Ok…Even though I don’t have kids yet… I know the pain of a bad name… I also have friends who feel the same way. I know a gal with the middle ( and oh-so masculine) name “Leander”.
Are there names out there worse than that one?
I have a friend named Silver. From the day we met her we knew she would end up bein a stripper, which she did. Parents please don’t give your daughter a stripper name, it tends to be end up being a self fulfilling profecy.
Aquaintances named their daughter Talisha (I’m not sure of the spelling), which strikes me as a stripper’s name. That view is partially influenced by the names of the other children I’ve seen born in the last twelve months - in a couple of years time, these kids are going to be in the same class together, which one sounds most like she’ll grow up to be a stripper: Emma, Christine, Talisha, Melinda, Ruby, Isabel.
I dislike names like Sterling, Chase and Hunter, though I’m aware that many love them. Sorry if I caused offence.
I guess it’s all down to individual taste. Most names are perfectly acceptable, but just not appealing so I guess there are thousands of names I wouldn’t give to my kid.
I don’t think I’d ever be so cruel as to name my daughter Maude… or Shaniqua.
Institute for Naming Children Humanely
My personal opinion is that if you have a girl with reddish or blonde hair and name her Amber, she will be a slut.
Since it is wrong to apply that name to someone with dark hair, all brunette Ambers are ugly.
Maybe I’m oversimplifying here…but nearly everyone I’ve ever met has been a perfect match for their name, for better or worse.
girls: Bertha, Gertrude, Heather, Venus, Matilda, Madonna, Daisy, Hortense, Jezebel, Dorcas.
boys: Adolf, Chairman, Bruce, Lance, Rance, Chase, Chas, Bubba, Hoss, Anton, Dusty, Waylon, Lorenzo.
Anything which gives the child bad initials.
I can’t call my kids anything which starts with an F or a P, because our surname starts with U.
(You figure it out).
Naming kids after anything that automatically reminds others of inanimate objects (Tiffany–Lamp, Madison–Avenue), after regions that you can’t personally find on a map (Brittany), or that people have to constantly ask how to spell (the above-cited Shaniqua, for example, or very odd spellings of common names) is a bad call, IMHO.
I also dislike girls given emphatically male names (Madison, again! She’s the son of Maddis?).
I posted a whole bunch of names I’d never give my kid in another thread some time ago. If the search function was working for me right now, I’d be able to give you the link. Anyone want to find it for me and post it? The thread was called “Why would you name your child this??? I don’t get it…” and was in this very forum.
But some names which I wouldn’t give my child:
Bertha, Bernice, Floyd, Gertrude, Judge, Justice, and Ernest.
Ditto Cazzle about “surname” names. They’re goddamn awful.
I don’t mind Leander though - it’s classical. But yeah it is a boy’s name, ironically the Hero in the Shakesperean play of those two names is the girl. Maybe that’s where they got confused?
Since my surname is also a common male first name, I obviously wouldn’t name my son that.
Aram Khatchaturian.
My uncle says that “Aram Khatchaturian” is in his 100-Goat Club: “If I owned 100 goats, I wouldn’t name one of them ‘Aram Khatchaturian.’”
(Aram Khatchaturian was the composer of “Sabre Dance,” possibly the most hated piece of classical music ever written. Though I think it’s kind of cool.)
Madison, McKenna, Caitlin, Emily, Alexis, Megan - anything trendy. For boys, Michael. Even though it’s not the most popular now (that’s Jacob, I hear), it’s way too ever present for me. I also would never give a girl one of the following middle names: Marie, Lee, Lynn or Anne. I think people just use them for filler.
This topic came up last week on a local radio station. I cannot verify its authenticity, but supposedly a teacher called in and said she had a girl in her class with a name that is supposed to be pronounced Shi-theed (accent on the second syllable). You can correctly deduce that it was spelled Shithead.
Personally, I’m dubious. No. Stronger than that, I’m extremely skeptical.
But, it illustrates my personal distaste for unusual spellings and made-up names.
I wouldn’t name a boy “Hortense,” just for the sound of it.
And I wouldn’t name any kid “Yes,” just for the discipline problems it’d create. “No, Yes! Don’t do that, Yes!” 
“John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.”
That’s already someone else’s name, too.
I had a father come in to my store the other day with his 15-month-old daughter. He had a very hard time spelling out his child’s name for me. It was Paiscionce. Pronounced Patience. I think any name that is difficult for a parent to remember the spelling of, or that must be pronounced in a cutesy manner, instead of how it is spelled, is a mistake. Or if it is the name of a common consumer product (Nautica, Evian, Toshiba…all names I have dealt with recently.
~thinks names such as " Mylanta", or " Budweiser" to be damaging as well~
I’ve heard of at least 3 girls named Latrina…probably their mothers thought it sounded artsy. Poor kids. Also, Vladimir. Maybe it’s a perfectly acceptable name in Europe, I don’t know. It just seems to me that it would set the kid up for a bunch of Dracula jokes.
Pretentious names, like Irving or Oswald. Hugo or Reginald, also. I don’t think Woodrow would work nowadays either.
Biblical names are ok, as long as they ain’t too obscure-sounding, like Nebacanezzer (sp?)
“No” would suck too. “No, no”. “Yes, no.” “You” has a kind of mass appeal to it, but… no, don’t saddle a kid with it.