Peter Beter ran for governor of West Virginia when I was in 6th grade.
I go to church with a Jiraporn.
I have to chime in and discuss a few of the more ridiculous names I ran across during my years working retail. Ava Cato was always a favorite of mine. Interestingly, she and her father, who were both regular customers at the video rental place, pronounced their last name differently. Dad said “Cah-toe” and daughter said “Cay-toe”. Hmm. She did have the more unusual pronunciation of Ava (Ah-vah) that agreed with the Avacado pun.
Then there was an older lady named Velveeta. Spelled exactly the same way as the cheese. I had a really hard time keeping a straight face as I was ringing her up.
There was a family that had twin girls named Liberty (“Libby”) and Justice. They were the cutest, best-behaved little girls known to retail-kind. They did not, to my knowledge, have another sibling named For All, or American Way. Such a shame.
Identical twin sisters at my high school were named Tina LaKeisha and Trina LaKreisha, and we had another set of identical twin sisters named Kerri and Terri Perry.
Perhaps her parents were opera buffs? There was a Barbara Seville that went to my church. That name has a certain amount of “win” to it, though. Not everyone would get the pun. A subtle bit of humor.
Also, I had a coworker whose name was Windy. Yep, she had sisters named Stormy, and Sunny. (Named in honor of the weather the day they were born, according to family legend.) Brothers were named Rocky and Dusty, though I never heard the story behind those.
Not so much a funny name, but some friends of a friend just named their newborn child Lennon.
Lennon? Ugh, awful.
Lennon is awful for a first name. Dare I ask, male or female?
A girl, I think.
One of my best friend has a (male) colleague named Tittiporn. I wonder if there’s a Dongkiporn out there somewhere.
That’s an entirely different category—Vivian, Adrian, Randy, Kelly, Tracy, Shelly, Hillary, Carol, Madison, Leslie, Robin, Alexis, Lynn, Christy, Ginger, Ananda, Chandra, Kim—basically any masculine name can become feminine if enough women use it.
I just remembered I knew a Curtrise, who was named after her father, Curtis. As I said, it’s pretty much accepted as routine among African-Americans.
Back in the 1990s, country singer Sammy Kershaw had a song about a girl who was named after both parents, with unfortunate results:
Ain’t nothing so precious as a first born child
What to call their little angel
They wondered for awhile
Your dear mama Violet
And your proud daddy Dale
I know when they named ya
They surely meant well, but…
Vidalia, Vidalia
Girl won’t you tell me why
Sweet Vidalia
You always gotta make me cry
Then there’s Supaporn (Super Porn? :eek:).
Alas, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Porn is actually pronounced like the English word “pawn.”
Heh, was the Romanization originally done by Brits? I’ve heard the same story is behind ‘Burma’.
“Urban Wanker??!” Oh, that is awesome!
I’m not sure who did the romanization, but written letters often very wildly from their actual sounds. Even though Thai has both the Ch and J sounds, you’ll usually see Ch written when it should be a J. And there’s no V sound at all, but you commonly see V used instead of the proper W. And Rs stuck in where there’s no R sound prsent; that’s because when a syllable ends with the Thai R, it becomes an N instead, but it also changes the sound of the final vowel, so I guess the transliterators wanted it understood somehow that this was the letter R and not the letter N, of which Thai has a couple.
In Thai, “Burma” is “Phama” (hard P sound for the Ph), but I don’t know the actual Burmese name.
That’s funny because over here, the English word “porn” is pronounced like the English word “pawn”. 
That’s because Aussies have dirty minds. 
Research boat captain Dick Furbush
The owner of the largest RV dealer in the midwestern US… Tom Raper. I’m sure he’s the source of many WTF moments because he’s got a ton of billboards along the turnpike.
Our recently retired County Attorney has this name too.
My father went to school (in 1930 or so) with twins Appolonia and Pertronella Kravatskis.
Beautiful names, I’m sure, for the time…but sheesh, Appolonia AND Pertonella? It was Polish / Lithuanian Central Pennsylvania, so the surname was not necessarily unusual.