My name is just four letters long and it is a fairly common nickname. A fictional
character in 60s television used to go by it. And without fail, everyday someone fucks it up. I have learned to answer to every permutation of it just so I don’t go crazy.
Sometimes I wish I had a different name. But it’s not a bad name just because people can’t get it right.
Chip?
Not only that, but half the time kids are assigned nicknames, when teasing each other. A first name just doesn’t work, as a line of defense, whether its common or not.
I recently saw an obituary from a small-town paper, I don’t remember the lady’s age but she was probably in her 70’s. Her name was “Chlorene.” A little checking revealed that around the time she would have been born, chlorination of public drinking water was becoming common. Guess her parents were pretty excited about it!
I joked to a co-worker that her younger sisters name was “Phlouride.”
I don’t know any in person, but when I’m reading it I always pronounce a soft ‘N’.
It’s not just a lack thing.
Utah Mormons are known for their “creative” naming
It’s rather embarrassing
But if the “black” name Shaniqua is actually derived from Chenequa it makes no sense as a name trying to connect with black cultural past. It would also be a hell of a journey for a name from Lake Superior to black areas.
I’m not convinced.
here is the Utah names website. It’s a hilarious read
I’m not sure what she meant, but I didn’t take that she was implying that “Shaniqua” was derived from “Chenequa,” just that that (homophonic) name had been around a long time. FWIW, I didn’t find any hits for “Shaniqua” in Google News Archives before 1980.
Hi, Jennifer!
I once went to camp with three girls named Megan, but they each pronounced it differently, as Mee-g’n, Meh-g’n, and May-g’n.
I think Quvenzhane is lovely. But when we had a different computer setup here at the library on busy Sundays I’d have to stand by our queue monitor and shout out people’s names when their computers came available, and all I ask is that you be patient with me if I pronounce it. I am seriously trying my best!
My father’s first named is Johnny, and he absolutely hated his whole life and insisted his first name is John. He thinks Johnny is a little boy name.
He has even had to have forms redone when people realize his name is not John, like at a hospital.
So I mean anything you name your kid can go wrong.
Why couldn’t Shaniqua be a respelling of Chenequa? Not all black American names are necessarily a reference to African heritage. Some are given just because the parents like the sound. Newsflash: There are black people in Wisconsin. Even if there weren’t, though the U.S. may be big and diverse, it’s still one nation, and people do get around. Moreover, a large number of black Americans have American Indian heritage in the mix too. (See Black Indians by William Loren Katz.) All it takes is for one parent to hear Chenequa pronounced, to like the sound of it, and respell it more phonetically, and when others hear it and like it, it can catch on and spread across the continent.
It’s by no means impossible that Shaniqua is Chenequa respelled, and I don’t think it’s even improbable. The name Winona is from the Lakota language, and long ago spread among non-Indians across the continent from its place of origin in the northern Great Plains. Sister Winona Carr (born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1924) was an African-American singer-songwriter.
I think it’s more improbable that [ʃəˈniːkwə] would have been invented out of thin air when it already existed in America.
The devil you say! clutches pearls
Juh? For the same reason all kids are unhappy when they can’t have what’s in/popular.
I’ve had to go through life telling people how to spell and pronounce my ethnic last name. There’s not much that could have been done about it, unless I went to the extraodinary step of changing it. I managed. It wouldn’t be any worse for someone to do the same for a first name, if the name was otherwise a good one.
That’s what I was thinking. My wife is an elementary school teacher, and at least half her class has names that would be considered unusual. Many children of Asian descent in her class with interesting Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese, names, for instance, as well as some African-American names. Of course, this is in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has tremendous ethinc diversity.
Also, along the same lines, I think in these threads one can emphasize too much the importance of giving a name to the child that minimizes the possibility of teasing in school. In the long run, the child will be in K-12 school for only a small part of his life. Only 13 years out of hopefully 70 or 80. I mean, even I was teased for a few years about my name, and I have a pretty common first name. But that was more than 40 years ago so it doesn’t affect me at all.
My niece is going to have this issue. Her mother pronounces her name the Russian way which is different than the American way. Her mom (and so my niece is learning from her) gets upset when when anyone pronounces it “wrong” but uses the American version for her pet name for her daughter.
Think of it this way. If her name is Trishia but pronounced Trish-ee-ya. He mom gets upset if anyone calls her Trish-u (short u) but she calls her shu (short u) as a nickname.
Generally, you don’t want to name your kid something that you feel will hinder him throughout life or make him a laughingstock. But some ethnic or ethnic-sounding names can’t help that, so you compromise. Everyone’s standard of ridiculousness is different though, you just have to hope that the truly dimwitted parents are rare and don’t have much kids. Then again, I want to seriously name my kid Gilgamesh, so what do I know? 
More on Wisconsin demographics:
"African Americans came to Milwaukee, especially from 1940 on. Menominee County is the only county in the eastern United States with an American Indian majority.
86% of Wisconsin’s African-American population live in four cities: Milwaukee, Racine, Beloit, Kenosha, with Milwaukee home to nearly three-fourths of the state’s black Americans. In the Great Lakes region, only Detroit and Cleveland have a higher percentage of African-American residents."
Chenequa is less than 30 miles from central Milwaukee.