I happen to live in an orthodox Jewish community (I’m an unaffiliated atheist, myself). Most of the names are very traditional, by orthodox standards (Moishe, Rivkah, etc.) but would sound unusual to more assimilated ears.
My brother named my niece and nephew with traditional Russian names because we primarily have Russian ancestry – Tatiana and Aleksi. I think they are great names, while also being fairly unique. You don’t have to be all that creative to be unique, just go back far enough and the old names are new again.
My name is Graham, btw – it confuses people since I have absolutely no British heritage that I know of. When I asked my mom why Graham, she first said that it was because I was named after her Uncle, who’s Hebrew name was Gedahlia (my hebrew name as well). She still can’t explain how Graham and Gedahlia are related though… I guess it’s better than being named Geddy.
I once lived next door to a woman who named her three sons, Storm, Stone and Steel. Number four was Jay, just to break some kind of pattern I guess.
My particular gripe is variant spellings that make it impossible to write the name down if you hear it. Less of a problem is names that are so unusual/unknown or contain ambiguous vowels so that it is impossible to reasonably guess how to pronounce it if you see it written. Within these two bounds I am pretty much happy with anything. I admit that some names (like those above) come across as tacky but I’m not going to stop anyone.
In my job I have come across Caitlin, Caitlyn, Kate-lyn, Katelin, Kaitlyn, Kaytelynn, Caytlynne, and probably some others. There is no accounting for that madness.
How is “Rachael” a misspelling? It’s a variant, but it’s not unusual.
But then I don’t consider Brittany or Tiffany weird,either.
Vowels are mushy things. Different dialects do funny things with them, even within native words. So people cling to what is familiar.
Example: back when the Harry Potter movie first came out, Emma Watson was on The Tonight Show. Jay Leno introduced her with his Boston accent, rhyming her name with “hatsun”. She came out and gave him a proper talking to, it’s pronounced like the vowel in watch, not the vowel in hat.
See?
How about being an anglophone in an anglophone country and wishing all the native spanish speakers could get your name right. Makes giving a name at restaurants difficult when the person who reads it out on the speaker says it funny. Or writing down the name spells it goofy.
What really sucks is both my first and last names have issues for Spanish speakers. I first encountered the problem in junior high, when I shared a class with some immigrant kids. They were fairly well-versed in English, but the vowels in my name tripped them up.
I once got a phone call from a woman named Yvonne, but I wasn’t in so my office partner took a message. I had a message written down that I had a call from “Evan”.
If? I mean, this girl seems familiar with hispanic culture and is fluent in Spanish. I don’t know if she identifies as Hispanic, just perchance, but she’s definitely white. Perhaps a name that is common within a certain nation given to someone of a notably different nation takes me by surprise. For example, if a black person is named “Xue Fei” or if a Chinese person like me is named Luz, a common name meaning light in Spanish.
You’re right, it is a perfectly normal name, but I think I carelessly jotted it down more for the irregular context than its actual rarity.
No, they do in some US dialects. The US isn’t the whole English-speaking world. I can’t think of any non-US dialect in which those words (except Terry and very) have the same vowel sound.
ETA: I’m not familiar with Canadian dialects, so there may be some there where the vowel sound is the same, but even if there are - North America still isn’t the whole English-speaking world.
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But that was not the inspiration…
Baxter found me after I’d first visited Baxter state park. And my Baxter is a gentleman.
Pandora was so called because she is curious and into everything – a little troublemaker. And because she figured out how to open a small box that WAS on the coffee table.
His real name was Gary - he had a Yiddish-speaking grandma that pronounced it that way and it stuck.
My local elementary school has some gems, there’s a young man named Excellent, a young lady named Phoenix, a Xzavious, several Nevaehs, a Serenity, and a Sunshine.
There’s plenty of Brayden, Cayden, Jayden, Aiden, Hayden, and Paytons to go around.
Lots of Kaylee, Kaycee, Kaitlin, Kaylee, Katie, and other Kay names for girls. At least 2 or 3 in each class.
I’m a fan of a game series called “Suikoden”, and one of the recurring characters is named Apple. I thought that was a very cute name and wanted to name a daughter that if I ever had one, but then Gwyneth Paltrow beat me to the punch, ruining the name. (If I actually used it, I would get responses like “Just like Gwyneth Paltrow’s kid”)
So instead, I named her Apollonia (yep, Prince fan), and I call her “Apple” as a nickname.
Every Thai has a nickname that he or she commonly goes by. It’s not unusual for years-long colleagues in an office not even to know a person’s real name, just the nickname. Common ones include Pig and Frog, supposedly out of the old belief that naming a kid something like that will convince the spirits that this is a horrible kid not worth taking, but there are pretty nicknames too.
Then you have the parents who try to be cosmopolitan and stick their child with an English nickname. One of the oddest I’ve personally heard of is Bonus, although it took awhile for me to understand this was English since the Thai pronunciation is Bo-Naht. But Paycheck might be the winner, so named because he came at the end of the month. Really.
