I think the OP has too much faith in people. I have no doubt that most people who claim this stuff are mistaken if not outright lying, but I’ve seen some pretty damned odd names while working in the hospital.
My mother is a supervisor in the records department of a major auto/property insurer and everyone in their department shares the funny names they find. This has always been a fascination for my mother for some reason, so she really enjoys it. Just the other day she told me about a policy for a Snow White.
Grew up on the same block as a kid named Mike Hunt. My parents’ best friends when I was young were named Sieman. They named their son Peter Sieman. They moved after 10 years, but there are people across the nation who know him since he was a pilot.
Also, my parents claimed to know a “Fonda Dix.” I called bullshit and was promptly show the yearbook with her name in it. She was quite a good basketball player.
I am sure I have told this story before at the SDMB, but a few years ago my wife had, in her second grade class, a (vietnamese immigrant) boy with the unfortunate name “Phuc Huu Ho”. (I saw the class roster—at first I didn’t believe her.) At school they called him “Huu”.
The others seem obvious, but there must be some play on words that is escaping me due to lack of familiarity with the dialect or whatnot.
But several are real names mate:
Stupid but real.
Memory tells me there is a historical figure of this name…
This is just the Arab name, although the spelling is a bit queer, it doesn’t seem to me to be in the realm of the truly illiterate (as some of the others are).
It does seem a bit odd to name someone after an Algerian city, but…
This morning I nearly choked on my coffee when I read the name tag of the asian girl woman served me…Dong Mei! No lie, I thought I was on candid camera or maybe in an Austin Powers movie!
I went to school with a guy named John Thomas and could never stop snickering whenever they called his name.
Your profile doesn’t show your location, but I gather you must live in a country where Jell-O is not a popular dessert. Lemon Jell-O and Orange Jell-O.
I had to call a guy named Dick Burns once. It was hard to keep from laughing at his name.
Every Children Services court liason here insists that they have seen Orangejello and Lemonjello, but I ask for proof (it would be in their computer system) and they offer to show me and then never actually do it.
My parents were teachers for many years at an early education school (K-3) and here a couple of 100% true ones that they came across:
Placenta - No kidding, this was honest to god a kid’s name
Semaj Trebor - Read it backwards … Robert James
Pink and Pinky - this was a brother and sister. The brother was Pink. Not only that, but he was Pink III. His Dad and Grandfather also had the name Pink, and both decided to pass on the name.
These aren’t first hand, mind you, but very credible second hand reports.
Jell-O is a brand name for what Brits call jelly- gelatin-based fruit flavoured desserts, in other words. It’s become the pejorative here, like Hoover in the UK.
Very common in some Latin American countries. I have personally met, am related to, or have documentation of the existence of:
Japonesa (japanese)
Francia Australia (France Australia)
German (very common, but pronounced differently than the English version)
Aleman (German)
Argentina
Germania
Marciana (Martian)
Grecia (Greece)
I’ve also met a Phuc. He was working at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, where I was chaperoning a high school choir trip during my student teaching. The kids had fun with that one.
I’ve said it a few times here, but I knew someone in college named Candy Hooker.
There are plenty of Dick Burns (Byrne) hereabouts. I once knew a guy who pronounced his name “Anus Lane”. I dunno how he actually spelled his first name.
