And this is how urban legends spread. Your father-in-law may have been teased, tricked, or duped; he may have misunderstood something in the context. But suggesting any of that will probably be taken as an insult to your father-in-law (though I hope not: it’s not my intention), and dismissed out of hand. Plus, that way you get to believe a fun story. Any challenge to the truth of a story you believe just entrenches it further.
A friend of mine worked in the music industry, and when she was hanging out with a country-western music icon she asked him to autograph an 8x10 for me. She told him my name was Mark.
As he began writing, he asked how I spelled it. She said, very slowly and carefully, “M . . . A . . .R”, and he interrupted, with a scowl, “with a “k” or a “c”?”
Reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon showing a class picture. The caption was:
Jessica, Scott, Scott, Jessica, Jessica, Scott, Jessica, Scott, Scott, Jessica, Jessica, Scott.
I’ll be celebrating the day when the current generation of college-aged girls with every damn permutation possible of McKenzie, Kaitlyn and Brittany all graduate.
Thank God, there seems to be an uptick in classic, pronounceable names of incoming freshmen: Anna, Sarah, Jennifer, and so on . . .
Of course, Jennifer was the too-trendy name of its day. In the 1970s the name was absurdly overused; in grade school I never had fewer than three in my class, and one year had five.
True 'nuff: I’m a vintage 1967 Jennifer 
Some names come in-and-out of fashion. This is one.
When I was in elementary school (late 1950’s - early 1960’s) we read the obligatory stories about Colonial America and the Pioneers. Jennifer was extremely common for the little girl’s name in those stories. I guess it was a really common name in those days.
I had never heard of anyone named that in contemporary America. It was just an archaic colonial-era name. Then, around the late 1960’s - early 1980’s, it suddenly became super-common again.
Exactly. I had someone just recently try to convince me that their doctor knew a Meconium, Lemonjello, and Orangejello. I don’t think so.
I could actually come up with a few different scenarios that don’t make my FIL the jackass. His brothers, who work in the same business, are racist assholes who enjoy fucking with people. I’m not a particularly stupid person but I am extremely gullible, which sometimes results in people confusing me for stupid.
How should Rivkah be pronounced?
I have an employee with a superfluous apostrophe. (Think something akin to Gabr’iela, with her explanation that her mother added it because “[the name] is Spanish”), while completely ignoring the facts that:
-Spanish names don’t have apostrophes
-She may have meant to give it an accent but an apostrophe is not the same as an accent mark
-The placement appears to be random and has no relationship to the pronounciation
This is one of those things where I didn’t want to hire her because of the headaches I foresaw in the paperwork but I decided it was unfair to punish her for her mother’s misdeeds. I wish parents would think about things like that when they kreate these knames.
Why name a kid Aislinn just to mispronounce it, if it’s not your ethnicity? It seems silly to me.
“Ball peen hammer.”
Seriously, most people pronounce it pretty much like it looks: “RIV-ka.” Israelis tend to say something more like “REEV-kah.” Yiddish speakers say “RIF-ka.”
Most of my family calls me Rivkele, but there are a few people who call me Rifkie, and a lot of people who really do call me Rivkah Chaya. When I was little, the rabbi at our synagogue had a daughter named Rivkah, so I got called Rivkah Chaya, because she was already plain Rivkah.
I didn’t see this post earlier.
I have an ethnic name which is part of my heritage. It was re-spelled according to English spelling rules, so that anyone with a first-grade education ought to be able to get it right.
You know what? Almost no one ever does; I’d say about one in twenty people who see it written first, and about one in ten who hear it from my lips.
One of ours went by the nickname ‘Neffer’, like Neffertiti. I liked her the best.
As of yesterday, I now know two women who have named their daughter Krystyna. I suspect there are more of them out there. how disappointed these parents will be to find out their daughter’s unique name is commonplace.
Hell, Spanish doesn’t have apostrophes, period. They’re one of the details that lots of ESL learners have problems with, precisely because they’re relatively rare as a grammatical feature; not so much learning to use them once you understand what they are, but understanding what they are.
I have posted these before, but they’re good’uns.
I am a retired science teacher. Others were posting about too-common names. One year I had four Jessicas in the same class. Occasionally, I’d say Jessica! in an accusatory tone just to watch four startled heads look up.
There was a girl at the local Food Lion with a name tag reading Maleria. I asked her how she pronounced it, and she said “Mallory.”
Another girl’s name was pronounced sha-MARE-uh. Unfortunately, she spelled it Chimera.
There were two brothers, Travoris and Lavoris. Didn’t the mother know of Lavoris, the mouthwash?
Is this a joke, or do you really not know that’s a thing?
I think it’s the incorrect pronunciation that’s bothersome. The ch is pronounced like k, not sh.
I met a cute, polite, sweet little 2 1/2 year old boy named Michael the other day. His mother said he has a brother and sister named Thomas and Elizabeth. I really wanted to shake her hand and congratulate her on her good sense.
Not to mention that in a room full of Braedons, Aidens, Jaydens, Haydens, Caydens, Hunters, Connors, Fletchers, Masons, Chandlers, Brewsters, Scribes, Apothercarys, and Witchfinders, Michael actually stands out.