Yes, kids can be teased using any name. Mr.stretch was called Lyin’ Bryan and Fartley (a play on his last name) all through school.
My problem is that I was born the summer of 1966. Me and Frosty the Snowman are the same age…I’m screwed.
Honestly, if I see a child with a more common name and an unusual spelling (Aydin, Myrrandah - which I saw on a local playground :rolleyes: -, or Sydni - all names I’ve seen on baby boards), I pretty much assume that the parents are morons. Yeah, it’s jumping to conclusions, but I think it’s pretty shitty to saddle your kid with a ‘yoonique’ name just so that you can be ‘different’.
My son’s name was number 395 on the baby name list for 2005 - we named him Bennett because Benjamin was too popular, but we liked the name Ben. We’ve gotten nothing but compliments on it. We actually fell in love with it because my husband is a HUGE Bennett Cerf fan, of What’s My Line fame, and we figured it was a way to not give our son an overly-used, trendy name, but still give him a name that was classic and easy-to-pronounce. (That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still get misspelled - my own mother told my whole family that he was “Bennet” three weeks after he was born, and then accused ME of telling her how to spell the name wrong!).
People are going to misspell a name no matter how easy it is. Why give them even more ammo by deliberately misspelling a name?
E.
I don’t know what part of the US you live in, but here in Florida it’s pronounced lore-ell and lore-ee. Except those retirees from New York, but they pronounce everything weird.
And I did look it up in the dictionary before, and lore-ell is an accepted pronunciation in American English. And since it is the accepted pronunciation in British English as well, I get truly irritated when people say it the nasal-y way.
But the mis-pronunciation of my name isn’t my only problem. I have people telling me I spell it wrong, that it should be Lori or some other such atrocity.
[sub]No, I don’t pronounce my name wrong, you have an outrageous accent. (slaps helmet and blows a raspberry)
BTW, the French, who arguably have one of the most nasal languages ever, pronouce the French version of the name (Laure) more or less Lore.[/sub]
Eh…when I was little I got a white kitten. I named her “Snowball” and, even then realizing that Snowball was too obvious, I changed the spelling to “Snough-Bayall.” What can I say, I was 7 years old, I could do much better now. But now I’m over it.
Seriously, when I see a child with a mangled name like “Niquolas” or “Myranndah” my first though is its parents are nincompoops, and my second thought is that they came up with the spelling by typing it with their nose.
I agree with most people in this thread.
Unfortunately, common sense has been turned on its head, and a woman whose parents named her Condoleezza is the U.S. Secretary of State.
That would never happen in real life!
RedRosesForMe, I feel your pain.
Try having a hard-to-spell, unusual name like mine – Vernon. I can’t tell you how many times, even after I’ve pronounced it and spelled it for someone, it comes back to me written as “Veron”.
What? It’s six letters and there’s clearly a “nuh” sound before the second syllable. WTF?
And wait. Wait! Just wait!
My last name sounds like it could be a first name, as my first name sounds like it could be a last name. Fine, I’m okay with that. However, if I’ve filled out a form (or someone has done this for me), with clearly delineated fields for first and last names, do not then say my name in reverse.! I’ve taken to just handing people my license when I know they’re going to be the ones to write down my name.
And wait. Wait! Just wait!
They still ask, “Is Vernon your first name or your last name?” The format – LastName [comma] FirstName – clearly lays out which is which.
WTF? Really, it’s so simple a caveman could do it.
Apparently not.
I have to admit the very first time I heard this name, I swore it was a joke name someone made up as part of a spoof.
When I found out there was apparently an “authentic” person connected to it, I reserved judgment, as I alway try to with “madeup” names.
Apparently, Ms. Rice’s mother derived the name from a Italian musical direction, roughly translated as “with sweetness.”
I think we have the same name!
I had a highschool friend named Marko (he was born in what was then Yugoslavia) who perhaps obviously always had to deal with people spelling his name Marco. So we formed the “K’s are Cool” club, which really was just us telling people that “K’s are cool” when we had to spell our names.
Wanna join?
What’s worse for me is that my last name starts with the two letters “Ca” but pronounced “Kay” in the name. So it’s Firstname with a K and last name with a C, and everyone wants to write it the other way around.
