So what’s her opinion on hedgehogs?
My meagre contribution is that in about 2000 I bought a fridge from a guy whose business card proclaimed him to be Ben Wa.
90% of my co-workers didn’t understand what was so funny about the name.
Oh, well, I tried. . . again.
I personally know a 12-year-old named “Lasha” (pronounced “La-shay”, and God help you if you mispronounce it to her mother even once, because you should totally be able to correctly pronounce the names of every single one of the over 600 kids who attend your school, no matter how they’re spelled, the first time you try). And she and her family are far from “ghetto”, in case anyone was wondering.
I believe a very large number of the bad name stories aren’t true (especially the stories that always pop up by people who apparently missed the 5 billion times it’s been mentioned in the past, about the brothers Orangelo and Lemongelo and that kind of thing), but this one is easily verifiable. It’s the name of the kid in the recent Supreme Court case about mandatory life sentences for juveniles. His name is Kuntrell Jackson. That could have so easily been avoided with any other vowel instead of the ‘u’ 
We very nearly named our son Owen James. Fine, right?
Until my mother helpfully pointed out that would make him O.J. Simpson :smack:
Yep, that was REALLY badly worded, sorry. You see, I think I remember this family had foreign accents, but it was so long ago I can’t be sure. Something about them made me think “not from here” and it was, maybe, the accent. An accent-less white family would not have stuck out to me as ‘not from around ehre’, I don’t think. As a white child in a mostly white city in Canada, non-white skin was something that would have made me think “foreign” - perhaps I was a small racist, but it really did seem to be more a childish ‘this person is different because of X’ sort of thing.
I KNEW no one would have any info on this, damnit, this is honestly still frustrating me after all this time. Dewygoo and Deedum?! C’MON! I must have an explanation!
Ok, so curiousity got the best of me again - turns out there are several "Deedum"s on Facebook:
I didn’t find any dewygoo, but there are quite a few with the last name Deygoo.
The second pronunciation didn’t occur to me. I’m English.
Ha, TruCelt, thank you! Although neither appears to be the one I knew (although the first one is in the right age range, I think) this at least confirms I am not insane. The second one also seem to be an older woman so that makes me think this may be a legit first name and not some weird 80’s made up name bullcrap.
Also, I am unsure of spelling of both names. All I know is they were pronounced Deedum and Dewygoo.
Seriously, thanks for the links, I am even more curious now. Off to do some Google fu.
That’s actually sort of a cool name. But then, (like most people) I’m a fan of mythology.
I know a crazy lady who has twin girls she named Kagome and Katana. She’s completely otaku, so I suppose that explains it. She recently had another child with a different man, and wanted to name her Kurayami. He wouldn’t allow it; so they named her (the much more normal) Kenna.
I also know a man whose name is Alfonzo Pacino (last name). His mother is a huge fan of Al Pacino’s. Perhaps not surprisingly, Alfonzo Pacino has spent some time in prison.
When I was in my early 20s I worked as a file clerk for a large insurance company. I processed claims for a pair of sisters (I assume they were sisters, anyway) working at the same retail store, named Rapunzel and Cinderella. Their last name was Hare. So… yeah.
I also went to college with a guy named Halloween Smith. Guess when his birthday was! I assumed his name was “Henry” for the first 2 years I knew him, because he only went by Hal. It wasn’t until one October when we were all kinda trashed that he expounded on why he loathed All Saint’s Day with such passion.
There was also a Moroccan exchange student in my high school for a semester whose name was pronounced “Ah-noose.” It was really sort of pretty. Unfortunately, it was spelled “Anus.” Her semester was not a happy one.
And just when he thought he was out- well, you know.
sigh Ok, I’m getting old. Because all this thread makes me think is that my World Domination era law of smacking people in the head with large sticks for Acts of Stupidity is perfectly reasonable.
Saw one at work recently. Now, some people carry credit cards that say things like “Valued Customer” or the name of a company for Corporate Cards, so what your card says might not be your name. Likewise nametags: you might have an alias there to keep your actual name private. I’ve done that.
But if your nametag matches your credit card, then that’s your name.
So her name was Altavista Robinson.
Named for a search engine, apparently.
Altavista is also a town in Virginia.
When the Texas Department of Public Safety converted the driver license records from paper to computer back in the late 60s/early 70s, they found several individuals whose legal first name was T9C.
I worked there as a part-time clerk before the conversion. The most unusual first/middle name I came across was Precious Blue-Eyes.
Well, if you count birth records, one of my grandfathers was named Baby Boy, as the doctor couldn’t remember what they had decided to name him.
An article in the Chicago Tribune today on the sentencing of William Balfour, convicted of murdering Jennifer Hudson’s family members, described Balfour’s sister Sensuous who was present in the courtroom.