Can’t speak for others, but while I’m resigned to it I’m tired of ALWAYS having to correct people. Especially on the pronounciation, as I prefer the proper pronounciation to the one people usually try. The spelling doesn’t bother me so much, since unless you’re a french speaker you’re unlikely to be able to guess correctly there, and I only have to give it once. But I’ve gotten to the point where introductions go something like this–
Person: And what’s your name?
Me: Jaynealli.
Person: Could you repeat that?
Me: Jane.
My nickname doesn’t get spelt right either, but it’s far easier for people to pronounce.
We need people with bad names so that those of us with good names look even better by comparison. My given name is Osiris. It’s a strong name with a powerful presense and believe it or not no one has ever teased me about it.
But there are some people out there who just give their kid the weirdest names and I just shake my head. There are tons of really good unique names out there which are pretty rare but some people …
I’m waiting for someone to say I named my daughter Brandy. It’s pronounced Bee-are-ai-en-dee-why. How unique.
Completely agree on the Caroline pronounciation, with that spelling it would never occur to me to pronounce it any other way.
I find it strange you have so much trouble with the correct spelling of your name, that’s the way I always spell Tracey, in fact I recently started working with a colleague who spells hers withtout the ‘e’ and I have to constantly remind myself, no e.
That idea of shouting it out the back door is 100% straight on. With a potential name, you should imagine both A - you are calling the child in for dinner, and B - you are yelling for the child to come back here and face you for having done something wrong
I, too, am against making up crazy spellings for the sake of crazy spellings. But I do understand why some parents name their children unusual names. Sometimes, the name has a deep meaning to the family, and they feel it is an honor to give it to the child. I was named Shatda for that reason. Pronounced Sha-hat-ta.
And you know, I hate to throw out cliches, but, I gotta say…getting teased does build character. It taught me to learn to speak up for myself, to articulate in front of a whole class, and a stubborn teacher that insisted the pronounciation was Shat-da; “It is pronounced Shatda. The S says ‘sh’ all by itself.”
Doing that kind of thing every school year really takes the shyness out of a kid.
Honestly, it would never occur to me to pronounce Caroline as anything but “cara-linn.” Same concept as “Katherine” (my daughter’s name) - surely no one pronounces that “Kath-a-rhine”? I’d pronounce Carolyn the same. Carolina, on the other hand, would seem to me to be “Cara-line-ah.” I don’t think I have ever known a Caroline whose name was pronounced with the long I sound (not that I’ve known dozens - I can think of two offhand.) My default pronunciation for Madeline would be same same thing - mad-a-linn - but I have heard that name pronounced mad-a-line.
My given name is recognizably ethnic, and though it’s actually a pretty name, it’s an easy one to make an unpleasant nickname for because of the spelling. Oh, to hell with it, if anyone wanted to know my “true identity” it’d be relatively easy to find out anyway: I was born Giuliana, pronounced Ju-lee-ahna, but in school the kids latched on to the G and called me Ghoulie Anna. As a rebellious teen, I had it legally changed to Anglicize it, but it never occured to me that “Julie Ann” is the default spelling, so I chose Juli Ann. I am forever saying “no E” to people, but it’s preferable to being called Ghoulie!
No one has mentioned it yet, but the one thing that unique names are good for is web searches (or any other electronic search). I have a very uncommon spelling of a European name, if you Google just my first name I’m on page 2. My mother says she got the name and spelling from an Afrikaners girl she knew, but I have a feeling that some Afrikaners mother just made the spelling up because its not the common Dutch spelling. I hated it when I was younger; its often mispronounced, and when people write it out they usually just use one of the spellings they already know. But now I love it, its my own unique identifier. Even if I marry a guy named Smith, its very unlikely that my first and last names will be duplicated in any database.
Ummm…My name is Laura, and I am the exact opposite of you.
It’s Laura, not LOWra (yes I have had people pronounce it that way), it’s NOT “LOr-a” rhymes with Flora.
It’s got an “a” and a “u”, it’s pronounce Lahra (and the La as in Fa La do re me) is NOT necessary to pronounce with a “hideous” nasal tone thank you very much.
It’s MY name, and I know how to spell and pronounce it.
I’m with the whole “down with K’s, Y’s and iegh’s” movement though. And I agree wholeheartedly with this:
Another one I always heard in my younger years (though in this age of video games, playdates and so on I don’t think it is really well-known anymore), was to imagine yourself calling the child home to dinner out of the backdoor.
