I recall speaking to a lady at work named Beverley Hills, but it is just about possible that her parents liked the name “Beverley” and didn’t bother to drag far-flung geographical names into the decision-making.
Some of the names mentioned in this thread are positively criminal, though. :eek: WHY don’t some of these parents just name the poor kid “Either my parents hate me, or they are as thick as two short planks or they are both and would somebody please tell me where to arrange for therapy sessions now.”
I know a couple who almost named their daughter Catherine Quinn Lastname. They were going to call her Quinn, until they realized she’d be writing “C. Quinn Lastname” on everything, and she’d be ‘Sequin,’ kinda like a stripper. The fact that their last name is two syllables and starts with an ‘S’ gave it a nice bump-and-grind alliteration, too.
So they changed Catherine to Katherine.
I know a couple who almost named their daughter Catherine Quinn Lastname. They were going to call her Quinn, until they realized she’d be writing “C. Quinn Lastname” on everything, and she’d be ‘Sequin,’ kinda like a stripper. The fact that their last name is two syllables and starts with an ‘S’ gave it a nice bump-and-grind alliteration, too.
So they changed Catherine to Katherine.
As someone who works for a newspaper, bizarre name spellings drive me nuts. I know girls at our local high school who are named Ashley, Ashleigh, Ashlee, and Ashlei. I also know a Brittnee, a Destiny, and a Destinee. Not to mention all the interesting spellings of Callie, Kelsey, and the like.
My friends aren’t much better. I have a friend who has a boy and a girl, Tylar and Alissyn. Another friend has Shailey (a girl), Colby, Kiegan, and Breckin (another high school classmate of mine had a Breckin last year too).
Yellowval, I’m with you. I work in the IT department of a bulk mailer. One of my routine chores is going through the mailing lists our customers send us to make sure we don’t send the same piece of mail to the same person twice. We’ve got software which flags names and addresses it thinks might be duplicates. If I’m faced with deciding whether something goes to “Ashley”, “Ashleigh”, “Ashlee”, or “Ashlei” Jones at 1234 Main Street, I’m afraid I’m going to pick “Ashley” every time unless I personally know “Ashleigh”, which is pretty slim odds. By the same token, I often have to convert a list that’s in upper case or a mixture of cases to title case. If I have to do that, chances are capital letters in the middle of names will get lost unless the name is something like “McDonald”.
I’m just glad my parents named me something sensible!
Me too! My sisters and I all have sensible names. Though my parents did screw up on mine. They gave me “Dawn” as a middle name. Lovely name and all that, but not when your first name is “Valerie.” When I got married, I dropped the “Dawn,” and took my maiden name as my middle, so I no longer have to live with the initials “V.D.”
I must say I’m puzzled at the inclusion of “Crystal” and “Winnifred” in the lists of dreadful names. As far as I know, these are both perfectly mainstream, utterly respectable, non-contrived-or-pretentious names. Winnifred in particular is a great name for a girl, because she can then go with “Winnie,” “Freddie,” or “Wendy” for a nickname, depending on personal preference. I’m just a couple weeks short of 50 years old, and I went to school with at least one girl of each name, and no one ever thought twice about it - they were perfectly normal names.
Another one I just remembered … years ago, my husband was in the checkout line at Meijer with his girlfriend, and noticed the girl’s nametag. It said, “SheWonderful.” Girlfriend said, “Oh, what a cute nametag.”
She gave them the head-bob / finger-wave / roll-eyes and said, “Tha’s ma name - SheWonderful.”
I’ve mentioned before that I’m keeping a funny-names list, here at work. I’m up to almost 150. For obvious reasons, I can’t reveal all, but here’s a couple of lovely first names: Pandora
Quovadis
Banana
Demon
Delarious
Controversy
I shit you not – these are all legal names, as entered in the courthouse records as being owners of our product.
I’ve always been disappointed that I have one of the most popular names for my birth year, but I have recently discovered that I really should be grateful. See, my father is a geochemist, so he wanted to name me Silica. Which is very pretty, if a little strange, but when he named his dog Silica, we realized the ugly truth.
I would have gone through my childhood being called “Silly”
When a friend of mine had one of her boys, the family next bed was Mexican and didn’t have a word of English between all 20 or so of them. When they saw that their baby came with a toe label that said “FEMALE PEREZ” they thought that the nurses had already named the kid… of course they pronounced it like it was Spanish, but still. My friend could see what was going on but she couldn’t find a way to explain it to them.
My first nephew was born last October. Both in my mother’s and my father’s family there is a tradition that, if there has been a recent death in the family (there is an inverse relationship between degree and time considered “recent”), you give that person’s name to the baby. It doesn’t have to be the baby’s firstname, can be a second… it can be a baptismal name only and never show up in civilian records.
So Mom was expecting that the kid would get a Jaime somewhere, after Dad, but my brother and SIL wiggled out of it. They claimed that, since my other brother is a Jaime, they want him to have that name available if he ever has a kid. The name SIL chose (not the name my bro wanted) was one that’s going to be held by half the boys born this year in Spain. You see, it’s the name of “the hunk” in the most popular TV show. We rolled our eyes discreetely but held our peace.
Then in the baptism itself, the priest asked SIL why did they choose that name. SIL gave the whole “zodiaquish” interpretation (chose one of three, apparently there are 3 different possible origins for the name)… and finished by saying that they chose it because it’s her father’s middle name, at which point her-husband-my-brother’s eyes almost popped through his glasses! Good thing SIL was standing with her back to the church and Mom was on the first row… I could see my bro Jaime giving her his fist to grab and later he showed me the nailmarks.
Short of cheating on my brother, I don’t think there’s a lot of things SIL can do to get closer to be strangled by Mom.
I worked with an Elmer once. She was one of 13 Elmer’s in the family. Large, odd family from somewhere in Utah. All the children were named Elmer, on the theory that if it’s good enough for the dad, it’s good enough for the children.
No middle names. Just 12 kids, boys & girls, all named Elmer.
One of the problems with the popularity of Gaelic names these days is that their pronunciation is not evident to the English-speaking eye. When I worked in an elementary school, there was a cute little girl named Niamh (which is a fine Irish name pronounced Neev), whose parents insisted that the name was pronounced Nye-am. Now Neev sounds lovely, but Nye-am?!? Do some research, people!
My grandmother’s initials were ELF until she married.
I think people who’ve had to live with odd names or nicknames may give more thought to what they name their children (unless they’ve embraced their odd name as a badge of pride, or been rendered completely antisocial by childhood teasing). My mother is named Ruth and hated being called Ruthie, so she refused family suggestions to name me Grace because everyone would then have called me Gracie. And besides, she told me, “every Grace I ever knew was fat.”
My dentist’s office had a hygienist named Purple Silver. Unfortunately I never met her; I really wanted to know the story there.
