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I once got a telemarketing call from a woman who identified herself as a name that must have been spelled LaZanya, or something, but was pronounced exactly like "lasagna." In this region (North Dakota) a lot of Native American families have translated surnames (like White Buffalo or Crow Feather). This is not mockworthy stuff, of course, but I did laugh inappropriately when I saw a news story about a dude who was convicted of manslaughter for accidentally killing his brother-in-law because he was messing around with a gun and didn't know it was loaded. His name was John Henry Knows His Gun. My mother once taught a student named Eugene Pool who went by Gene. Yep. I went to school with twins named Stormy and Skye. There is a reporter for Reuters, or at least there used to be, named Opheera McDoom. It's not a pseudonym; I know someone who worked with her for a while. (I would say this is more "awesome" than "terrible" though.) There is at least one child in the town where I live named Raistlin (as in Raistlin Majere from DragonLance). I have seen a Raistlin listed as ringbearer in three different wedding announcements, and I sincerely hope that it's the same kid.
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Sep 13, 2012 15:50
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I realize these are both normal girls' names in Japan, but I knew two sisters in a Japanese immigrant family whose names were Yu and Ai. It was just about impossible to have a conversation about them without ending up in a "Who's on first?" situation.
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Sep 13, 2012 20:54
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My friend's mom, a nurse, once saw a baby named Polyethylene. The mom thought it sounded pretty. I gotta admit, it does sound kind of like a name, derived from Polly and Ethel.
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Sep 13, 2012 23:41
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Ariel is a man's name in Hebrew - come on, haven't you heard of Ariel Sharon?
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Sep 14, 2012 07:39
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As I said before, most of the Native American names here are pretty normal, but I felt bad for the dude I saw today with a surname of Coming Hag.
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Sep 15, 2012 04:34
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Zerz posted:I also worked at a daycare with a woman named Princess, and due to her role as a preschool teacher, the kids had to call her "Miss Princess." My mom worked at a preschool in the 1970s and says she taught boy-girl twins named Toady and Widget. I think Widget might have been the girl, but I'm not sure. She says those were nicknames and not their legal names, but she never learned their legal names because that's how their parents signed them up and those were the only names they answered to. Also, this was at a hippie preschool called Middle Earth.
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Sep 17, 2012 15:28
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I just remembered how stoked I was when I got my 10th grade class schedule and found that my American history teacher was "A. Merriken." Yes, it was real; her first name was Anne and Merriken was her married name, and it was a total coincidence that she taught American history. IIRC, she didn't find it funny, either.
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Sep 21, 2012 01:55
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Just FYI, phone books aren't a 100% legit source of weird names, as some of them will let you list yourself under whatever name you choose. My hometown had a listing for Ferris Bueller; it was not an actual person named Ferris Bueller, just a guy who liked the movie and thought it would be funny. I went to school with a Chinese immigrant family named Wong who thought it was hilarious to tell people "you have wang the Wong number" when they called their house.
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Sep 24, 2012 15:03
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Khazar-khum posted:So many variants of La-a have been told that I wouldn't be surprised if someone now gives it to their kid to be 'ironic'.
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Sep 27, 2012 01:04
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Rabbit Hill posted:I used to work at a school for Native American children, and many of them had really neat last names, including Knows His Gun, already mentioned in this thread. I had compiled a list of all the great names I encountered but can't find it now -- off the top of my head, I remember Rides the White-Hipped Horse, Kills the Pretty Enemy, Kills on Top, Bear Comes Out, Bad Bear, Lone Bear, Yellow Eyes, Middle Rider, Bear Chum (the last name of a very nice little boy, first name Byron...very plausibly a friend to all bears), Scalp Cane, Big Back, and Onion.
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Sep 28, 2012 00:47
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Dogbrisket posted:Worst thing I ever saw in my time working in California's social service system was a kid named Wu Tang. Just loving horrible.
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Sep 28, 2012 22:57
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redmercer posted:On a more positive note, since this is also somewhat the Cool Names Thread, I met Malachi J. Blade when I was in basic training. Good guy.
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Sep 28, 2012 23:46
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I went to school with a girl named Sparkle Coker. In my parents' hometown, there was a guy named Clay Pots who owned a barbecue restaurant named after himself. Apparently quite a few people saw the CLAY POTS sign and came in looking to buy pottery. My mom once had a student named Gene Pool. Someone I know on another internet forum sees a physician named Dr. Hu. Finally, in my job, I see a lot of names from the Crow nation in Montana. The Crow were one of the tribes unfortunately saddled with a lot of awkwardly translated surnames. One I've seen a few times is Holy Elk Face (I always mentally add "Batman!"). There's also Birdinground, Gun Shows, Hugs, Pretty on Top, and Not Afraid. But the best one I saw was a married couple from Custer's times. Her name was Kills in the Night and his name was Crazy Sister-in-Law. Those were their full names. (I think Kills in the Night is still used as a surname now. Not sure about Crazy Sister-in-Law.)
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Mar 24, 2015 16:11
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The White Dragon posted:Gun Shows is the best goddamn surname ever. And now I remember one more cool/horrible Native American name. I saw a news story out of Montana once about a dude named John Henry Knows His Gun, whose 1st-degree murder charge had been reduced to manslaughter because he didn't know the gun was loaded when he aimed it at his brother-in-law. Also, the victim's surname was Whiteman.
