Actress Barbara Hershey and actor David Carradine had a son they named “free.” When free was about 12 or so, he asked his mother about his name. She told him they named him free so he would have no preconceived notions or expectations based on his name. He wanted to know if he had to keep the name. She said, no, that was the whole idea, he was free to do as he pleased. She wanted to know if he would like to change it.
He said, “I kind of like the name Tom.”
Honorable mention goes to George Foreman, who named his sons George Foreman, Jr, George Foreman III, and George Foreman IV.
~VOW
Along the same lines, “Papa” John Phillips named his son Tamerlane the Great. As soon as the kid reached his teens, he leafed through an almanac, found that “Michael” was the most common name for boys, and immediately changed his name to Michael Phillips.
Fair point that kids who are bullied are bullied for other reasons, the names just make easy targets. But I still think there’s more than a bit of “good natured” fun gonig to be made of that name.
Of course, in a class with Jer’Majesty, Apple, and Audio Science, a kid named Kyd (or Destro) is going to fit right in. Or at least have counter ammo.
there must be a lot of strippers in the US then, since some of these names are among the most popular names in 2011 in the US - including Madison in the top 10, a street name taken from a movie.
Not really anything to add except that a comedian made a joke about Apple and the teasing the poor girl would get at school: “Ha-ha, your dad is in Coldplay”.
The thing is, to a large degree the “strangeness” of a name is precisely because of familiarity. Cherry, Lily, Rose, Daisy, Jasmine, Ivy, Violet, Heather, etc are common enough names that they don’t scream weird, whereas Apple is not a common name, and thus is not in the “name” category. So you encounter it as a name, and think “that’s weird”.
But if you go back to childhood, a lot of names were strange when you first encountered them. I remember the first time a knew a Sean. “That’s not Shawn, that’s Seen.” No, you don’t get to tell other people how to pronounce their own name.
But there’s a difference from just unusual and pretentiously silly. Just think “the artist formerly known as Prince”.
It’s like you think these kids are retarded or something. Those conversations are dumb. No one talks that way, and some super rich celebrity kid isn’t going to have a lot of trouble in school. Fuck, ya’ll, where do you think names come from? Someone has to make this stuff up.
So I’m lousy at artificial dialogue. And analogies. They’re still [del]dumbass[/del] unusual names, and somewhere along the line someone is going to point that out to the kid.
Given that my daughter’s class included a Ya-Ya, a Wa-Wa a Princess Tinkerbelle (with the e), and a Vaishakhi (unusual because it’s the name of a festival, not because it’s a foreign name - there are plenty of those) I know from personal experience that kids just kinda stop noticing ‘unusual’ names when there are so many of them around. These kids’ll be fine.
He went right up to George IV, and also named one of his daughters Georgetta. Bizarre in its megalomania, but at least they all have nicknames too and the name itself is fine.
OK, now that is awful. Every time she has to say her full name she’s going to have to resignedly wait for the punchline or, perhaps, sympathetic grimace. Plus lots of Marx-brothers style pretended ‘confusions’ with the number.