My first name is Taylor, and I hated my name growing up. I tried to get people to call me by my middle name (Michelle), but it didn’t work. My mom named me after Elizabeth Taylor (sorry mom, vomit), and later on I asked her why she didn’t just name me the former…
“Because Elizabeth and any variation of it sounds terrible with your last name.”
She does have a point.
Taylor is every third person’s last name, yet people have consistently pronounced it wrong. Where do they get ‘Tyler?’ Two completely different names. I blame the idiot parents who get “creative” with spelling and pronunciation. Everyone has lost their “name-sayin’” confidence. Or, they’re just stupid. I don’t really get too irritated when people flip my name by mistake, though. Taylor is a common surname after all, and even though my surname would make for a hideous first name…I’ve seen worse.
A friend of mine named her daughter Maddison. I’m not exactly sure why she thought the extra ‘d’ was needed. Oh well. Another friend named her oldest daughter Chianne. She took a pretty name like Cheyenne and spelled it rather ugly…I don’t get it.
Personally, I’m all about names that are well-established and broken in. Boys - Oliver, Jack, and Brandon. Girls - Charlotte, Diana, and Olivia.
I’ve gone by my first name my whole adult life. It’s very, very, very common and I am hardly ever contrary.
My middle name is not so common and spanish in origin. Mom called me by a shortened form of said name from the time I was born until I insisted upon being called Mary. My mother resisted because she felt “forced” into giving me the name Mary by her parish priest. It seems I would have have been doomed to eternal damnation if I didn’t have a proper Saint’s name.
I like my middle name as a whole but not the diminutive. It’s just too cute and girlish and yes, would fit a stripper very well. Mary may well be common but it is a fine name and one I am proud of. I never had any misspellings although my late mother in law always called me Mary Ann, which was odd because Ann was no part of name.
So, I say, Thanks Father Whatever for convincing my mom to give me a good, decent name.
I used to have a boss whose name, properly spelled, was “Jeffery.” Not his fault, of course, but it used to embarrass me because I’d have to refer to him in correspondence with people who didn’t know our firm very well, and it looked like a typing mistake I was too dense to catch.
Also, I have an uncle who DID have a mistake made on his birth certificate. It was supposed to be “Conrad” and someone slipped up and wrote “Conard,” so the family went with the misspelling. Other kids teased him about it and he hated it. When he was old enough to do so, he legally changed his name to Con.
Not only does it rhyme with lorry, but it’s absolutely vital for this piece of spontaneous wit, about a fairly large friend of ours called Laurie: “Does she beep when she backs up?”
That’s SO funny, being a Spanish name I’d be terribly surprised if it doesn’t belong to a saint. The only Spanish names I know which aren’t a Saint’s are newly-minted ones invented by certain nationalist leaders in the XIX century (hey, by our standards that’s still smelling of ink).
When I was four or five, our new next door neighbour moved in; a family with a little girl the same age as me (I can’t remember HER name now!) and her American mum and British Dad. She didn’t call her Mum Mummy or Mommy but Lorry. Her mother asked me to call her Lorry too.
I was really confused by this and asked my own mum why my new friend called her Mum “Lorry”. My mum, not realising that I was actually asking why this kid called her mum a truck, answered along the lines of "Her Mum’s American and some American mums want to be addressed that way. This satisfied my curiosity, and I went to play with the kid for as long as she was a neighbour, happily calling her mum “Lorry”.
It wasn’t until I was 18 and at college when I met a girl called Laurie that the penny finally dropped…
I hate to point out the flaws in your cliches, but not every kid has as positive an experience with teasing as you seem to have had. Not every kid uses it as a chance to cast aside their shyness and learn to stand up for themselves. Many of us ended up basically giving up in the face of bullying and dreading school for the majority of elementary and middle school.
On a more topical note, I am strongly against spelling names in “creative” ways. If you’re an adult and want to change your name so that Nicholas is spelled “Nikquoehloush” or some such, then that’s your choice and your business. But do not force such a name on a child who will be saddles with it with no choice for the most important years of his life (in terms of developing as an individual.) Giving a child such a name is nothing so much as a cry for attention on the part of the parents.
For what it’s worth, my given name is Daniel, fairly vanilla as these things go.
But do you really think that if your mom had named you Sharon, you wouldn’t have also learned to speak up for yourself or to speak in front of others? And since most other people have no idea what the deep meaning of your name is, and no idea that a seemingly two-syllable name should be pronounced with three syllables…come on, the “s” can’t say ‘sh’ all by itself when the ‘h’ is just standing there next to it, waiting to hook up as usual, them’s the rules!..it is very frustrating to deal with.
