One of the employees at a local McDonald’s is named Trakia. There is no good way to pronounce this.
I work in South Asia and several names I encounter are unusual to me.
One such was a man who had his name printed on the back of his hard hat, it was “Ashit” - not uncommon for the region.
My first reaction was disbelief, until I had worked there longer and encountered several men with the same name, also a few others equally strange.
OK - I know this is supposed to be about N. American unusual names - but what happens when these names are encountered in the West ( immigrants, visiting scholars etc.)?.
In my experience, people with names that are common in one culture but unacceptable to the North American ear are encouraged to take a nickname for the duration.
Heh! I always loved the name Ellie (because of the book the Waterbabies), but decided against it because Sam and Ellie is almost as bad as Sam and Ella. Also, it was a ridiculously popular name the year my daughter was born,
Years ago I worked as an editor for a publisher that published books about mining engineering. One of the first things I had to get used to was that in that industry they spelled it “gage.” That’s how it was in the specialized dictionary used in the mining industry, or at least by people who wrote books and articles for the mining engineering industry.
That dictionary also was my first introduction to my favorite long word. I had always heard that “antidisestablishmentarianism” was the longest word, but it had one so long that it had to be set in smaller type to get it on one line: “pneumonoultramicroscopicvolcanoconiosis.” Oh, sure, it looks like they just ran a bunch of words together to make one gigantic word, but that’s what they did to antidisestablishmentarianism, pretty much. It’s a lung disease, similar to black lung but much harder to spell.
A couple of weeks ago I saw a woman named Candida. I’m guessing it could be a Spanish or Portuguese name. Either way, it’s still unfortunate to share your name with the fungus that causes yeast infections.
Maybe Gage was named after Phineas Gage!:eek:
I knew or met men named Beverly and Kim. Girls are taking over a lot of previously male names. I know there are lots of examples, but I can’t think of any right now, darn it. Leslie! There’s one.
This is my experience as well. And I appreciate it if someone who’s name is very hard for us to pronounce takes a nickname or shortened version. I’d do the same in a similar situation. It’s just easier to interact with people if your name isn’t stressing them out.
There’s a famous porn star named Candida Royale. Which is really funny because lots of sex is one thing that can lead to yeast infections. If she’s got Candida Royale…well, I guess she’s earned it.
(She was in Boogie Nights, too. A very cool lady, IMHO)
True, it was more that in combination with the rhyming last name that stuck out as the weirdness for me…
I certainly hope (she?) isn’t planning on a career as a health care professional. 
My neighbors’ kids are named Blade and Nixon. I’m not sure about naming your kid after a disgraced former president, especially using the last name. Blade, on the other hand, is an awesome name. I wish I was named Blade.
This makes me want to hurt someone. Huk, however is awesome. Good for yelling out the back door. Huk! Get off your daddy’s car!
Huk does look like quite the rapscallion in his official photos.
Trevocean looks like he’s seen some long days and cruel nights, however.
Og and Huk aren’t related, are they?
I wonder if Qadgop the Mercotan can serve as a data point for this finding in some of the social science literature - that having an unusual name is a common trait among delinquents. That is, the Kenyacies are represented at a higher proportion in prison than say, the Edwards?
Personally I suspect it has to do with a socioeconomic distribution. I knew a number of folks at Harvard pursuing advanced degrees with what I would consider to be… er, non-standard names. These folks, to a person, were very self-confident - having an odd name seemed to give them something. But it was hard to imagine Dr. Precious Williams not getting crap for her name, no matter where she went to school…
Friend of a friend had triplets recently and named the boys Jaxon and Jagger.
They surely don’t look related.
Someone I know had a classmate with a common, normal Jewish first name and a common, normal Jewish last name.
Unfortunately, the first name was Eeta (not sure how it’s spelled) and her last name was Berger.
That’s a new one. I used to look at NFL rosters every preseason, before first cuts, and see how many spellings of the name Antoine I could find. The record was 11, and that’s not counting Antonio, which is a totally separate name. I would have considered this one close enough.