Damn it! All that snorting indignation I’ve wasted on nothing. Fair enough, and, to be honest, I can’t actually remember what he said the relationship of the girl to him was, which leaves more space for urban myth insertion. Never heard of the Oranjello/Lemonjello thing, but that’s prob. because they’re too American to catch on as an urban myth where I am (they’d just sound unfamiliar).
That one’s a coincidence, there’s a few people with that name. A Thai name is Kittiporn; that “porn” string turns up a lot in names. Indonesians have interesting names, like Megawati, Suparman.
I feel like there’s some I should add but I can’t really think of much now. I know of a girl named Marquis, thankfully pronounced correctly. I can’t help but think that an “e” should be at the end of that, though, and pronounced accordingly.
In the film I Love You, Man, there’s a douchy guy named Tevin. I can imagine the writers sitting around, saying “Let’s name him Kevin, that’s an asshole’s name.” “No, Travis!” and finally coming to a compromise. My standard semi-fictional “WTF were the parents thinking!?” name is “Pashleigh.”
Yes, when you get into non-English names, a lot of combination show up that are strange to our ears. I used to work with a Kittiporn (I work with a lot of Thais and a lot of Chinese, who also end up with names the sound obscene to us). My kids go to school with kids who have names that I don’t know how to spell, but sound like Me Moo and Hoochie. But both of the kids in question are first generation Americans.
My next door neighbor’s grandson is named Griffin.
And my grandmother gave each of her children two middle names. She was an uneducated prairie woman but apparently well read as the middle names include Cyrus, Thoreau, Cinderella, Emmanuel and Marie Antoinette!
It wasn’t uncommon for pioneer women who had precious little of beauty in their lives to give their children names which created some idea of elegance for them.
I think, as we become increasingly more populated and diverse, and as popular culture calls for less focus on our cultural heritage people may be seaching for some individuation/identity in naming.
If nothing else it gives any ignoramus the chance to retort to authority, “Hah! You can’t even pronounce my name right. And you think you’re so smart!” Hee, hee.
I refuse to deal with these names. I’m still in shock from all the Mykynzy-Cydnee-Brytynee generation. We’ve used a busniness here locally several times: the person who answers the phone is named “Memory”. I wonder if her brother is called “Experience”, or possibly “Doggiestyle”. . .
Regarding the references to “Griffin”, it is a not uncommon surname of Welsh descent. In the American South, it is also not uncommon to bear a family surname as a given name. Griffin appears as both given name and surname in my family. Neither usage is associated with class or the mythical creature (or cartoon patriarch).
Not a creative name, but I’m working with a client right now whose last name is Assed. Pronounced ‘ass-head’, which I intentionally mispronounce as ‘ass-HED’.
wow… I can’t believe there is more than one Kittiporn walking around! There is a client at my job with that name. We also have a client with the first name Titty. My all time favorite though is the guy with the first name Waffles. I am assuming that is his legal name because it is on his W2.
It sounds like a Thai name. I doubt it sounds so odd in Thai. One of my classmates last year is Tanyaporn - but her parents intentionally gave her a name that could be shortened to something that sounded more Western. (She does usually go by Tanya.)
Griffin is the least weird name I’ve ever heard. Dijonaisse is the name of one of the characters on The Proud Family, a Disney channel cartoon with predominantly African American characters.
A FOAF on Facebook is naming her soon-to-be born child Heaven; so much for the backward spelling.
For some fun names, look no further than the Appalachian Mountains. I recently ran across a man named Grethal.
Are these meant to be spellings or merely pronunciations? Because who the hell doesn’t pronounce the last group that way (and the middle group is fairly common in pronunciation as well, and the first group is just old-hat non-rhoticity)?
A friend of mine is a math tutor at the local community college. One of his students has a son named “Antoine II”. Now, even taking into account that this is the kid’s first name — so it’s “Antoine II [Smith]” rather than “Antoine [Smith] II” — it doesn’t sound so bad, right?
