while i myself do have a pretty unpronounceable name, i’d like to point out that it’s because my parents are ghanaian. (it’s also because my mother’s name is rose and she felt robbed of her ethnicity, so now she’s taken it out on my sister and me.) anyway, having this name has made 12 years of public school hell for me; now that i’m going to college and then into the real world, it won’t just be me dreading substitute teachers. no, now it can spread to include pretty much the world at large, from receptionists to potential bosses. so i’ve embarked on a search to find a better name; that’s how i came across your site. i ALSO found two sites which should be banned from public use because they’re both akin to lighting a match in the firework store of idiocy:

first there’s a charming baby namer at oxygen.com which seems innocuous – until you go into the database and see the names “swanhilda” and “shakuntala” back to back in perfect seriousness, both of which i think have bird derivatives. wow, that makes them sound even worse… a new feat. then there’s my personal favorites, that i just found in browsing for the link to the main site: “hreodbeorth” and “aemilius”. the first is the ancester of robert and the second the predecessor of emily. …words fail me. and “nike”? didn’t they see ANY problem with that?

then there is a true gem of a site called utah baby namer: an online help for parents looking for that distinctive name that says ‘i’m a utah mormon!'” i couldnt finish reading all the names because of the peculiar proportions of vowels to consonants in each name (there were either waaaaaaaaay too many vowels or none at all), but my favorite of the ones i did manage to get through were “aarikkaa” and “abcde” (names to choke on if ever there were any). a close runner up was “ae jae.” and i still haven’t figured out why “aingee” gives me the creeps so badly; it should be pronounced like angie, but it makes me think of fungus for some reason.

-Adwoa

Note: The authors of the Utah Baby Namer warn on their front page these names are not so much suggestions as anthropological artifacts. It should also carry a warning it will make soda come out your nose, make you want to rescind Utah’s statehood, and make you eager to talk to missionaries who come by your house, just so you can find out their names.

“Sure I’d love to hear about the Book of Mormon, Elder LuWayne (snicker snicker).”

Hey…maybe THAT’s why they used those names!