Oh, man. Working in juvenile court, I’m on the cutting edge of Ghetto Names.
Here’s a few we’ve collected over the years:
Eunique
Mercedez
Starquasha
Alpacino
Hennessey
Shemale (pronounced shuh-mah-lee)
Trebreh (first person to figure out what his or her dad’s name is wins a prize!)
Sillouette
Ma’Lawn
Cokeine (a middle name, not a first, but the first was pretty bad too)
Fashion
I would assume the newspaper typoed “Lydia”. I think my dad knew a Lydia.
You can if you spell it with a Y. A friend has a granddaughter named “Emersyn”
My mom worked with a guy who became a grandad to a little girl named Calyx. She said he walked around for a few days muttering “what’s wrong with names from the Bible. Sarah is a nice name.”*
Stir all of these together and you get half the little girls’ names from Toddlers & Tiaras:
Jadyn
Kynnedee
Skylar
Mykenzee
Madysen
Sparkal
Oh how I wish I were making these up.
And now you know my dirty little secret. I watch Toddlers & Tiaras. I don’t record it or clear my schedule for new episodes or anything, but when I can’t sleep…I watch an episode or two and realize that I am not, in fact, the worst mother in the world.
*So now I’m wondering what names that we consider common or traditional were considered “out there” when they originated. “The neighbors named their daughter ‘Elizabeth.’ That poor kid. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?”
Drain Bead, ‘Starquasha’ is KILLING ME!
ETA: The rest don’t even startle me. I’m numb.
Edit again: Ok, Alpacino made me blink.
Edit one mo time: ‘Shemale’ is pinging my bullshit meter
Or both.
More than the individual Mc-s and the adens and aylas, what the names that bother me are the ones where the parents take a fairly standard name and just start adding syllables. They obviously think this makes the name prettier or more distinguished, but it doesn’t work. It makes it long, goofy, and harder to pronounce. Jessica is an okay name. Jessicayla is not.
While I generally like unusual or old-fashioned names, for some reason, Gaelic names for girls (eg: Bronwyn) set my teeth on edge.
I also dislike “creatively” spelled names, especially those which incorporate punctuation marks.
Mercedez - common Spanish name (sometimes also spelled Mercedes), like the name Candida (female version of Candide) it may look weird to cultures who are unfamiliar with it.
Starquasha - related to Bigfoot?
Alpacino - Robdeniro?
What do you guys think of ‘initial’ names?
Like JT, CJ, BJ, DJ, RJ, AJ?
Our sons name is Alex John but we’ve called him AJ since birth.
I’ve always wondered what people think of the name or if it annoys certain people but I think everyone I know would be too polite to say anything.
Don’t bet on it. I used to have to proofread those things, checking the set copy against the little forms the parents filled out. They made “N!xau” from The Gods Must Be Crazy look like “James.”
Doesn’t bug me at all. I usually think of them more like family nicknames, and everyone I’ve known who had an initial name was the seond or tird with that name so it was a necessary distinction.
For example Robert John Smith, his son Robert John Smith Jr. who went by “Bobby”, then Robert John Smith III who was called “RJ”.
How about Pierpont?
Boy, I’m the old man out. I don’t mind any of these names (with the exception of "Shemale)
Not a big fan. It sort of seems to me like their name is a “secret” that we’re not privy to.
That’s “Finch”, F-I-N-C-H.
I have no problem with nicknames whether it’s initials (“AJ”) or a diminutive version of the name (“Lenny”). At least the kid can legitimately fill out a job application calling himself Alex or Leonard if he wants.
I see where you’re coming from but my first thought was “Llama-Boy”
The baby girl’s version is Alpacanita.
Great, that just made me think “Pack and eat who?”:smack:
My grandmother named all five of her kids names that start with “D”. The Duggars (the family with 18 kids) have also done this. Don’t do that. It makes it hard for the next generation to keep the names of their aunts and uncles straight, and makes it damn near impossible for their eventual spouses to learn who everybody is. Mr. Neville can never remember which of my uncles is which. It wouldn’t be so bad if you did this with only two kids, especially if they were of opposite sexes, but find another initial for your third and subsequent kids.
For the same reason, don’t choose rhyming names for all your kids. Don’t do that even if you only have two. Especially not if they’re twins.
Don’t have a “theme” running through all your kids’ names. Don’t name all your daughters after flowers or all your kids after characters in a book or movie. That’s lame, and makes you look one-dimensional. You must at least occasionally think about something other than gardening or that one book or movie, don’t you?
The ending sound in the first or middle name should not be the same as the initial sound of the last name. No "Martin Nelson"s.
If you give your kid a name with a unique spelling, they will get sick of spelling their name for everybody, and having people get it wrong all the time. I speak from experience, as my maiden name has a slightly unusual spelling. This played a role in my decision to change my name when I got married.
Don’t call your kid “BJ”. The others are OK.
Always check the initials of any prospective name, to make sure they don’t spell something embarrassing. Nobody should have ASS as initials, for example. I’d avoid any initials that spell a word, or any that match a well-known company that goes by initials.
Don’t name your kid Candida. It has two strikes against it. It is the kind of yeast involved in yeast infections (be sure to do a quick Googling of any prospective name, to avoid this kind of thing), and she might get nicknamed “Candy”, which is one of the worst of the stripper names.
I like Zelda, though (and it has a history in Mr. Neville’s family). But it would probably be a better middle name than first name.
I have a nephew named Gabe. I do not like that name, since I had a friend in high school who had a boyfriend by that name who I thought was a loser. I always hear the name in that moon-struck teenage-girl voice she always used when talking about him (which she did incessantly). Mr. Neville’s brother didn’t ask me before he named his kid.
I don’t like the name Missy or Melissa, since there was a girl by that name who was mean to me, and I don’t like how “Missy” sounds. I’m not a fan of the “ss” sound in names.
Rose*mary…
Candida and Mercedes are both perfectly fine names that have been around for hundreds of years. Candida means “white” (hence it’s use as a descriptor for a particular yeast) and Mercedes comes from “mercy”. People who get all giggly at names like that display their own lack of awareness rather than any idiocy on the part of the parents.
I concede though that Candida leads to the pole-dancing name of Candy way too easily.
I don’t like the spate of unisex names. No boy should have the following names:
Tracy
Leslie
Adrian
Ariel
Jaime
Ashley
Kelly
Courtney
Frances
And no girl should have the following names either:
Jordan
Taylor
Bradley
Bo
Ryan
Toni
Billie
Corey
I detest overly pretentious and weird names. A little pretentious and weird is fine, like Phoenix, but a kid like Apple should have their name changed by a judge as soon as possible before they reach 18.
And speaking of pretentiousness, the worst names are ones with Jr., the second, third, etc. in them. What kind of ego-maniac names their kids after themselves? Those parents are assholes.