Weirdest names you've ever heard

[snowthx]

Swastika. Saw it on a email distribution at work. I thought, “no way!”, but, evidently it is a name occasionally used in India. Which makes sense, as the swastika symbol originated there before being perverted by Nazi Germany.

[Mahaloth]

Bob Mortimer has met many people with interesting names.

Steve Bytheway is probably my favorite, though.

[FairyChatMom]

Just remembered another one - one of the techs at my CVS is named Marvellous, according to his name badge. His accent suggests he’s from a Caribbean island, FWIW.

[mtnmatt]

I personally knew a Richard (never Dick) Holder, and a Dick Pfister, both of which amuse my inner 12 year old to this day.

But the winner was a “real-user” customer (woman) on a TV commercial I saw 45 years ago named “Toppie Smelley.” I can’t remember the product - maybe Crisco? - but I can still picture her name on the screen and remember my disbelief.

[Rick_Kitchen]

@nearwildheaven

I had a HS classmate named Kelly Green. Someone did tell me that this was not her birth name - that her father died or left, and her mother remarried and she was adopted by her stepfather.

I had a friend whose last name was Green and his brother’s name was Kelly.

My Dad’s name was W. H. That was it. His family called him Dub, short for W. But when he joined the Army, they refused to recognize initials as a name, so he went by William, which was his grandfather’s name. When he joined the work force after the War, his co-workers called him Bill.

There was a guy on the news last night whose name was Theed Vault.

[Rick_Kitchen]

@P-man

I had an uncle whose name was Bus. I’ve never seen it written, so it may have been spelled differently.

The Los Angeles Lakers are owned by the Buss family.

[Rick_Kitchen]

@MoonMoon

One of the feral children next door is named Major. Every time his mother screams bloody murder at him I think, “Major pain in the ass, more like.”

My mother had a great-uncle named Major.
I used to work with a very large gentleman named Precious.

[erysichthon]

@Rick_Kitchen

@MoonMoon

One of the feral children next door is named Major. Every time his mother screams bloody murder at him I think, “Major pain in the ass, more like.”

My mother had a great-uncle named Major.

I guess you folks don’t watch CBS-N; one of their political reporters is named Major Garrett. Obama once admonished him by first name in a news conference, saying, “Major, that’s nonsense, and you should know better.”

[WildaBeast]

@FairyChatMom

One of the engineers I worked with had the first name Major. Personally, I thought both were out of place on a Navy base.

I wonder if his parents were fans of Catch-22. For those who haven’t read it, there’s a character whose rank, first name, and last name are all “Major”.

@dtilque

Surprised no one’s mentioned Elon Musk’s latest kid’s name. Originally, it was X Æ A-12. But that ran afoul of California’s rule that all names must be alphabetic characters only, so they changed it to X Æ A-XII.

Speaking of names that contain numbers, there was a manager at the company I used to work for who went by K7. As an immigrant from India, Americans had difficulty pronouncing his actual name, but K7 comes sort of close to how it’s pronounced. So he started just going by that. That was even how his name was set up in Outlook.

Then there’s the writer Jennifer 8. Lee. Apparently the story there is that she wasn’t given a middle name when she was born because that’s not a think in China, and she choose the middle name “8” when she was a teenager.

[Hari_Seldon]

There is a moderately well-known Indian mathematician H. P. Dikshit. There was an Indian diplomat (IIRC, she was once ambassador to the US) named Dixit and I wondered if that was really the same name.

We once had a German visitor to my department named Oliver Pretzel. His wife was named Crystal Pretzel. Curiously, the German word for pretzel is bretzel.

[nearwildheaven]

There used to be an artist who was fairly well-known in my region (and not just for her name) who as an adult changed her first name from Sharon to Sha4ron. When asked why, she said she did it because she could.

[Bijou_Drains]

sports fans named their kid Espn. A retired college FB coach is named Dick Crum.

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

Names of actual people I encountered firsthand myself and saw their paperwork:

1. Philistine
2. Eunuch, her son (as an adult, he got it changed to Enoch)
3. Jotavious Cheese
4. Early Livestock
5. Reno Coffin

[John_DiFool]

Met a young man awhile back. Dietman. He’s on a diet? Is he a superhero?

A 3rd party kindly told me later that it was pronounced “deetman”…

[Senegoid]

@needscoffee

À friend says she went to elementary school with Myron Stands-At-The-Door. I’ve never been able to verify it, though.

Plausible, I suppose. I mentioned, above, the Everybodytalksabout clan, which I found listed in a Blackfoot genealogy on-line. I’d expect a name like Stands At The Door there too. Well, I didn’t find that, but there a Rides At The Door clan, and Rides At Door, and Rides Behind and Rides In The Middle clans. See here.

See here for a compact list of the names.

[CairoCarol]

I know someone whose first name is a month and whose last name is a common food - I’m not going to give the actual name as she’s a real person and I’m pretty sure there is only one of her. But her name is essentially identical in impact to “January Hamburger.”

[P-man]

Yeah, but it was my uncle’s first name.

[WildaBeast]

I actually went to school with a girl named January.

That made me realize that April, May, and June are fairly common feminine names, but other months aren’t.

[LH75]

A couple of seasons ago, there was a female contestant on the Food Network Show Worst Cooks in America named Spongetta

[Sternvogel]

Oven Fry chicken coating was the product that made Toppie Smellie famous.