What's in a name?

[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...)

[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...

[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.

[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."

[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.

[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?

[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.

[TexanCzexican]

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!)

I won't even lie, I LOVE the name Gage.

My family is all P's so my kids will more than likely end up with different names.

I LOVE Paxton, Peyton, Perdita, and Patience.....I also loved Porter so much that I named one of my pups that