Absolute truth here. When I was a medical Resident, I had a woman and her son in my practice. Mom’s name was Philistine. A bit odd, certainly risible, but definitely an attempt to spice up the name “Phyllis” a bit. Too bad it made her sound like Sampson’s captors.
But even more unusual was what she named her young son. She insisted it was a biblical name. Maybe she meant to name him “Enoch”. But his legal name, and the name that she called him was Eunuch.
A woman I used to work with gave her son an odd name. Phonetically, it’s pronounced:
“PADGE-uh-muss”
The spelling is:
P A J A M A S
Can you imagine?
One coworker, last name Winters, named her daughters Stormie and Summer. I figure those girls are destined for a career in porn or stripping.
Another coworker named her daughters Star and Sparkle.
My FIL’s given name is Bobbie - which I’m sure was adorable when he was born, but it doesn’t suit a 71 y/o, white haired man.
Oh my, thanks for the huge laugh!
Except that our last name is Johnson, and when we found out we were having a boy, we went through every dick joke name we could think of. Hubby thought it would be funny. Thank God we ended up with a Zack.
A problem I have encountered- I have a very common name, but it still gets misspelled and it drives me nuts. My husband also has a “k” in his name where most Americans have a “c” so he gets it too. My point is this- we toyed with the idea of Gaelic names for one or more of our kids, but why torture them with people misspelling and mispronouncing their names their whole lives? I love the name “Siobhan” for a girl (pronounced She-vawn), but can you imagine the butchery? Oh well, again I lower my expectations to thelowest common denominator. Kate is still nice…
FairyChatMom, I had a teacher in high school who named his daughter Summer and his son Winter. Winter Sean Douglas. Ack.
Pokeit! Seriously, his name was Pokeit! I never got over that one! Grade 11 Geography, and not a day went by when someone didn’t say his name, which was always followed by reems of laughter!
(Making fun of people isn’t cool, but neither are Grade 11’s so what did you expect!)
On a side note, I am naming my first son Facetious. The kids can call him Fez!
Or Homer Jr. the kids can call him HoJou! 
Just a list of author names shamelessly stolen from a book called Bizarre Books compiled by Russel Ash and Brian Lake (they don’t every time say wether the names are pseudonyms or not, but I figure some of them must be authentic names):
Istvan Apathy
Nellie Badcock
Ludwig von Baldass
Krista Bendová
Myrtle Berry
Nicolas Bidet
John Thomas Bigge
Petr Bitsilli
Hugo Bonk
Emu Ceka (pseudonym for F. Muck)
Roger A. Destroyer
Jacob Fagot
Vera Fartash
A. Farto
Semen Frug
Stanka Fuckar
Odd Bang Hansen (not funny at all in Scandinavian)
O. Heck
O. Hell
Jup Kastrati
A. Kipper
Hieronymus Knicker
Dirk La Cock
George Lunge (co-author with Ferdinand Hurter)
Professor A. Moron
John Muckarsie
Violet Organ
Alfra B. Pant
Willy Prick
Hans Rectanus
Isac Shag
I. I. Shitts
Mrs Hepsa Ely Silliman
Ivor Snook
Hehe, I read that as Hey There. I can just see the poor substitute teacher now. “Is Hey There here?”
I know a guy whose name was First Beyond Middle Endless Last Joy
His parents were big hippies. So is he, so it is okay, but a little funny.
Yeah, I’m sure John and Jane Smith chose it to honour their Slavic ancestry. :rolleyes: I did say that I wasn’t criticising those of a different nationality where it’s accepted as a proper spelling, I was speaking of babies obviously given a “trendy” spelling. In Australia, it’s uncommon, and it looks stupid (IMO). If you live in Australia and decide to name your son John, fine. If you decide to “French it up” (despite no French ancestry) and name him Jean, he’s going to be teased because Jean is a girl’s name. Same thing. If you’re French and you name him Jean, well, that’s kind of different.
I was unaware of that as I have never encountered a man named Angel. I saw this, and thought it would be like naming your son “Cupcake”, or “Snookums”. I take it all back.
LindyHopper, the person who submitted that name did say they knew someone by that surname, and thought it would make a good first name. I actually feel sorry for anyone with the surname Abbruzzese, let alone the first name…
Um, cazzle, reading a birth notice in the paper doesn’t tell you anything about a baby’s heritage, nor does the parent’s surname. I don’t mean to belabor the point, but you have no idea if these names were “just trendy” or if they are a link to the children’s heritage.
