I love your site! I fell into the unfortunate experience of being exposed early in life to two different sets of horrific names: the “mama made” names that have exploded like a neutron bomb through the public schools, and the even more odious faux family names with which middle managers one generation out of the sticks grace their head-geared, ADD-raddled spawn.

Here are some examples:

–Twins named Domiko and Tomiko who went by their nicknames: Frito and Dorito.

–A girl whose parents preferred the “French” spelling of Amber: Ambuer. Yeah, blame everything on the French. Another girl was named “Timiri,” pronounced “TI -mur -ee.”

–Another girl whose mother must have found the endless procession of Tanyas and LaTanyas too prosaic. Her name was Satanya. As in the Hebrew name for the devil, plus “-ya.”

–I don’t know what the hell it was about the names “Antoine” and “Andre” that made people’s creative juices flow, but in the same school were DeAndre, Twan, AnTwan, and Deandray. There was a Kenyotta who went by “Yot” and didn’t understand when the track coach started calling her “Boat.”

–My brother’s third grade had both a “Precious” and a “Princess.”

–On to the less ridiculous but more pretentious. Some people feel an all-consuming need to be cute, in the way ducks with bows stenciled onto your wallpaper and silhouettes of obese gardeners are cute. There was a family of one son and four daughters named, respectively, Brian, Kaycee, Kaylee, Karlee –I could go on, but does it matter? I don’t know how the son escaped with Brian and not Keeeegan.

— My father in law went to school with someone named “Dorcas Clapsaddle.”

-Corey