Names, weird and otherwise...

[RandomAnthony]

Charissa mentioned, in another thread, that she threatened (with good reason, in my eyes) to name her kids "apple or rainbow or blanket" if her in-laws didn't stop bugging her to carry on a family naming tradition. This got me thinking of a couple questions.

1. What are the weirdest names you've heard?

2. Should parents be praised or taunted for such weird kid names? Does it depend on the name?

3. What are your favorite names?

4. What's up with celebrities and weird kid names?

5. Should these names be characterized as "unique" and not "weird"?

6. Why do parents choose these weird/unique names? What are the consequences/benefits for the kids?

Ok, by way of a response, I will say two of my three sons have what I would call interesting middle names. My seven year old's middle name is "Tempest" after my favorite Shakespeare play. My youngest son's middle name is "Odysseus" after "The Odessey". These names drove my mother in law INSANE...a true benefit, thank you very much. I've also had women tell me the names will make my sons sound deep and help them get dates. I just thought the names sounded cool and meant something.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal a while back about people trying to choose names for their kids that sounded powerful and political and actually paying naming consultants to help them because they thought it would give their kids an advantage in life. That sounded way over the top to me.

[[deleted user]]

I think some people go about naming their kids the way they go about getting tatoos. They get some big, wierd, bright thing they think it cool at the time and you know one day they have to look back and laugh at how stupid they were!

I have a friend that just had twin girls:

Vivian and
True

Now come on doll, if you're going to name one True, the other either has to be False or Value!

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

Luckily my parents moved us into the hippie commune *after* we had all been named. Nevertheless... going through life with a $20 handle like "Charissa" has been challenging. No one knows how to pronounce it, sometimes even when they've heard it 100 times, and forget about spelling it. Combined with the last name of "Drengsen"... well... let's just say I never get confused with anyone else. Has this made me a weirder person than most people? It can be argued that is has. I may have been weird anyway, but the name sure didn't help. Not that it's a bad thing! Just... you know... complicated.

Michael Jackson naming his kid "Blanket"... it's just one of his many criminal acts. Personally I think he should have been sent up the river just for that alone.

On the other hand... If I meet another "Tom" in my life I may run through the streets screaming. Certainly there's got to be more interesting names out there without resorting to "Toilet Seat" or "Flounder" or "Biscuit". There's a balance somewhere, right people? Or is that too much to ask?

[shellyindallas]

Charissa-I was hoping in that last thread you would tell how to pronounce your name. I'm assuming it's KAH-rissa (?)
Also, you make a good point. Names like Tom and Bill can be as annoying as something like Telephone or Jet. So yeah, I agree, there's got to be some middle ground here.
Of all the jackass celebutard names out there the one I'll never get over is one from a celebutard by blood--I heard Matthew McConahey (I have no idea how to spell his last name) on Letterman explaining that his brother named his kid Miller Lite. The Miller part isn't so bad...but Lite for a middle name are you fucking kidding me? It's not even good beer!

[Monica]

Love the names Randomanthony! I'd hoped to name my son Orestes after the Oresteia and it's titular hero -but was shot down because of the whole rhyming "orestes, testes" deal which may have come to naught.... So we went with Ronin.

I agree the Lite is tardlike and there should be some even ground ... I do like Liv Tyler's kiddos name Milo which is unique (for the times)yet not farfetched.

[J]

All four of my childrens names start with the letter E. I have no idea how that happened.

[[deleted user]]

My sister (the one who gave birth last Friday) wanted to name my niece Braxton, Drew put his oh-so-manly foot down on that one. She's Grace, which I actually like. Drew wanted Sabastian (for a boy), sis asked him if he wanted the kid to get beat up every day. Isn't it the wife who's supposed to pick out the foofy names?

I would say CHA-rissa, at least that's how I've been saying it in my head for the past couple of months...

I have a friend who named her daughter Tralin, her name was Tracy and her husband's Galin...then she divorced the alcoholic and he has never been seen again, GOOD CALL!

[J]

Tempest? Odysseus? Danger? Oh, I so love those!

