Given names off the beaten path

Oooh, I love Qlive! And Viqlet would be a great name for a horse. I’ll remember those. :slight_smile:

My contribution: I had a female ancestor whose name was “Comma Reader.” We could never figure out what inspired that choice.

There was a famous oil firefighter named Booger Red in the early part of the 20th. He was supposedly called that because an early fire scarred his face and “made it look just like a booger.”

We had babies named inadvertently after body parts. Vulva and Ulna comes to mind. There was a King and Queeny.
Oh, and Gods Precious Miracle, Mom said she’d go by Precious, but her actual first name was Gods.

Without the apostrophe? Seems to rather defeat the point…

No one’s mentioned the infamous Nosmo King? Or the battle one hospital had trying not to get a woman to name her daughter the “beautiful” Clitoris?

I taught/coached a girl whose first name is America. She has a very straight-laced small-town background and it turns out it’s a family name (her grandmother’s, I think).

My step-cousin’s name is Cain. I also think it’s a strange choice, but then again if you knew my aunt (by marriage) you might understand.

My boyfriend has an ancestor, a great-uncle I think, who was named Royal.

When I was doing exploratory teaching in high school I had a boy named Loyal in my class.

Someone I knew from a previous job named their daughter Jovi, the parents were both big Bon Jovi fans.

I know men named Luscious and Thorn.

I heard a mom in Starbucks call out to her daughter “Tesla,” which I think is a fantastic name.

I’m a few weeks away from giving birth to a baby girl we plan to call “Romana.” I hope she likes her name.

Mary Tamm or Lalla Ward Romana?

Please tell me her middle name will be “Dvoratrelundar.” And that you’ll call her Fred.

Damn. That’s what I should have posted.

Yes, I’m talking about his first name/last name combo. Each is unusual but not unheard of, but apparently only two living people have both.

I, on the other hand, am a dime a dozen, middle initial and all. (I kept my birth name when we got married.)

Ignatius Aloysius was the name of one of my uncles. My friend’s neighbors named her daughters “Sunshine” and “Rainbow” which I think is a bit too treacly for real life. I know an Aphrodite, an Elwyn, a Murphy, and a Smith (all given names).

I have friends that named their son Hieronymus, friends who named their son Tiberius, friends whose daughter’s middles name is Danger.

I also worked with a man named Kim Iris Lastname. He did not go by his name.

I used to work with a Sandra Olympia. One day she mentioned her brother, Alexander Philip, and that both of them had the same godfather. I said “fan of Alexander the Great, uh?” “:confused: Well, he is a professor of Ancient History but I don’t know about that detail…” “The parents of Alexander the Great were called Philip and Olympia.” “Oh!”

I know a woman named Zenobia. I always thought that was an odd one.

Rowan is a girl’s name now? I had no idea! I’ve known a few male Rowans. My sister-in-law used to go out with one (he was Irish).

Why do so many male names get co-opted as female ones? Ashley, Cameron, Evelyn, Leslie, Jody, Vivian, Kelly (OK those last two happened some time ago)…

Many of those names have now become almost exclusively female, to the extent that it would seem strange giving them to a boy.

And yet I can’t think of any names that have gone in the opposite direction. Very odd.

That reminds me: I knew a woman named Milo.

Lalla Ward Romana. :stuck_out_tongue: And her middle name will be Josephine, so if she decides that her parents were just TOO nerdy for words, she can go by Josephine.