The “obvious” ones to me include the ones phonetically or originally spelled Sherry, Cheryl, Eric/Erica, or Caitlin. All of those could potentially have dozens of spellings. British Dopers would probably say the same thing about “Alastair”.
I’ve had teachers tell me that they didn’t realize there were so many ways to spell “Alice” or “Jason”.
So, what are yours, and what was the strangest?
I thought of this last night when I saw something online about a pair of conjoined twins who were separated, and one of them was named (are you ready for this?) Knatalye. That’s pronounced “Natalie”.
Unless her szyszter was named Knitalye, that’s stupid.
Natalie DOESN’T “have” that spelling. If you allow that, then my name can be spelled Pjmnhavird = David.
Knatalye is a MUPOS name - Made Up Piece Of Shit.
Names respelled to ease their transition from one language to another - sure, that’s legit. Usually there are one or two generally-accepted respellings per name, in English. Sometimes more, if the name entered English more than once.
But ixnay on the MUPOS names, or we’ll be discussing this for far too long.
UNLESS - was the topic of MUPOS names your main point? In that case, this is going to be fun.
I just came across someone online named “Cheaun.” I guess it’s supposed to be pronounced like Sean/Shawn? I don’t think it’s a name from another culture, unless I’m wrong.
I’ve seen people with my name, but spelled differently - Emilie (a sort of French way, not so unusual,) Emili, Emmaleigh, Emilii. I’ve also had my own name misspelled many times by others as Emely, Emilly, Amélie, and - this is a new one - Amely.
I live in a French-speaking area, where Amélie and Émilie are ordinary French girls’ names, hence some of the misspellings. I never did understand “Emely,” though.
The kids were cute, too. Unfortunate that one was saddled with a mangled name like that IMNSHO.
OTOH, I have a friend whose daughter’s name is a spelling of “Olivia” that I won’t post here because it’s unique enough to identify her. I’m not the only person who saw that and went, “Um, WHY?” but she’s in her 20s now, and she has never been “Olivia”. The name fits her perfectly.
I have a friend who’s name is pronounced Casey (think: Casey Jones). However, it’s spelled Cassie. I don’t remember the reason for that, but she’s spent nearly her entire life either correcting the way people say it when they see it written or correcting how people spell it when they’ve only heard it.
In college, she went by “Cassandra”. It’s not her name but she was getting frustrated with everyone saying it incorrectly.
On top of that, her last name would be very, very common if it had an “s” on the end of it. Common enough that people see it written and say it that way. Again, she spent her entire life correcting people. That is, until she got married. The person she married has the typical spelling/pronunciation, I remember her comment was “I spent my whole life telling people how to say my last name and it was all for nothing”.
Oh, and another one. I have a friend with the name Reene, like the nick name for Maureen, though Reene is her given name. She spends a lot of time A)correcting people that say “Rene” and B) telling people “no, I didn’t spell my name wrong” when they see it written and fix it thinking it’s a type. She’s had birthday cakes that have said “Happy Birthday Rene”.
If you’re going to give your kid a weird name, give one that can’t possibly be corrected into a normal name. Fleerg is good. Mubble-Mepser works just fine. But Jenafor (who I have met) is a no-go, as are all those other similar ones.
My students who come from francophone Muslim African countries (Mali, Senegal, Guinea, etc.) typically have names that come from classic Arabic names, but modified to fit their language and spelled the French way. It can be interesting to look at the names and try to figure out their etymology. Here are some examples:
[ul]
[li]Mamadou, Amadou, Mamadi, Mouhamed, Mouhamadou, Mohamed: Muhammad[/li][li]Boubacar, Aboubacar, Babacar, Boucar: Abu Bakr[/li][li]Fatou, Fatoumata, Fatim, Falmata, Fatimatou: Fatima[/li][li]Aissata: probably Aisha[/li][li]Kadidia: Khadija[/li][li]Abdoulaye: Abdullah[/li][/ul]
I’ve also seen Adama and Ibrahima, which are forms of Adam and Ibrahim (despite the ‘a’, they definitely are male names), and Abdul spelled the French way: Abdoul. Also Moussa, which is Musa/Moses. I’m sure I’m forgetting some possible variants of these names, and there are probably some I didn’t even recognize.
Of course, these are probably distinct names, even though they have the same etymology.
The lil’wrekkers boyfriend is Palestinian. He says every male in his large family has Muhammad* in their name. He has 4 first names, Muhammad is his 3rd.
(*or maybe Mohammed, not sure of his spelling.)