Sometimes I think that children who are named unusual things or given unusual spellings have such loyalty to their parents that even those they might despise their own name, they will never, ever admit it. Even if they tire of having to spell it over and over. They have to find other ways to take out their hostility!
I have the more unusual spelling of a very common diminutive of my name… Debby instead of Debbie. I don’t have problems with having to say “Debby-with-a-y” over and over because there is no way to know from hearing my name which way it is spelled. And it distinguished me from my friend Debbie-with-an-i-e. In fact, to this day, that is exactly how my friends refer to us when we are together. Add to that the fact that I spell it Debra and she spells it Deborah (which some people insist on pronouncing de-bore-uh just to be contrary, even though they have never in their life heard it pronounced that way…the difference between deb-ruh and debber-uh is so slight that we both consider it prounounced the same)
I got my spellings, in part, because my father was slightly dyslexic. When deciding between two common variations, they went with the spelling that he naturally used, so that he wouldn’t have to struggle with it. I don’t see the same consideration for other fathers at my work! In the other thread I related the tale of the father of a 13-year-old girl who had to refer to his notes to remember how his daughter’s name was spelled, because he and his wife spell it differently. That, to my mind, is sad. If you’ve picked a spelling that your loved ones can’t remember without notes, even after 13 years…that’s so sad.
Cutesy names can be very distracting when they don’t match the person. I worked with a girl named Caressa. I was constantly wondering to myself if her mom named her after Caresse soap…which was a product she didn’t seem familiar with (soap, not just the brand), and the disconnect between such a lovely name and the fact that this was a huge, hulking, graceless, smelly, incoherent lump of a girl who was not in your wildest imagination caressable.
And don’t get me started on naming children after products like cologne and cars and alcohol (Nautica, Lexus, Chardonnay, Cristal and the like are popular around here.) Though I did work with a girl named Quasar once…I kept hearing the trademark sound from the television brand in my head whenever I heard her name. She said her parents were hippies who named her while they were high…she continued the family tradition by doing coke in the bathroom at work, if the rumors are true. In her case, the name fit, though I think she worked hard to fit her name. She might have had a happier life as a plain old Karen.
And while we’re on the topic, what’s with the multiple middle names, and the first names that don’t get used? Poor Litoris thinks we’re picking on her, since her child’s name inspired all this, but her Aiden Caughner Niquolos (I think) first was called Caughner (pronounced Connor for all the newbies to the Thread, though I still hear Coffner in my head when I read it) and now has decided to use Niq as he goes into kindergarten. What about the Aiden part? Why even bother naming him something you never, ever use? Makes my job as an engraver harder, too, as friends try to figure out just what his initials are in 20 years when they want to get him a gift when he’s a groomsman! I had a friend in school whose first name was his dad’s first name, and he was called by his middle name to not confuse them. Let’s say his given name was Albert Ronald Davis, and he was always called Ron. Always. It was a huge shock to many of us when the senior yearbook came out and we found out a lot of people’s real names! He tried using A. Ronald Davis professionally, but finally decided to legally change his name to reflect the reality of his usage, so now he’s Ronald Albert Davis. Still honors his dad, but more accurately reflects the name he goes by.
My husband is never sure how to spell his daughter’s name either. What she is called sounds like Jackie, but it is spelled either Jaci or Jacqui in an effort to correspond with the spelling of the entire name.
Kid Kalhoun’s name is Justin (I didn’t know any Justins at the time). Anyhoo, my mom’s sister sent him a gift and spelled it “Justine.” Now, she knew he was a boy…and she’s a college educated person from an affluent neighborhood. How could she possibly think that was the way to spell his name?
May I point out a practical consideration? I work for a bulk mailer and among the things we send out are information for colleges and business schools. Part of what we do is go through mail lists to make sure we’re only sending one copy of something to each person. Litoris, with all due respect to what you’ve chosen to name your children, if I’m going through a list and I see “Niquolos” and “Nicholas” with the same last name at the same address, I’ll probably assume the former is the misspelling and delete it from the database. If I saw “Caughner” and “Connor”, I’d probably assume they were two different people (I’m afraid “Caughner” looks like it should be pronounced “Caff-ner” to me, too) and leave them both in.
Speaking of which, I’ve been compiling a list of names I’ve actually seen on mail lists. May I present Siege’s first list of what not to name your baby?
Channel
Brittannie
Cheronda Shaylyn
Luscious
Baby (Appears to be an adult)
Despina
Cydney
Julann
Shadaye
