What's in a name?

[TexanCzexican]

My dad seriously wanted to name me Pumpkin. Seriously.

My mom wanted to name me Peggy Jr. and call me Junior.

THANK GOD they settled on Paige, and my middle name came from a Kathleen Woodwiss romance novel.

A friend of mine named her child: Abcde prounounced Absidy.

[Duck on Wheels]

Heh - there's a well-known Norwegian geography professor called Just Gjessing ("yoost yessing").

Other unfortunate Norwegian names are Randi and Odd.

Funny though, our reactions to all names are based on habit. There are lots of names that sound fine to me in Norwegian, but very "creative" if translated - in Norway you can call your son Wolf, Bear or Hawk and nobody bats an eyelid.

Old joke from Readers Digest: a small boy turned up for his first day of school with his name printed on a card around his neck - Fruit Stand. A little unusual, but this was back in the 70s when every other hippy child was called Moonbeam or Sunflower or Raindance. He was a bit shy, and didn't react much when talked to, but lots of kids are shy in the beginning.

Ready to take the school bus home the driver asked where he was going. Little Fruit Stand just looked at him and pointed at the card round his neck. The driver turned it over, and there on the other side, printed in neat letters, was the name "Anthony".

(Chlamydia - is just mean. Well, no, but an example of how a little ignorance is a terrible thing...)

Oh my! Poor little fruit stand. And I wonder how many of that professor's foreign students pronounce his name "just guessing". We also have some job titles at the uni that don't travel well, such as what we call our TA's: student assistant, stud. ***. for short. I wonder if that title's gonna make it through the autocensor [ha ha! nope, it didn't. quod erat demonstrandum]. And as for literal names -- yep. There's Odd (means spearpoint); there's Kjetil (means helmet); there're all the powerful animal names for boys like Ulv (wolf) Rein (reindeer) Elg (moose) Bjørn (bear -- my son's name) Hauk (hawk) Are (eagle) Jo (horse) Orm (snake) and other nature names for girls like Dagny (dawn) Silje (willow) Siv (rushes) Liv (life) Binna (she-bear). Not to mention nicknames. If you go back to the sagas, all the main figures had nicknames to differentiate one Ulv or Bjørn from another. Erling Lopsided (he'd survived having one side of his neck slashed with a sword), Magnus Barefoot (a child king), Olav Fat (later known as Olav the Holy, but before being sainted he was just a fat brute). Still, I can't understand people intentionally doing that sort of thing to an innocent child. Is it just an urban myth, or was there really a senator from Texas named Hogg who named his two daughters Ima and Ura?

[missymaya]

Interesting thread so here's what I've heard and seen:
I worked with a woman who called herself Sissy but her real name was Clifford (apparently it was a family name and her father was gonna name the kid Clifford, no matter if it was a boy or a girl).
Another woman I work with named her little boy Draven Lennon (the first name I don't where they got it but the middle name is after John Lennon). I like it but it took a little to grow on me.
I grew up with a girl named Meadow Flower (first and middle). Wonder what her parents where all about?
I had a great uncle Gold and a great aunt Silver and there younger brother, my other great uncle, was named, wait for it....Thomas. My Grandfather's first and middle name is as follows: J B. That's it, they aren't initials, that's just his name and how you spell it. Weird.

[KnottedYet]

A friend of mine named her child: Abcde prounounced Absidy.

I know of an Abcde, too!

And a friend of mine in school, last name Storms, had uncles "Western" and "Northern."

[TexanCzexican]

Is it just an urban myth, or was there really a senator from Texas named Hogg who named his two daughters Ima and Ura?

Growing up, the neighboring town was West Columbia, which has the Varner Hogg plantation house and he only had IMA, Ura is made up.

Ima was actually really pretty, which makes the name all the more unfortunate.

[Geonz]

When I taught school, one of the kiddos was named Elton John. The parents had told their daughter she could pick the new baby's name, and she called their bluff. He went by John.
"Misty Dawn Day" I thought was neat... "Rusty Leake" had to get tired of that!

[Eden]

I certainly hope they are kidding, but my husband's parents have said if they had a son before they had a dog the kid would have been named Rufus.... but fortunately the dog got that name.

I used to work with a woman named Karna - yeah she got called Karma a lot.

[IFjane]

Some names from this year's enrollment:

Carma
Gage
Kazire
Akyia
Cedasia
Jakeia
D'Myija
Keyonia
NeVaeh (heaven spelled backward) - we had two of these last year!

And a couple years ago we had:

Turnipseed (really!)

[Trekhawk]

LOL - I thought my kids had unusual names but after seeing these I'm thinking maybe not.

[mimitabby]

wow, what great names (awful, I mean)

here at work we have a Wong and Wright.

I went to school with Fern Speer, Holly Green and Olympia Spinuzza.

(sounds like a restaurant menu )

My eyes cross with the most recent crop of kids names where people come up
with a couple (or just one) letters different for a name. So that guarantees
that NO ONE can spell it... and sometimes even pronounce it.

[Bad JuJu]

Regarding the first names that sound like last names, that comes from a long-standing southern tradition, which held that the first child should have the mother's maiden name as a middle name and the next child should have the mother's maiden name as FIRST name, all this regardless of whether the child was a girl or boy.

I don't think the newer crop of Taylors and Carvers and Madisons, etc. are based on any kind of tradition, but that may be where people got the idea.

I've got sort of a personal approach/avoidance complex about kids being named according to tradition or not. My twin brother was named after our two grandfathers--which made him a nice, respectable "James Lee"--while my name was more like an afterthought: "Oh yeah, we've got this girl to name, too!" So I got "Judy" after..........Judy Garland. What were you thinking, mom?

[Wahine]

These are the names of the 5 children of one of my best school friends: River, Rain, Lake, Sunny and Eddy. A little odd but not bad.

My surname is pronounced "knobs" and I come froma family of military men. My father was Major "Knobs" and my brother was "Private Knobs". My uncle was not military but was named Richard and went by D!ck...

One of my good friends nearly named his son Noah DeNault. He didn't realize how it sounded if you say it fast - "no I don' know". Fortunately we helped him out with that.

Finally, I went to school with a native girl named Anita Drinkwater.

Spanish speaking friends don't like to call me by my proper first name because it's pronounced the same way as the word "almost" in spanish....Cassie. So they say Casi-eh instead.

[Haudlady]

I used to know a kid named

Mark Ingpen

[Zen]

I find these names so unfortunate.
My first and last birth name rhymes, which is why I kept my married name.
My first name is a lovely name and I like it but always felt so self concious about the rhyming aspect.

These poor kids. Their parents should be ashamed.

[SouthernBelle]

"Wendy Summer Knight"