When my mother was a kid, she knew a family named “Dracula,” pronounced Druh-KOO-lah. Apparently that was the correct way to pronounce it in whatever country they were from.
I went to high school with a kid named Toby Dick. It’s not as bad as Harry Dick, or something, but still, what were his parents thinking? I hope it was something like mom’s uncle Toby is a billionaire who will leave the kid more money than most people see in a lifetime if he’s named for his uncle. I also went to high school with a kid named Doris Morris. Her middle name, I am not making this up, was Louis. At least according to the yearbook. I don’t know whether she was related to the kid next to her in the yearbook, but he had a name that was just stupid. Not obscene, not eye-rollingly cre8tive, just stupid: Meallie Mack Morris. I went to junior high with another kid whose name must have been some kind of inside joke. He was named Oak Base. Like, you might put a sculpture on an Oak base, or maybe granite. Oak Base.
Harry Baals, former mayor of Fort Wayne, IN. They were building a new convention center and wanted to name it after him. He pronounced his last name with a long A, like “bales,” but still…c’mon.
I’ve known of a Cameroonian named Hitler. German colonialism is somewhat fondly recalled there, especially in comparison with French rule. This has translated into some people having an unusual interpretation of French WWII.
Certainly not worst, but:
I had a classmate named Duk Whing and a neighbor named Anita Hickey. I was also friends with a couple with the last name, Head. I didn’t tease them with the cheap and obvious word-play, just mild riffs like, “Heads are going to roll” and “two Heads are better than one.” They took it in good stride, but probably spit in my cocktail glass when I wasn’t looking.
This isn’t a bad name, really, but it’s a genuine case of nominative determinism (living up to your name). There’s a Bulgarian hurdles champion called Vania Stambolova.
Obviously “dick” hasn’t always meant dick. It must be fairly recent. The earliest reference I find is British English in the 1890s. It may not have crossed the pond until WWII (it may not have been common enough to do so by WWI), and that would explain why men who were born before about 1960 are so commonly called Dick to the exclusion of other names, while there seems to be an abrupt switch to Rick or Rich after that.
Dick Tracy probably kept the name somewhat safe from ridicule for a while.
But year, when paired with something like “Trickle,” you’d think even if he was born in 1945, he’d go by Rick or Rich.
Even Rick Trickle sounds kind of funny because of the rhyme. That guy’s kind of out of luck whatever he does. Trickle is kind of a funny last name no matter what your first name is.
BTW, as OP I meant “worst name an ordinary person has had to live with.” No duh that “Hitler” does and probably always will top the list as the worst name to have, period, and that there are others worse than “Mustafa Kunt.”
MAD has been here, of course. They did a piece on being a household name for good and bad reasons. One was “Being a household name because of your quality.” The other was “being a household name because of your name.” The illo for both was of the “Bobbit Sausage Company.”
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt had a funny bit on this. In Kimmy’s GED class, she is introduced to her Vietnamese classmate, Dong. She giggles. She introduces herself to Dong, and HE giggles, because “ki mi” is “penis” in Vietnamese.
(I don’t think it’s actually true, but it’s a nice subversion.)
I watched a little bit of the Daytona 500 this year. I had never heard of the guy who sang the national anthem, Phillip Phillips. I was like, “Dude, your parents are dicks.”