Just because someone lives in Australia doesn’t mean they should renounce their Russian heritage, does it? If it does, remind me never to move there! Feels a little too judgemental based on your own ideas to me.
At a downtown New Year’s Eve celebration several years ago I passed a woman wandering through the crowd calling out for her little girl Tequila!
“Don’t you complain about your name, girl! If it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t be here!”
A former GF of mine taught a fifth grade class that included a boy named Shithead (pronounced; “shi-thayed”).
I was given to understand that this is a common name in his etnicity.
For my own part I hope I have not caused my own children too much future bother:
My son’s middle name is I (no period).
Perhaps in compensation we gave our daughter two middle names. Her initials are M.M.M.M.
EJ’s Girl, I know it’s not conclusive, but in both cases the surnames were common names of English origin, as were both sets of parents first names, and both mother’s maiden names. Also, the middle names were common trendy names spelt wrong.
Sure, the parents might have been Slavic or something else despite their Anglicised names, but why would you condemn your child to a lifetime of having his or her name spelt wrong? I just don’t get it.
They still could be Slavic or other blood lines, but when you see a birth notice that looks something like:
Smith (Jones)- Brian and Karen announce the birth of their daughter Aleksandra Khayleigh
well, you don’t suspect foreign heritage so much as stupid spelling. No, those aren’t the names - I’m sorry to say I didn’t keep the newspaper, and can’t recall the names exactly. Suffice to say, they were very British sounding surnames.
Hey! I have an Aunt Star! She’s in her mid 50’s, a former caterer and a lawyer. She’s cool, but respectable. So don’t be baggin’ on Star! 
(My grandfather had semi-unusual taste in names; four girls named Althaea, Claire, Penelope [my mom], and Star.)
Sparkle, on the other hand…:rolleyes:
I knew a guy whose first name was Gian, pronounced John. He had an ordinary, common, anglo last name, but his mother was Italian. Almost nobody ever knew how to pronounce his name correctly, and it probably didn’t help that he didn’t look remotely Italian. Later, he was engaged to an Italian woman, and he wanted to take her last name instead of her taking his–but I don’t know if he ever did.
If you weren’t familiar with Italian, you’d never guess that was a common name or how it was pronounced.
My family is guilty of this crap. Twice. It goes like this:
My grandmother Mildred and her then-husband Wayne agreed to name the first child after him. Neither one had considered that they could have a daughter. Thus my mother was christened Waynette.
Years go by. A cousin becomes pregnant. Since this is rural Nevada, and she is humor-impaired, she names her new daughter Tammy Waynette Smith.
I am humiliated by proxy.
And, unfortunately, it was the 67th most popular boys name in 2000- in the US. People watch too much tv…
One of my classmates was named Summer Rain Fall. Her sister’s name? Autumn Fall. I don’t know what happened to Autumn, but Summer’s turned to a life of crime last I heard(drug dealing I wonder if she inherited her supplier.)
Personally, I hate the recent trend of naming little girls things that used to be only boys names. I’m shocked that none of our students (3-5 year olds) have trendy names…of course, since four of the ten boys have the same name, it’s not much better.
The couple who lives across the street from my parents named their first son Colby Dell. That’s great–name your kid after a piece of cheese and a computer. I almost slipped once by referring to the boy as “Cheddar Compaq.”
Oh please tell me this was in southern Wisconsin (during the 80’s). I know of a Pajama (with that pronounciation) from there. I hate to think there are two.
There is someone in Edinburgh, Scotland, whose name is Richard Head. Oh, that I were making that up - poor guy!
When I was a lawyer in Aberdeen, I had a client whose father had named him after a player in the local football team. This kid’s name was (and presumably still is) Zoltan Varga McKenzie*
I have also seen (in office correspondence) Archibaldina, and Henrietta Dick.
*Last name changed to protect the guilty.
A woman is sitting on the couch reading the newspaper when her oldest daughter comes up and sits on her lap. “Mother, why was I named Rose?”
“Well,” says the mother, “I had you in the house on a lovely breezy autumn afternoon. Right after you were born, a single rose petal flew through the window and landed right on your forehead. I took it as a sign.”
The woman went back to reading her paper. Suddenly, she felt a tug on her pants. “Mama,” said her second oldest. “Why was I named Daisy?”
“At the hospital, your father brought me this lovely bouquet of flowers. A single daisy fell off and landed right on your forehead. I took it as a sign.”
The woman was about to go back to her newspaper when her youngest came into the room, ran around and around in circles yelling “Gah! Gah! Afhctahahh!!!” before falling to the floor.
“Oh will you be quiet Concrete Slab?”