I have met Thor, Sigurd, Tyr, Odin, and Herkales.
um, that last one would be Herakles, actually.
Your mention of Thor helped me remember some older threads where I was having similar issues with such names:
Ever know anybody with the given name “God”?
05-21-2010, 08:48 AM
Zeldar
Thurl
12-08-2011, 05:52 PM
Zeldar
OK this one you need to hear first, before you see the actual spelling: “Illovenee”.
Got it? This is what it actually is:
[spoiler] Iloveny, or I love NY.
Her father saw it on a t-shirt. [/spoiler]
I also know an Euclid.
Do you mean he’s the only person with his first name, and the only person with his last name, or do you mean he’s the only person with both? Because if it’s “both,” I’d be surprised if there’s a duplicate for anyone in my extended family.
Names come and go in waves of fashion.
When I was a child (1950’s-1960’s), Jared and Jennifer were unheard of – except in stories we read about American life in the colonial or pioneer days.
I once met a guy named Dick Head. He thought it was the funniest thing and he was quick to hand you his driver’s license to show that was in fact his actual legal given name. He went on to say it was a family name but his father (Peter Head III) had decided to update the name as he he passed it down to retain its vulgarity in modern American English.
Yeah. I’m pretty sure both myself and my all of my children are unique in the world in our combinations of first and last names.
Batman bin Suparman. no, it’s not a typo. it’s a common Javanese name.
I used to work with a guy in Colorado named Atilla.
Ghengis is quite popular in Romania, I think.
I know a young man whose first name is Cain. Always seemed a strange choice to me.
Not particulary uncommon in Hungary, actually.
I can’t say I know anyone with any particularly weird names. Usually it’s more along the lines of absurdly common nicknames for common ethnic names- I know a guy who goes by “Mo” (or maybe “Moe”) but his actual name is Mohammed, and I know a bunch of Chinese and Taiwanese people who do the usual Western name thing- Mike, Robert, Stephen, etc… when their real given names are actual Chinese names.
Still, probably the strangest given name I’ve ever heard was a guy who worked for the Phillipines branch of one of my company’s business partners- this guy’s name was “Krzcht”. No idea how it was pronounced- I only saw it in emails, but that’s how his address was spelled, and how the salutations to him in emails were spelled.
That’s right- no vowels. We got a lot of strange names from the Filipinos though- old-timey ones like Ethel and Clem mostly.
Names come in and out of commonality. Unusual names don’t generally bother me unless they are obviously fabricated simply to sound unique, or have horrible mangled spellings on more normal names.
When I was born, my name (Jordan) was quite rare, and now it’s very common. My son, which will be born here in the next few weeks, we are naming Xander, which is a little unusual, but his legal name will be Alexander, so if he doesn’t like Xander, he can easily go by his full name or by Alex (but there are a lot of Alexes out there now). Gives him options.
I would raise an eyebrow at names that are of historically evil people, because it would just make me wonder why a parent would do that.
A friend who works for the City saw a kid come through her work named “Playon Infamous-Pimpin” (last name was normal). She knew no one would believe her, so she copied his SS card, blacked out the number, and rephotocopied it (destroying the copy where you might see the number) and showed us the copy.
I know a guy named Zebulon, and yes, he is named after Zebulon Pike.
There’s at least one Zebulon in my own family tree.
One that a friend reported to me back in the 60’s was an acquaintance of his named Holygotham. He convinced me that it was a real name though I still have doubts.
How many Geronimo or Cochise names are you aware of outside the Native American community?
Is Dracula used outside the Eastern Europe region? Vlad was a character on The Americans recently.
I keep expecting to see some sweet young thing, starlet type, named Hecuba or Medea or Cruella. Is Jezebel going to come back in style anytime soon?
When I was a kid I had a friend named Zachary Taylor. His sister was Elizabeth. S’truth. She hated her name.
One of my favorite phonetic given names occurs (but not commonly) in Brazil. It is Railde, which in Brazilian phonetics, is pronounced /high-EEWJ).
On a long South American bus trip, my wife and I discussed that we thought Olive and Violet were both very nice names. And, since the letter Q is underused, the little hook could be artistically added to change OLIVE and VIOLET into QLIVE and VIQLET, pronounced ‘clyve’ and ‘vicklet’. We resolved that if we ever owned two pet goats, they would be named Qlive and Viqlet.
Yes. One of my nieces has a name like this. Her first and last names are both quite common, and she was named after a relative from an earlier generation, but in combination, they’re the same as the name of an actress who is, I would say, a second-tier film star.
Poor girl.
As mentioned in earlier threads, Thor (also spelled Thor) is an extremely common Norwegian name. Sigurd is pretty common as well (although, of course, not as cool, in my opinion). I’ve never met an Odin, though (nor any Baldurs or Lokis, in case you’re wondering), and I guess I’d have to go to Greece to find a Herakles.