I’ve never heard it before. Is this an American thing?
Its not common at all and I have never heard of it before either. Different groups in American society often invent new names that seem to fit in well with their subculture. Jon Benet sounds French and vaguely aristocratic which her parents seemed to want because they were wealthy social climbers that were very into pageants.
From Wikipedia
Then dressed up in a fakeroo Fransh accent – “Zhan benNAY.” Which has always reminded me of “Jacques Penne [PenNAY],” the intentional Euro-snooting of mid-level American retailer J.C. Penney. See also “Kay Marche [MarSHAY]”, a/k/a K-Mart.
(Yes, I am aware there should be an accent over the “e” in “Marche,” but I dont’ know how to do it.)
She’s probably the only person in the world to have that name.
You forgot TarJHAY (Target) and VaLOO VaLAGHE (Value Village).
The thing is, I’ve actually heard at least two people say “Tar-JHAY” and mean it seriously.
How serious can you be when you say, “Tar-jhay?”
My wife and step-daughter refer to “Kohl’s” as KO-LAY.
Any man who names his daughter after himself has serious boundary issues.
And let’s not forget the French (fry) bistro named “Jacques en le Box”
I has no idea her name was intended to be vaguely French. I just thought, “John Bennet”.
The French name ending in “et” does not have an accent. If it ended in only “e”, it would have had an accent: “é”.
Methinks the who issue needs a visit from the Forget commission, headed by Claude Forget, which studied unemployemnt insurance in Canada for the Mulroney Conservatives in 1986. Claude Forget was French and his name was pronounced “for-ZHAY”, but I could never see the name without thinking pf the English word “forget”. Which seems like a good idea. Way too much media attention on the events.
How is it any different from a man naming a son after himself? Not that I’m a big fan of that either.
Revenant Threshold writes:
> Is this an American thing?
It’s an American thing in the sense that Americans often make up new names for children, some of which are based on parents’ names.
You don’t really expect it outside of certain subcultures, though. Is her family Mormon?
Not that I’m aware and they’re certainly not black. Are there other subcultures in the US that give their kids foriegn sounding names?
Well, foreigners sometimes do.
But the weird idea of trying to feminize the father’s name seems particularly similar to Utah Mormon naming practices to me; her name is not just invented (as with a lot of African-American names), it’s her father’s name.
True, but it is still pronounced the same way (or should I sé the sém wé?). As in cachet, guichet, etc.
There’s an area of Cardiff called Splott, and allegedly some of the yuppie incomers a few years ago were trying to get people to pronounce it Sploh with a French accent.
I know someone whose first name is DeNeil. She’s named for her father Neil, so her name “means” “of Neil.” I use quotes around “mean” because it’s made up. I suppose you could claim it was based on Spanish ('de" meaning “of”), but her last name is Polish-sounding. She’s a white female American non-Mormon, so I guess the inventing of names is not limited to Mormon or black subcultures.
That’s not quite how you would pronounce “Forget” in French. The “et” isn’t pronounced “ay”, but closer to how you would say “get”, except without the “t” sound. As well, both syllables are equally accented.
[Kahn Souphanousinphone]
Kahn Junior, if you don’t come here right now, you are no longer my son!
[/Kahn Souphanousinphone]