I have a friend who is a Lissa (and not Lisa) because her mom is French and she didn’t want francophones to always pronounce it as “Leeza”, which is was happens with “Lisa”. So the extra S got everyone pronouncing “Lissa” correctly in French, though she now has to contend with “liss-ah” in English. Still, very easy to correct people for.
I got the “Caughner” name right away, but would never have guessed that that’s how you spell it had I heard the name said out loud first!
Reminds me of an SNL (or MadTV?) skit where Santa (or the Kwanzaa guy… I forget the skit, really, except for the punchline) asks a young boy how to spell his name. Kid starts off “Quah’v’ehen”
And how do you say that?
“Kevin” :smack:
So, do you have insurance with Geiko? And do they get your name right? 
This is excellent advice.
hijack codeI do actually (love them) and they do get my name rite!*hijack code.
*please don’t invoke Gaudere; I did this on porpoise.
I have to say I am amazed at the people who have taken (extreme) offense to my childrens’ names. Wow. If you dislike the names so much that you must hijack 2 different thread to rail against them…well, I am thinking you just need more drama in your real life, or perhaps a real life at all?
With the exception of Caughner, my son’s names are spellings that I have seen numerous times before. In fact, I chose the spelling of Niquolos because I knew 2 guys growing up (different ages, different regions) with that spelling and always liked it. I chose names for both of my children that are difficult to shorten or spoonerise.
The thing is that people will misspell names no matter how common they are. It is the way of things. I stated in the other thread that I don’t get pissy when people misspell my kids’ names. They don’t either. I get pissy when his paternal grandmother refuses to acknowledge the fact that he chooses to go by Niq rather than Caughner.
All of my names have enough variations that I have had to correct spellings my whole life. The secondary reason that I go by my middle name as opposed to my first is that my fourth grade teacher took it upon herself to tell me what a moron my (Mensa member) mother was in misspelling my name. How dare she leave the “e” off? Etc etc etc. Honestly, there is so much more to life than pissing and moaning about peoples’ names. At least in my life there is.
For those who wish to continue bemoaning my choice of names for my children – enjoy. I am glad I have given you purpose in life 
I had a co-worker who “didn’t get” the “ch” pronounced like “k” thing (or “ph” pronounced like “f”,which struck me as weirdly inconsistent), so she named her kids Mikeull and Kristuhfer (or something like that).
My sister, who has a perfectly standard alternate spelling of a relatively common name, was told all through her childhood that she was either spelling it wrong, or pronouncing it wrong, no matter how many times she or my mother insisted that it was her name, and she really did know better than they.
My neighbour’s name is Lorrie.
I was sent from grade one back to kindergarten because I did not spell my surname the way the teacher thought it should be spelled. Unfortunately, at the time as a seven year old, I was not able to explain to her that my name preceded standardized spelling.
She was going through a divorce. I wonder if she is still alive, and if so, if she is as miserable now as she was then. If she ever had grandchildren, I hope some of them had one of those impossible-to-spell names that rhymes with echinacea.
Creative spellings don’t bother me when it comes to names. Why not do it however you want? Granted, creative spelling can cause great confusion and a breakdown in communication when applied to non-name usage. However the spelling of a given/taken name is no different than signage, a symbol for the self. Why stick with the standards, the usual or the traditional, when you can do anything you want?
Seems to me the answer to the argument that it would cause hardship to the child, is to teach our children (and some adults) not to tease others because they are different or do things differently.
How is that going to stop them from having to constantly correct the spelling of their names all their lives?
I don’t care for the practice, but it’s not a big deal. It’s also not a big deal to have to spell your name every time in my opinion (although having people argue with you about it would get old really fast).
My kids? Sam & Rose.
Number of misspellings over the last 9 years? Zero.
Depending on the name, I think either “stupid parent” or “crazy parent”.
What I’m trying to say, probably badly, is not that you’re saying it wrong or spelling it wrong, just that when people say it differently, they are just using another common pronunciation. For example, if your name was Stephen and you pronounced it “stef-en”, it would be a little unreasonable (IMHO) if you got mad when people said “steev-en.”