[RandomAnthony]

Thanks, people. I will forward your kind posts about my kids' names to my mother in law if she causes any trouble:)

I thought Kar-is-uh (that's how I thought we say it, anyway) was kidding about the name "blanket"...ha.

There's an achievement test used in education called "The Woodcock Johnson." Yes, ladies and gentlemen, try to say "We're going to be studying the uses and purposes of the Woodcock Johnson today" in front of a room full of undergrads, and see how well that goes over....

http://www.riverpub.com/products/wjII...

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

It is in fact Kuh Ri Suh (both Anthony and Shelly are correct)...

people say CLUH RI SUH all the time... I'm like... where did you get the L???

I love your boys' middle names Anthony BTW... very classy.

[Clackamas]

I have an acquaintance named Rose who named her children Thorne and Blossom. Seriously, how do you think the boy is going to feel years from now when he's going through his mom's Guns&Roses collection and find out that "every rose has a thorn"?

[J]

I sympathize with you Charissa. I can't tell you how many times in my life people have read my name as Jose' instead of Josey. Do I look like a Jose'?

[Seizure Romero]

All this time I've been reading 'Charissa' but I've been pronouncing it 'throat-warbler mangrove'. Hmm.

No, I won't stop stealing Monty Python jokes.

'Seizure Romero' was first used in protest on a name tag that convention people insisted I wear. It was only a few hours before some lackwit asked me what kind of name 'Seizure' was. I looked at him and hoped my blinking was audible. He continued, "I mean, I know Romero is Hispanic, but...."

[[deleted user]]

That's really going to drive me nuts now Char, every time I read your name I have to mentally chastise myself!

Clackamas - Ha!

I dated a guy in High School named Laurence Francis James II... not too bad right, except his father wasn't Laurence Francis James I, his older brother was! Talk about a lack of imagination!

[Seizure Romero]

I'm thinking that's not a gene-pool in which you'd want to swim. Way to dodge the bullet.

[[deleted user]]

Sparrow was the 6'2" 200 lb 17 year old my daughter was friends with
yah-the parents had him in the commune

once worked with an x-ray tech called Steve Geiger

and Gwenyth Paltrow should be shot
but i figure she was probably hungry at the time

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

heeee... Seizure.... I think I'm going to tell everyone from now on that's how to pronounce my name.

Amy, don't sweat it baby... I've been called worse!! : )

[Kirk]

In honor of Steven Woodcock...

If you any of you have ever looked at my profile and seen my last name, you know the testicular burden I've---um---toted throughout my life. Yes, I've heard it all: Curnutts, Curballs, Curnads... (This is not an invitation to bring it on).

On another note, when I was 12 I used to ditto off a neighborhood newspaper. All the people getting ready to have babies used to tell me the names they were thinking of for their kids and I would print them very naively: Ivory, Rufus, Homer, and, of course, all the double entendres---Felacia being the one that put me out of business.

[Paul]

"Tempest? Odysseus? Danger? Oh, I so love those!" But J, if you had chosen them, a mysterious force would have changed them into Etempest, Eodysseus and Edanger. Not so pretty I think. At work we deal with emails from people from all over the world so we naturally collect funny names - a couple of recent favourites are an American called Gail Quail and a Latvian called Marissa Bendova. The kids names at Georgia's school are weird. One is Bracken, that's a girl, and another is DeQuayne, that's a boy. Most memorably in nursery she encountered a boy from Ghana whose splendid name was Gifty Kwaka (pronounced Quacker!).

[Clackamas]

So... My complete name is Alice Clackamas Lee Cruikshank. My dad worked in a salvage yard when my mom was pregnant with me. He was very into cars and wanted to name me Constance Velocity Cruikshank (for constant velocity, a.k.a. cruise control which was a new, high-end feature in 1976). My mom objected on the grounds that she'd never known a Connie that she liked (her exact words were "Connie's a sl*t name"). Instead, they agreed on Alice for a first name... the salvage yard that dad worked at was Clackamas River Auto Wrecking though, so he slipped the Clackamas in while mom was still doped up after having me.

Aside from that, My dad wanted 12 kids but my mom couldn't do it so my 3 siblings and I have 12 names between us. My younger brothers have it worst as Axle Carl Jerry Lee Cr and Michael Garth Edward Eric Lee Cr.

