dad thinking…” not “WTF, made-up names or names from other cultures.”
And as someone who has spent her entire life patiently spelling and re-spelling both my first and last name for people because I have unconventional spellings for both (and an uncommon first name with several “correct” ways to spell it), I assure you that there have been many a time when I wished for a name like Mary Smith.
On the other hand, it’s OK that my name is MINE and if I google my full name. I’m the only person that comes up in search results; and I do.
On the other, other hand…the above.
Had I had children, I would have avoided unique, quirky, trendy, celebrity names like the plague.
Along with all our Michaela permutations at school, we have Cheyenne, Shyann, Shiann, and Shaian.
I had an acquaintance in high school whose name was Joe. His older brother was also named Joe, and that’s what happens when parents have different godparents for each child and allow those godparents to choose the names. As far as I know, my classmate is still being called “Little Joe”.
I still think Angelina Joile and Brad Pitt either didn’t say their daughter’s name out loud or else never thought of it w/ his last name. B/c as soon as I heard, ‘Shiloh Pitt’ the 7 year old in me said, ‘Pile o’ shit’. I suspect other children have made the same connection.
I’m a Sarah, and Sair-a is how it’s usually pronounced, though I do hear long-A Saah-ra occasionally. My nickname in my family is Sare, pronounced as it looks, like Dare.
I’ve known people named:
Meadow
Hurricane
England & her brother Paris
Mystic, last name Powers
My Dad’s name was Royal, but he was born in 1920 so not really a modern name. It was NOT shortened to Roy. Not if you didn’t want a second civil conversation with him, anyway.
You just reminded me of THREE people I worked with whose last names were the subject of a lot of jokes. I worked with a man and woman whose last names were Cox and Peters. Our manager’s last name was Bliss. The running joke was that wherever you had Peters and Cox, Bliss was sure to follow!
My mom suggested this for my cat and I liked it but ended up going with Freya.
I’ve known a male Paris and a female Paris.
Speaking of places in Europe, my daughter has a friend named Fenchurch. At first I thought nothing of it because I assumed it was probably Ethiopian or something, but no, Fenchurch is apparently a street in London or something. But Fenchurch the person is an American middle school girl.
Oh, maybe so, I’ve never read that or heard of the name before. It didn’t sound like a name to me, at least in this language, so I was surprised to learn that Fenchurch and her parents were American. My daughter has lots of friends with names that sound weird to me, but most of them or their parents are foreign.
Yes, in “So Long and Thanks For All the Fish”. She was named for a station, I think train (presumably on the aforementioned street). As for why, let’s just say it is apparently possible to get rather conceivably bored waiting in the ticket queue at that station.
Sorry, you’ll have to spell it out for me. All I’m coming up with is Mandy (perfectly normal), Maranda (could just be an odd spelling of Miranda), Manda (short for Amanda, fine - unless your surname is Huggenkiss), Wary (OK, that would be strange but not horrible) - what am I missing?
Strange - that’s exactly how I would expect it to be pronounced. f I see the spelling “Sara”, I assume it is SAH-ra (to rhyme with Tara). Sometimes that spelling is pronounced the same as Sarah (SAIR-a), but I wouldn’t ever think of Say-ra.
