Ugh, I totally agree.
Haire as a last name squicks me out, especially since the kid I knew with the last name of Haire went by B.J.
This is a family name. Mount Hogue, British Columbia, is named after some relatives who were born Hogg but adjusted both the spelling and the pronunciation.
I know a woman whose last name is Merkle. If she married a man named Boner there’d be joy among baseball fans everywhere.
(for non-baseball fans wondering why I brought up Merkle, you need to check out Snodgrass’ Muff).
Ah, innocent times.
Poindexter.
I always thought Sexsmith was a bit unfortunate. I used to chum with a fellow with that last name and I guess the family would regularly get crank calls saying 'If a black smith makes horseshoes, what does a Sexsmith make? Hehehe."
I think that would get old really fast.
My children’s pediatrician is Dr. Harms. Not a good name to have in that profession…
As if Trickle wasn’t bad enough, his parents named him Dick.
Between the OJ and the series, I don’t think I’d like to be a Simpson.
I don’t know if it’s one of those old stories, but I was told that an entire extended family — grandparents, adult siblings, their whole families — with the last name of Butts en masse went down to the Their State Name Change Department and all became Butlers.
I want it to be true, because I want to imagine I was the reporter who was there to interview them when it happened and asked, “how does it feel to put all that behind you?”
Cox.
I don’t know if it’s innocuous enough to qualify, but I know a large family with the last name Trojan. I’m sure they were ribbed endlessly in school.
Oh, and there are a lot of Glasscocks around here, which freaked some people out in a similar thread here at SD a while back. I guess it’s a bit suggestive, but I’m so used to hearing it it doesn’t even register.
The name. Hearing the last name.
I just remembered another one: there’s a car dealer around here called Lunghamer. It sounds like something you’d use if you wanted to hurt someone really, really badly.
Horney.
I used to work in a doctor’s office where we had a frequent patient with that last name. Whenever someone would go to call him from the waiting room, they’d say, “Richard… Richard?” (not his real first name) because they didn’t want to say his last name. Once I got to know him, he told me that he never thought anything of his last name, until his daughters told him how much grief they had gotten in school, and then he wished he had changed it.
Dude, that’s fucking metal. Maybe toss an umlaut on there.
Upthread, yeah, Cox definitely qualifies. I can’t believe how common it is, and that so many people are just fine being a Cox.
You just made me laugh really hard! I’m still having aftershock giggles.
I stumbled upon the last name Godly the other day and reflected that I really couldn’t handle that. Being an atheist named Christine is a little weird, but Christine Godly would just be too much.
I’ve known girls named Fuchs, Sweat, and Nipple, but I wouldn’t say those qualify as “seemingly innocuous.”
There used to be a Sweat Movers here. When I saw the truck, I’d always think, “is there any other kind?”
My husband once knew a girl whose last name was Brain. That is just a little too … what? Anatomical.
Hee. She figured, why waste it. Bet she had almost as much fun as her best friend, Miss Noktupp.
I don’t see why people are saying Cocaine is a name they’d refuse. Sounds pretty kick ass to me.
My mom’s best friend has the last name of Butts.
Yeah, I like it. Years ago I met a Gutluv. Also awesome.
Humm - strangely I was a Simpson for a couple of years and it was never a thing. I guess if I had named Junior ‘Bart’ it probably would have become one.