I knew a Dallas too, fortunately a little boy. I’ve since heard it for a girl, which is icky.
I’ve also known:
Odin
Talon
Steeple
Barsha (I understand this name is Indian. She isn’t.)
Rokia (Also white. Her parents were in the peace corps prior to her birth)
I only met one of the kids, but there was a family with five kids named Quark, Zenith, Road Runner and two other names just as odd that escape me at the moment.
I was once at an outdoor concert and the D.J. offered a prize to the person with the strangest name, verified with their driver’s license. The person who won was named Gaye Parrot.
That reminds me of a girl who went to my high school named Velvedena. I’m not sure of the spelling on that since it’s been awhile. To my little 14/15 year old self I thought it was gorgeous and wanted to name my own daughter Velvet someday.
I work at DPSS and have encountered some unusual baby names. Some that stick in my mind are:
Anakin - Dad was a Star Wars fan
Dadinirt - that boy’s father was named Trinidad and just wrote his first name backwards on the birth certificate
Kobe - after the Lakers’ Bryant
Neo - not after the Matrix guy; his mom’s first name was Noemi, the Spanish version of Naomi, and apparently rearranged a couple of letters in her name and got rid of the last two.
Princesa - Spanish for princess
Neveah - “Heaven” backwards
I have also encountered an “Ever,” I think the parents are from somewhere in Central America.
My sister’s friend named her daughter Cambria, after a town on the California coast she visited during her pregnancy. The child in question seems OK with her name. I think it’s pretty, myself.
BTW what’s wrong with “Amelia?” I know “Melena” is Spanish for mane.
To answer people’s questions on Amelia and Melena, I googled it.
amelia: Medical term for the congenital absence or partial absence of one or more limbs at birth.
In medicine, melena or melaena refers to the black, “tarry” feces that are associated with gastrointestinal hemorrhage.
Neither of these things seem to be all that pleasant from a medical perspective. In googling Melena, the medical definition/description pages took up the entire first page. Is this an actual name somewhere?
I used to go to church with a couple who named their first son Dozinger.
In my (entirely white, Amish country) high school, we had lots of kids with unusual names:
Piper, and her sister Westie
Freedom (boy)
Silver (girl)
Michaela (girl, pronounced “mi-SHAY-la”)
Sonny After Noon (his brother had the less-cool name Mark David Noon)
My daughter’s name is Justyce (Just like in the pledge, different spelling.) She’s in shool now and knows two other girls with her name, but theirs is spelled with the traditional “i” so hers is still special. Her first grade teacher insisted that her name was REALLY Jessica, and even wrote that on her report card!! That wasn’t a fun year.
The mother of a classmate was named Harvienne (har-veen) after her father. I don’t know if her twin sister Kate was named for their mother. I’m not totally sure of the spelling there.
I think Isla is just old, not strange. It was my grandmother’s name, and it seems to be making a bit of a comeback. Small bit, at least.
I met a Calliope once too. I think it’s an awesome name.
I know a guy who swears his actual, given name is Radley. Like Bradley, but no B. He’s in his 40’s. How did his parents know how cool that would sound 30 years later?
I also knew a guy (and when I say “guy”, I mean “pond scum”) who insisted on going by the incredibly hubris-having nickname of Gandalf. I mean, call yourself Trismagistus or Ged or something, but Gandalf! So, I ALWAYS thought of his name in my head as Gandolph (rhymes with Randolph), just to annoy him. (I made a point of telling him that.)