I have no idea what kind of reasoning helped them determine that these names would be okay to grow up with. Poor Axle got called Axle Crankshaft for years... "what's your mom's name, radiator? What's your sister's name, car door?"

[[deleted user]]

you can't make this shit up

[Seizure Romero]

Wow.

Your father deserves an A+ for effort. Constance Velocity Cruikshank is a name that screams adventure.

[Clackamas]

Unfortunately not. It makes me feel like I came from Laurence Francis James I and II's gene pool.

What about funky spellings of names? I know it's their parents' fault, not theirs, but do you automatically assume people are idiots if they have a creatively spelled name? My job requires that I see al ot of names on a daily basis and a couple of weeks ago I saw a Malysa, Kyberlii, and an Alysynn who all worked for the same company. Obviously the hiring manager doesn't have my bias.

[[deleted user]]

those two sound like cyborgs to me
let me guess a web design co.

i also loved the constance velocity
and your real name is lovely with alliteration

it sounds like an old engine getting ready to kick over

alice clackamas lee cruikshank
alice clackamas lee cruikshank cruikshank cruikshank alllllice

kiss that old man of yours he's marvelous

[[deleted user]]

tyranosaurs reeeexxxxx would be better

if you're an 8 year old

darn
i never can keep the hate in the right group

[[deleted user]]

I met a girl named Terri B. Dull - mean parents!

[[deleted user]]

Crystal Smith and
Crystal Wrestler... both not so good, but not as bad as Crystal Clear!

[Seizure Romero]

You can lead a horticulture, but you cannot make her think-- Dorothy Parker

[Nikki]

for my oral quizzes i get dressed up to give my students a challenge by pretending to be phoney patients based on my real clinical cases

some of my favs;

Ima Rex - motor vehicle accident

edith Norgelstein - geriatric patient based on my grandmother (NY accent and all- "oy the bunions")

anyway u get the point - keep themlaughing and maybe they won't notice that they learned something

[Nikki]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (20 minutes later) HAHAHAHAHAHA....

p.s. George Forman? WTF?!!!

[[deleted user]]

hit 4 times too many in the head
at least he has an excuse

[[deleted user]]

and...

my 1st granddaughter's name is stella
3 years later my son named his daughter...ella

he's the musical one

[[deleted user]]

my daughter suggested i mention my 1st grandson's name

i said there's nothing particularly amusing about

theo (dutch pronunciation tay o)

well...i guess the humor comes in with the whole name..theodorus adrian

and what it means
theodorus means enlightened one and
adrian means dark one

ok that leaves my head injured son as the smart one

[J]

Paul: Dear God! You're right! Those are horrible. It's a constant tongue twister trying to keep these kids names straight as it is. And while some clever girls might think the name Odysseus is hot, I doubt Eodysseus would be so lucky.

You know, it is growing on me though.

[Clackamas]

I went to school with an April Mae Jullian...

[Christy]

I'm a school social worker. I worked with a family with three sons. Their names were Mister, Master and Sir. *shaking my head*

[Jillian]

I was bored a few weeks ago and watched the Tyra Show. They had an episode where they presented a group of people with different ethnic names and they discussed the different sterotypes of each name. The first name they discussed was Deedrica. People in the discussion group said she was from the ghetto, black, on welfare etc. Then after they showed the clip of the discussion they would reveal on the show who the person is with the name. Deedrica was actually a little white girl. Her Mom based her name partially after a soap opera actress she likes.

Another name was Ashleigh. The assumptions with this name was she is white, spoiled, slut, gets by on her looks, only will wear designer clothes, preppy etc. Showed the picture of the real Ashleigh and she was a little black girl. Her parents named her Ashleigh instead of an ethic name because they didn't want her to be held back in life because of her name.

I found the show rather interesting and brought up a lot of good points. Your name is the first thing people see sometimes and they judge you based on that.

[Paul]

A guy I was unlucky enough to know misspelled his first two sons' names when he registered them - first one was Garry, second one was Kirt.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr20...-
06.shtml

Destiny??