Poor sons! 
It amuses me to imagine that they went on to have sons whom they named Fred, Bill, Jim, etc.
while their grandfather’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.
Haha yes indeed. 
Not a lot else one can do in a grave, of course
An all-time odd one is playwright Athol Fugard.
A nickname, but…
And then those funny wedding announcements (some NSFW I guess):
You missed the best part of this. He wrote a book with Robin Fox called The Imperial Animal.
I just remembered that I had a HS classmate named Coleman Paul. You can imagine what they did with that name.
Mackenzie is a relatively common one - Prime Minister Mackenzie King (actually Mackenzie was his third name, but nobody’s heard of William King, have they?), or actress Mackenzie Phillips, as two examples.
Pepper Salt. (Yes, Pepper was her first name.) I didn’t meet her, but she was in a school where I taught.
I just saw somebody mentioned online yesterday (I think it was in a news story, but I lost track) named “Eejipt.”
Mackenzie Scott – Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife
I’ve mentioned this one before, but it never gets old.
Newfoundland has so many bizarre names, they don’t even get attraction. I once saved the newspaper clipping announcing the Monster - Freake marriage. I knew a guy there named Dunc Hunt. I worked with Mary Christmas.
We have mentioned the perfectly understandable names Magnus, Maximus, Augustus, Major, and so on. On the other hand, I have encountered — not personally but through reading, the rare first name Minus. Perhaps it seemed to suit a tiny little baby? Or an alternative to Paulus or Junior? There is also a Minus family name, according to Wikipedia.
That new Atlantic hurricane, Isaias, is pronounced vaguely like ee-sye-is. It appears to be impossible to pronounce correctly unless you are a native Spanish speaker.
Some years back, there was a Pacific typhoon named Aere (eye-ear-ee) which was some obscure Pacific Islander language’s word for “storm.” I kind of liked that.
I used to be an interpreter for English teachers, and one of our students was named Simba.
[quote=“nearwildheaven, post:154, topic:915747, full:true”]Some years back, there was a Pacific typhoon named Aere (eye-ear-ee) which was some obscure Pacific Islander language’s word for “storm.” I kind of liked that.
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Some years back, there was a typhoon off the Asian coast. The Chinese government named it after a mythological dragon . . . Long Wang.
It’s not really that “weird” per se, but I worked with a half-Hungarian, half-English writer named Zoltan Scrivener. Zoltan is a perfectly normal Hungarian name, but that combination with that profession, whenever we first submitted articles for publication, the editors always thought Zoltan Scrivener was a pen name of some sort. Nope. That was his real name.
My other favorite is Norwegian long distance runner Stig Roar Husby. That’s just music to my ears.
Every Thai has a nickname, bestowed in childhood, that defines him or her so completely that it’s not that unusual for close friends or colleagues not to know someone’s real name. Some may sound unflattering, such as Frog or Pig, two common ones. But those are attempts to convince evil spirits that these are babies not worth taking. The oddest nickname I encountered was probably Bonus. He claimed his father gave it to him because he came at the end of the month.
I saw a black guy in the local arrests whose first name was apparently Monkee I thought it bizarre that his parents named him that presumably aware of the racial insult but all the same that was the name they chose I guess. Maybe they just liked the band.
Just came across this one today: Warren S. Warren.
From WaPo article on a study of efficacy of various styles and materials for face masks.
This is reminiscent of Griffith J. Griffith, who donated a mountain property to Los Angeles in 1896 to create Griffith Park.