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Mar 27, 2015 14:58
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The Orange Mage posted:I just found out one of my teenaged cousins has something that would count for this thread. I thought her name was Kayla. Is that her legit birth name or did she start writing it that way herself? I know a Kathryn who goes by KT, and a Casey who writes his name KC. I also went to school with a girl named Susie who decided to start spelling it Psiouxzy. I don't know if she continued it into adulthood, but she was in the yearbook that way and teachers went along with it.
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Apr 1, 2015 15:35
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TINY T-REX ARMS posted:Took my two year old to the park today. He was being a little crap and refused to play on the swings or slides so we just walked around the playground. A little kid probably about his age toddles over and my son immediately goes over to him and proceeds to stand RIGHT IN FRONT of this child with this big, goofy smile on his face. He's a lil' creep but he's young enough that it's funny and not that odd. "Bear-it" is how I'd pronounce "Barrett" ... am I missing something? Are you in the UK?
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Apr 30, 2015 17:58
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razorrozar posted:You never played FFVII. Neither have I, but I'm familiar with the name. It's a common enough surname, and surnames-as-given-names is a thing, especially in the south.
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Apr 30, 2015 19:48
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Yeah, bear-it, carrot, Mary, merry, marry, bury, wary, dairy, berry, very, Harry, hairy, chair, dare, pear, parent, apparent, parrot .... these are all identical "air" sounds to me. I can try to pronounce them differently, but it just sounds like I'm faking an accent if I do.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:32
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Oklahoma, although I don't have a pronounced accent, and I'm embarrassed to admit that while that lady sounds fairly wacky, that's just because of the pitch of her voice and what she's saying. Her actual accent doesn't seem odd to me. I live in North Dakota now, so my accent's been migrating.
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Apr 30, 2015 21:11
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Ran across this couple in a company newsletter: Husband, Carrol Wife, Zackarae
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May 1, 2015 17:47
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princecoo posted:We had a Japanese exchange student stay with us when I was a kid, he was pretty cool. His name was Yu, which isn't unusual but it did result in multiple unintentional comedy routines.
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May 4, 2015 19:01
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bringmyfishback posted:Also fraternal twins Yuuya and Yuya.
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May 5, 2015 14:13
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Is there a rule that a certain percentage of boys born in this generation have to have names ending with N? Like ... 80%?
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May 8, 2015 23:28
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flakeloaf posted:Reminds me of the story of January "Jani" Schofield.
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May 12, 2015 16:24
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KillerEggplant posted:There were a LOT of Jennifers in my classes growing up. This data point could probably be used to guess my age fairly accurately. I was born in 1977 and, like you, grew up surrounded by Jennifers. No one ever got my name right (they thought it was Allison), or if they did, they made Wonderland jokes. People who heard my name before meeting me would invariably tell me they'd expected "a little old lady." Apparently it's getting popular again, which is very strange to me. 
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May 15, 2015 19:59
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Istari posted:My first exposure to this (when I was about 6) was that episode of the Simpsons in which Marge and Lisa are shopping for a bathing suit (swimming costume ?), and Marge points one out and says "It has a starfish on the fanny".
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May 20, 2015 15:19
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Artemis Fowl, of the young adult urban fantasy/adventure/whatever series of the same name, is a boy. At least there it's explained that he got a female name. I can't remember the explanation, though.
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May 26, 2015 10:51
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I was looking for a different oddly named actor from Babylon 5 and ran across this one: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1249078/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t438 "Bluejean Ashley Secrist is an actress, known for You're Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley's Birthday Party (1997), Babylon 5 (1994) and The Amanda Show (1999)." I can't find the one I was looking for - it was a single very long name, no surname. I guessed wildly that it might be Indonesian, but I don't really know what I'm talking about.
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Jun 16, 2015 21:21
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Bertrand Hustle posted:The Hong Kong director Jingle Ma has an... interesting choice of English name. It's not a translation of his Chinese name. Dude just goes by Jingle in the English-speaking world.
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Jul 5, 2015 01:52
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As a 38-year-old Alice, I got to experience a childhood of being told I had an "old lady" name - and now my name has broken the SSA top 100, I presume because of Twilight. I guess by the time I'm an old lady myself, people will hear my name and assume I'm in my 20s, which isn't so bad, really.
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Jul 11, 2015 02:46
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sweeperbravo posted:Possibly the latter, but a lot of it is just the social/societal expectations of being married. You're married to Mr. Taylor? You must be Mrs. Taylor. You're going to get called it anyway by people who meet your husband first.
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Jul 14, 2015 14:55
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Bertrand Hustle posted:I feel like I should share this tidbit I noticed on last year's Name of the Year entries: NOTY mentions that his sister also got to pick her own name. I wonder what she picked. Edit: I'm imagining a serious little girl named something like Elizabeth Smith, rolling her eyes at her brother trying to be all "cool" and "wacky."
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Jul 15, 2015 16:00
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It bothers me more than it should that SOLIDS-GAS-LIQUIDS is out of order, no matter how you look at it. I wonder if her old friends and family members are forced to call her SERPENTFOOT or if they're allowed to call her Jenny or Sarah or whatever.
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Jul 16, 2015 16:29
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I was just reading about the DEA Silk Road case and ran across this in a Wired story from March:quote:Two former investigators into the Silk Road dark web market have been arrested for money laundering and fraud charges directly related to their investigation.
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Jul 17, 2015 15:05
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sout posted:I've seen you post in this format before and it always makes me laugh. Content: My 10th grade history teacher was named Anne Merriken. So when I got my schedule, it said my American history teacher was A. Merriken. I thought it was a joke until I met her, but no, it's her real, married name.
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Jul 24, 2015 21:46
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