Just a quick rant against some of you parents out there. I know you have the dire need to “be different” than everyone else and avoid boring names like Bob and Joe for your kids, but please think long and hard about what you’re naming them and what they’ll have to deal with in school and when they’re trying to make it in the professional world (i.e. after schooling).
For example, how would you pronounce the following names (real names from newborn babies at Stacie’s hospital):
Orangejello
Lemonjello
Would you say “Orange Jello”? No, that’s wrong and God forbid you mispronounce it in front of the mom! It’s:
Or-an-juh-lo and Lem-on-juh-lo (sorry if I don’t know the proper dictionary syntax)
A Truly Horrific Name
Now I want to prepare you for one of the worst possible names I’ve ever heard. This is a real name as dictated by a friend who works in the Pennsylvania State Social Security offices. It’s worse than Harold Balls or Michael Hunt.
Are you ready for it?
Here it is.
Analtouch
Yeah, how would you pronounce that one? Like a bad thing that happens in prison? I would have thought so too, but nope, here’s the correct pronounciation:
uh-null-tush
Wow, what else can I say?
What names have you run across? I want some real, serious names, not some Bart Simpson hijinx. Maybe I can help get the word out to parents that they just need to think like a bully for a second (or a potential hiring manager) and wonder whether Analtouch is a good name or not.
Unless they’re intent on their child being “Dr. Analtouch, the Proctologist“
I was the librarian in an elementary school in New Orleans in the early 70’s. One of the students names was Enema pronounced en-ee-mah. I wanted to strangle the parents.
there was a girl in Jamaica named
Aluda Shitt .
gots to be more carefull
What gets me is parents who name their kids after booze. I have seen a Dacquiri and a Tequila.
Yeah, that’s best reserved for cats. Like my cat, Captain Morgan 😉
A friend’s mom was an EMS worker and a nurse, and she saw an Acetaminophen, and I think worse, Abcde, pronounced “Ab-said-ee”. How confused would you be the first day of kindergarten, when your name is all over the place? When I taught, I had a Cinnimon (we called her Cinni) and a friend had Usmail (Us-my-ail), as in the post office.
Through my mom’s group, I met a woman named Candy and she honestly married a nam named Bill Korn. Her name became Candy Korn!
I commuted on the train with a guy once who I got to know over the course of about a year. I only knew his first name, Harry. One day, there came a need to know his phone number so I was entering it in my cell phone and asked him for his last name. I was sorry I did because I busted out in sidesplitting laugher that resulted in the guy eventually ending our train friendship. I couldn’t help it, his last name was Balls.
I once worked with a guy named Hugo Furst!
Actually, no, I didn’t. I just made that up.
Orangejello and Lemonjello – as well as Shithead – are both documented in the book “freakonomics.” IIRC, the book does at least suggest that these stories are on the level, not urban legends, but it seems to me that the likelihood of the sister of one of Shithead’s former teachers reading this blog is rather slim.
I went to school with a girl named Anita Bush, I swear. Poor girl, what was her mother thinking?!?!?
I used to work for SBC business and we kept running into problems with an agent at another department named Nita Mann. I thought it was a made up name, but I saw it on her rep-log. Also, when I worked for a cell phone collections department, I spoke with a Quing (pronounced like king) Dong and U. I. Tung. No joke. These are classics. 🙂
My friend has a cousin who’s name is Crystal Ball, poor girl. And I read an article not long ago about a mother who named her baby ‘Asshole’. Apparently it’s pronounced “Ah-sol-ay”, but spelled asshole.
Lol, I almost forgot… I went to school with a guy named Phil McCracken. What are these parents thinking?!
My first name is Honey and my middle name is Beatrice(Honey Bea) I went to school with a Sharon, who later married J. Peters.