Stupid Kid Names.

There was a customer who used to come in my store and his real first name was... BabyBoy. Apparently he was abandoned after birth and placed in an orphanage and no one ever named him. I saw his drivers license with the name on it. I felt bad for him, especially since he was over 50 and having a name like BabyBoy...


I had a friend of a friend a long time ago who had named her daughter...Brahmus. She was a bit off in the head...

Throat Warbler Mangrove


... but it's pronounced "Luxury Yacht".

I'm naming my kid Zuul.

Any name that is not pronounced anything like it's spelled.

ie. Siobhan -> "Sha vohn"

Hey! I like my name! Now my cousin, Roisin....(yes, that's her real name and it's pronounced Ro-sheen), now there's a name! We used to call her Raisin just to be mean.

I actually go by Mary in real life since my mother did the Irish Catholic thing and named me Mary Siobhan. Growing up Irish Catholic on Long Island, there were almost as many Siobhan's in my school as there were Mary's.

One of the most prevalent naming trends for girls that I've noticed in the past 10-20 years is using last names for first names, mostly for girls. Out of 16 kids in my daughter's kindergarten class, nine of which are girls, there are two McKennas, one Taylor and one Madison. (One of the boys in her class is named Blayze, a name I get a kick out of since this kid really lives up to it.) I've also run into girls named Hailey, Bailey, McKenzie and Kennedy. This trend joins the parallel practice of giving girls names that have been typically used for boys, like Jordan, Sydney, Morgan, and Avery; older forms of this trend are Vivian, Dana and Kelly.

I've also met a lot of parents in the past seven years who seem to like variations on Jayden/Braden/K/Caden/Pey/Payton for either boys or girls.

Of course, I'm sure a lot of people find amusing the nickname by which we refer to our daughter; her name is Katherine, and we call her Kitty. This is mainly because I've met a gazillion little girls called Katie, and I wanted to call her something different, at least while she's little. Also, it seems to drive my mother-in-law nuts; she always icily refers to her as "Katherine," and refuses to call her by her nickname.

Shannyn Sossamn (this one actress) named her kid "Audio Science"

That's funny. My late mother-in-law's given name was Kathryn, but all her life she went by Kitty. Nothin' wrong with that. Feel free to tell YOUR mother-in-law that.



P2

then there's the famous:

Urhines Kendall Icy Eight Special K

Aw . . . I used to call my Katie, who turned 16 four days ago (!), Kitty Katarina when she was little. I still call her Katiedid. And Kate. And Katherine. I figured when we named her that it would be a good name since there are so many nicknames and so you can be so many people!

Ditto with my Christine. Chrissy and Katie, kinda cutesy, don't you think? Friend of mine thought so - she called them "Crispy" and "Crunchy" behind our backs, lol. Her daughter told me told me about it, though, and I thought it was cute.

coco

P.S. Urhines? I wonder if that is pronounced "your hineys"?

omg my cousins are sooo very guilty of this... let's see... Keaton Cruz, Colette AndieMay, and see this is bad, the names are so unusual I can't even remember them!

Have had people come into my office with strange names or spellings, like Cheryn (pronounced Sharon), Benavee, Win, Wikitoria, Pendleton (for a female), Rabbitt, Kevin (for a female), Jerlyn.... I could probably go on all day...

Though to have a unique name might have been nice, as long as it isn't "TOO UNIQUE"
This is coming from a girl with a very common name.

Ricky: Now Lucy, I don’t care what you name the baby but we’ve got to get it settled.


Lucy: Well, I’m not going to settle on just any old thing. I want the names to be unique and euphonious!


Ricky: OK. Unique if it’s a boy and Euphonious if it’s a girl.

-----

coco

I went to school with Candy Barr.

When I used to work in advertising, I had a client with the last name of Moorehead. They named their first child Craven.
Craven Moorehead.
Now that is just down right mean imo.

Ghoti is not mispronounced. It follows the rules of English just fine.

Ghoti is pronounced "fish"... "gh" as pronounced in 'enough', "o" as in 'women', "ti" as in 'intuition'.

-Ghoti

It always struck me as a weird name -

My Uncle & Grandfather are named Newton (Newt)

And from what I was told, my Swedish great-grandfather was named Njewton.

Well, Ghoti, the link given kinda points out that "Ghoti" is formed by deliberately choosing nonstandard words, and that by and large English spelling and pronouncation is fairly regular; nonstandard words are often so due to their origin (i.e., "electrician" pronouncing "ci" as "sh" makes sense if you're trying to preserve the original "electric" root.)

Which doesn't make it any less fun to use the name, just, it's not following the standard rules.

Does pronouncing by nonstandard rules make it a mispronunciation?

Really, I thought Chance was just picking on me.

And really, how the heck else would you pronounce 'ghoti'?

-Ghoti

Sha-vohn

"go tea"?

A couple I know wanted a girl, planned for a girl, were repeatedly told they were going to have a girl even. They decorated and were gifted according to the child's expected gender. And, since they were positive it was going to be a girl, they had only prepared girl names.

Guess what?

The two then decided after some deep thought that they would name their new boy "Tucker."

I Don't guess they envisioned the "Why am I named Tucker?" question later in life.

I wouldn't want to explain it.

How can you have a stupid Kid Names thread without mentioning Bob Geldof's daughters Fifi trixiebell, Pixie, Peaches and Heavenly Tirana Tigerlily ( or similar)? also River Phoenix and his siblings....

I wanted to call my first daughter Rowan after a close friend at school. But once I married Mr Berry, I knew I couldn't do it to the poor child.

Incidentally, I learned something very interesting about names, which I thought I would share with you. As a keen genealogist I had often read that surnames developed as people started to travel more and needed to identify themselves. If you were the only John in the village, then you didn't need a surname, but once you moved to the town and were one of five, you needed to have a surname like Baker, to identify you.

It seems that this is quite wrong. Reading the history of the development of the English surnames, it seems that children before the Norman Conquest (1066 for those who have forgotten their English history lol) were assigned a unique name. Parents would search for a name which would express the child's individuality, and it would be a name that wasn't held by anyone else. They might incorporate a talent or skill that they hoped would be important to the child. Just sometimes, they might invoke the name of a famous or successful relative, but generally not while that person was alive.

Thus, you didn't need surnames to identify you, if your first name was unique. After the Normans arrived, the practice of naming children after saints or important local (and alive) landowners caught on, and it was then that the need for distinguishing surnames was understood.

I think that people who try to name their children in a unique way are trying to establish their children's uniqueness, and harking back to the old ways.

The people who roamed America before the Europeans invaded it used sometimes to take several years to decide upon a name for their offspring to ensure that the name fitted the character, which is a similar idea.
Bws
Cali

heh, I must be young, almost none of these names sound strange to me.

even knowing that I still pronounce it Goaty

The trend for in the southern USA is to make compound names with a short first name adding the name "Grace." My sister, who teaches first grade, talks about classes full of kids named "Mary Grace" and "Katherine Grace" and "Mary Katherine Grace."

Stupid names? I have heard of young girls named "Female" pronounced "fee-ma-lee." I know one "Cinderella" (a grown woman). I am related to one "Candy Kane." In Houston, Texas, many public spaces were endowed by "Ima Hogg" (no kidding).

In Texas, we shop at the H.E.B for "Howard E. Butt" (or Howie Butt), and I wanted to (albeit jokingly) name my son "Ramses."