When I was a kid and up through at least my late teens (I’m 38) all of those kids were on TV shows or somewhere in the media/pop culture radar. Moon was on the “Valley Girl” song. They were all MTV and tv host personalities. Dweezil and Moon Unit had a CBS sitcom based on their real life family when I was around 10. My dad explained who they were. I remember Ahmet and Dweezil hosting a cable show in the late 90s. So I am familiar with all of them. Dweezil has kept up with music, which has resulted in some intra-family legal issues over the use of the Zappa name.
Re Khaleesi: Yes, it’s silly - but have you ever met anyone named Earl, Duke or Major? I’ve met several people whose first name is Earl, and one named Major. Then there’s Rex (which I always associated with dogs as we had one by that name when growing up), which means King, and Regina which means queen. Khaleesi is no different from those, concept-wise.
An ill-educated (or just unfamiliar with English) immigrant naming a child “Vagina” or similar is unfortunate.
Someone naming their kid “Abcde”, well… I’m sorry, but there’s no reason to give a kid a name like that except as a very sick joke.
(to be clear though, that Southwest employee was insanely over the line and I hope he or she is denied unemployment, due to being fired for cause).
Yeah, that one’s a bit too… obvious… to be told unaltered these days. I mean, aside from “negress” and “pickaninny” though the latter wouldn’t ring any bells anyway.
Probably 30 or 40 years ago I read one of those “Humor in Uniform” items in Reader’s Digest about a man in the military named R.B. Jones. He had only initials, rather like Harry S Truman’s middle “name”. Anyway, it was a chronic problem during his initial days in the military, so he took to filling in forms First Name: R only Middle Name: B only Last Name: Jones. Throughout his enlistment he received paychecks made out to Ronly Bonly Jones.
We’ve named several pets Ronly Bonly in memory of this possibly non-existent person…
You mean it isn’t Bee Jay Hunnicutt??? Early this morning I did a search on Ronly Bonly and found “him” on Snopes. This was actually in a 1958 Reader’s Digest. “Suspected” as urban legend. But it really was nice to have confirmation that I did read it somewhere, which we know makes it true.
Here you find an <a href=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TZk1gYj2xo”>interview</a> with her and her father. She is happy with her name, as she states with a sense of humour wothy of her father’s.
I am not sure you are serious, but just in case: Juan is Spanish and means John. Juana is the female version of that same name. Juanita is the female diminutive, like Johnny, but in female.
In Spain people get two family names, the first is the father’s first family name, the second the mother’s first family name. (Theoretically you get infinite names, the third being the father’s second, the fourth the mother’s second and so on, but I disgress). I had a boy in my school whose name was Jesús Caído de la Cruz. Guess you have to understand Spanish to know how hilarious this was. But Jesús is a very common name in Spain, only in that combination… I don’t know what the parents were thinking of.
Of course it is all a cultural thing, remember Billy Wilder’s “One, Two, Three”? Where the American woman asks the German woman what her name is? “Klotilde”, she replies. “I will call call you Klo then!” “Please call me Tilde!”
In the early seventies, I was printing the enrollment list for my urban junior college. Had to stand by the pin drive printer in case the perfs tore out - bored, so was reading the names of the students (s-l-o-w printer) and hit stop on an unusual name. My boss raised his eyebrows; Latrina was a new one on him, as well. Were the seventies the dawn of the made-up name?
Regarding some of the other names mentioned - have a cousin named Leslie, who would be in her early sixties, now. And my favorite uncle (the favorite family personality, in fact) was named Maurice, accent on the second syllable. Unique name in a huge family of standard names. Man, I wanted that name.
Worked in a marina where was built a huge sportfisherman for a rich guy who had a marlin obsession - the boat was named the Snarlin’ Marlin; rumor had it that he named his son Marlin.
Near me, buried in a nearly defunct churchyard, is a woman whose first name is Narozzo. She was born in 1860, and I can find barely a hint of an origin for that name. Perhaps made-up names have always been with us.
Right now I have two coworkers who never miss a chance to make jokes based on my name, since they discovered it means Light (as in “what lets us see”, not “the opposite of heavy”). One of them does it in a nice way (his first reaction was “hey, mine means ‘Sun’, cool! Or rather, hot!”), the other one’s reaction was… calling me Lightbulb. Congratulations, dude, I’m now 50 and you’ve just pushed the previous marker for that joke by 6 years.
My name isn’t even particularly assholish, but there are names which do point out “this person has parents who are assholes”. That’s a huge marker for someone who will make a good bullying target, and in fact may already be abused at home.
Well, yes. Someone somewhere was the first Dan. Someone somewhere was the first Bob. Someone somewhere was the first Lee, or Li, or may not even have had a way to spell it.
I know a beach attendant in St Martin (Dawn Beach) who goes by the name Grey. His skin is the blackest skin could possibly be, leading many people to ask why his name is Grey. When asked, he whips off his sunglasses. Whoa The most amazing grey eyes you’ve ever seen. People actually gasp.
We’ve probably beaten the business about Moon Unit and Dweezil to death, but in case anyone’s curious about why Frank Zappa’s third child is named Ahmet, it’s after Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder and head of Atlantic Records. In addition to launching the recording careers of many artists, Ertegun also wrote the songs “Chains of Love,” “Sweet Sixteen,” and “Mess Around,” which was recorded by Ray Charles (one of the musicians he discovered).
I posted these in another thread some time back: I have a friend who taught second grade for a while, and she would write down some of the more unusual names for me. Among them: Dazzilyn, Angeleyez, N’Gage, Klowiie, Trulee.
My favorite, though, was Aiaia. Yep. A-I-A-I-A. I guess you pronounce it like this.
As I’ve mentioned before, my username was because we referred to our kids as “Dweezil” and “Moon Unit” respectively while under construction. We joke that we stopped at 2 because we couldn’t quite get our minds around “Ahmet” Jewishlastname :D.