What's in a name?

[bmccasland]

Let's just say moving to New Orleans has been a cultural experience that I'm still grasping. There's a well know jeweler in town Mignon Faget (makes nice expensive stuff, owns several stores). Mignon is french for cute.

BUT names from the past...
Fluffy Montana S*****
and my favorite - Female (rhymes with tamale). The poor (literally) mother was so pleased with the name the hospital had given her baby girl. Female Garcia (not the true family name). Once the nurses caught on, they coaxed her to give the wee one a more proper name, like Maria.

[divingbiker]

I've got distant relatives named Harry Butt and D!ckie Butt. No joke.

[Zen]

Queen Victoria (they actually called her that)

We are not amused....

I've got distant relatives named Harry Butt and D!ckie Butt. No joke.

I give up.

[abvnx]

my husband wanted to name our first daughter Lily Elu Tao Jenga.(i have talked him out of this)

on my dads side, i have aunts Dode(rhymes with toad) and zelda. and a cousins nico(rhymes with rico) and dason and darcy.

[makbike]

I have had several brothers who were named for animals in a food chain - I kid you not. I've had Jack Rabbit and Tom Cat. Every kid in this family is a link in a food chain.

[Aggie_Ama]

My family has some that are just awful:

Pansy Jean (my mom)
Pansy Loreen (my grandma)
Pansy Ellen (my great grandma)

The doctor that delivered me delivered my mother and asked if I would be Pansy IV, thankfully my mom said no.

There is also Buella Faye (she goes by Aunt Sister) and Clora Tulifah Loranee (guessing on the spelling).

My dad went to high shcool with a girl named Tinker (first name) Bell (last name).

The other day I had to call a guy for work that is seriously named General. I felt weird saying it as his first name.

[NJBikeGal]

My colleague had a student a few semesters ago whose name was pronounced olive...unfortunately, it was spelled

ALIVE!

Maybe they were just happy she made it?

He had another one this past semester named Ikea...perhaps her parents like to shop at Scandanavian home goods stores?

[Zen]

My family has some that are just awful:

Pansy Jean (my mom)
Pansy Loreen (my grandma)
Pansy Ellen (my great grandma)

The doctor that delivered me delivered my mother and asked if I would be Pansy IV, thankfully my mom said no.

There is also Buella Faye (she goes by Aunt Sister) and Clora Tulifah Loranee (guessing on the spelling).

My dad went to high shcool with a girl named Tinker (first name) Bell (last name).

The other day I had to call a guy for work that is seriously named General. I felt weird saying it as his first name.

Awful they may be but that's old timey Texas (or the South)

Somebody has to have a kid and name him President.

[Brandi]

Hemi D? Am I missing something? Closest I get to a meaning here is 250. Brandi, on the other hand, is a name I've come across before. Not often, but it's not strange to me either.
BTW, Brandi, our neighbours just got home from a vacation in Denmark. One thing they saw was the Sand Sculpture World Championships. They were very impressed!

Very cool! But I don't think it was the world Championships. Those are held in Canada in a place called Harrison hot springs (neat place) I think what they saw was called Anoxy world champion sculptors sculpture. (what a mouth full). It was a demo but they look just like a contest. REALLY neat stuff!

[KnottedYet]

Chlamydia.

I kid you not.

[Eden]

Chlamydia.

I kid you not.

someone really must not have known what it meant and just though it sounded cool

[lph]

I think Mignon is actually a fairly common girls' name in France. The cross-cultural problem again. I struggled with it when naming my own kids. Some names that I liked in Norwegian simply would not do for a kid who would also be crossing the Atlantic a lot -- like Roar (pronounced roo-ahr), or Just (pronounced yoost). My daughter wound up being named after my grandfather because his middle name is a girls' name in Norwegian. So we kinda held our breath when she signed up for a dorm in college in the States -- what gender roommate would they assign to her?

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...)

[crazycanuck]

I had no clue what hemi was either...

I can't believe some parents want to call thier kids Devil...

Some people's parents

C

[margo49]

Heh - .

- in Norway you can call your son Wolf, Bear or Hawk and nobody bats an eyelid.

In (modern) Hebrew it is the same; my 3 are "little valley", "sapling" and "brook". You can call a boy "dawn" too.

[DirtDiva]

Haha! The kids I've taught (and this is merely most memorable the tip of the iceberg)...

Princess and Empress (sisters)
Peace (noisiest kid in the class, of course)
Talon
McChesney
Angel (the opposite, of course)
Bienvenue (I thought that one was kinda neat though - definitely a neat kid when he had his act together - guess it just suited him somehow)

I've taught a few Hemis, but always Maori/part-Maori boys - it's the short form of Hemiora. Aroha is a maori girls' name, but I hope you wouldn't go calling a kid "Love" in English. Actually, there are a lot really pretty names that only sound odd because they are arabic/asian/whatever and we're not used to hearing them - Amira, Anisa, Priya, Sadia, Zaynah...