The English name Bobby sounds like the Malay word babi, which means ‘pig’.
With apologies to your friend, THAT is awesome 
And in the spirit of this thread, what could possible be more in/appropriate than…
Reminds me of this place in my home town. In Spain it used to be very common for restaurants and BnBs to be “Casa [owner’s name]”, like the French Chez whatever. Places with that kind of names tend to home-style cooking.
There’s a restaurant whose owner, having already lived in Spain for several years, decided to go with a traditional Spanish name. Visitors to the town and people who just moved there usually take several attempts to understand that there is a restaurant called Casa Wang (/guan/ or /guang/), not Casa Juan (/xuan/), and that yes it is a Chinese place. Not an “unfortunate translation”, but certainly a source of confusion.
(Considering how many Wangs there are, don’t tell me that’s not an American name - you’d have to kick a bunch of citizens out ;))
ETA: I’ve made a purpose to use the phonetic alphabet more or less properly (should I put stress markers on monosyllabic words?), let’s see how long it lasts…
It’s still a lot closer to a t (or d, if voiced) than a th. The th sound is made by putting your tongue a little between your teeth. Not on your teeth, not behind, not anywhere else - between.
To clarify, NOT a friend of mine. I do not know the people involved, its something I only heard about. It’s possibly an urban legend, but a highly plausible one.
Yes of course, names that are euphemisms for penis are only inherently funny if they involve American euphemisms.:rolleyes: :actual rolleyes:
Surely he did that on purpose. “Beaver” he can’t help, but he could have gone with Harold or Harrison. I suspect there’s a little twinkle in his eye, because he knows that will be good for business.
My mother was a high-school teacher during the era of the great Vietnamese influx, and the teachers and counselors had an ongoing headache trying to convince these families to adopt the pronunciation “fook.” Many instances, with predictable consequences, of:
Teacher calling roll: “Anh Fook?”
Angry student: “No! Anh FUCK!”
One is left to wonder if he felt a sense of “destiny” to enter medicine and/or become an OBGYN specialist because of his name.
I had a similar conversation with a couple of Iranian friends who asserted that is also means “buttfucker,” *kun *being a vulgar word for “ass” and kuni, by extension, being someone who likes (or is associated with) ass.
He was born for the job.
I did explicitly say “to me”, so :rolleyes: back at ya’.
That is the essence of this thread - the names are only funny do to unfortunate similarities, not intentionally. That is why a name is funny in a language other than its own. Sometimes, names are funny in their own language, too.
Like the girl I knew in Jr High with the last name of “Titsworth”. Just about the time that girls start growing them and boys are becoming preoccupied with them, she has to live down a moniker drawing attention to hers and proclaiming their value.
Huey in print looks like the Mexican slang term huey or güey (pronounced like way). It means idiot, dummy, or, among many teens, just dude or fellow.
Since we’re all being technical here, as a distant relative of Mr Cronkite and a speaker of nederlands, “krankheyt” is archaic.
You could go with “krank” for sick, but the “heyt” is not used in standard Dutch anymore. It was replaced with “-ijt”. But that can’t follow an “h” (“-ij” can, as in “hij” (he/him/it depending on context).
“Krank” still means sick, but is old-fashioned and makes you sound like a German (and “Krankheit” definitely will, though “Geschmacklosigkeit” sounds much more awesome). Use “ziek”. If you want to say sickness, go with “ziekte” (or “het ziekte”, “een ziekte”. If you want to say you are just a bit sick, use “ziekje”. A minor sickness might be a “ziektje” (definitely “een ziektje” not “het ziektje”). The Dutch love diminutives.
, So, if good ol’ Walt had a grandson (or grandfather) called Ezekiel, you’d have Zeke Cronkite.