Author Archives: notwithoutmyhandbag

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

Another good name from the news:

NTSB investigator Tealeye Cornejo

The Name Boards on AOL have suddenly been invaded by a bunch of newbies, most of which either claim to be pregnant with twin girls, or know absoulutly nothing about names. While I have to respect these newbies (many of which actually know that -son and mack- mean son of) the names the suggest can be absoulutly awful.

My favorite one has to be Kendalyn (“Its like Kendall, but its prettier!”) While this name is not entirely awful, they only get worse. Madison is a favorite, but all of them spell it differently, anything from Maddicynne or Mhattuhsuhn. One woman is planning on naming one of her twin girls Eabrazhun. Karsyn, Chandlyr, Parkyr, Kaidyn, and other “The Y makes it feminine!” suggestions are everywhere.

And then theres the (alleged) sightings. Someone said they met 3 sisters, Jelously, Signifigence, and Honestey. Theres the rumor of Chevodka, the man who was concieved while his mother was drunk on vodka in the back of a chevy. We see the lemonjello and orangejello post at least once a month. Someone said they knew twins named Hansel and Gretel.

In real life, the most atrocious name I have heard on a little girl is Maverick. What would posess any person to give such a masculine name to a little girl, I will never know.

-L

Names to Be Read by Immature Readers Only:

• Re-elected in December as chief minister of Delhi, India: Honorable Sheila Dikshit. (Indian Express, 12-16-03)

• Arrested in May for prostitution in Grove City, Ohio: Ms. You Suk Kim. (WCMH-TV (Columbus, Ohio), 5-22-03)
• Revealed in September to be threatening to use his $5,000 Oakland, Calif., government arts support money to kill African-Americans: artist Richard Aswad. (East Bay Express, 10-1-03)
• Killed in August in a village near Sihanoukville, Cambodia, as a result of having his testicles defensively squeezed by his battered wife: Mr. Ouch Yan. (Associated Press, 8-29-03)

Costume designer on a local theater production: Beaver Bauer

My husband works in human resources. At (region)(state) Health Systems, he came across an Anita Nooner.

He had to explain that one to many of the co-workers who caught him laughing. It’s a sad world.

Our friend named her son Stiv after Stiv Bators. I don’t know which is worse, the name or the thought that he’s named after a zitty, weasly, dead junkie. (Not that there’s anything wrong with zitty people. Some of my best friends…)

I work at the University of (big American city), where we have Jack Daniel and Dick Wood helping us out. I also handled the application a few years ago of a Barton Fink (!!), but though accepted, he chose to attend elsewhere. One applicant came close, but no cigar, with Karen Hiscock. If only it’d been Sharon.

-S

My mom has a friend whose name is Leanetta. This woman named her daughter Ravenelle. I guess Raven wasn’t feminine enough for her.

-T.

Unfortunately I don’t think I have many weird name sightings of my own to contribute… the few I can think of are

Windsong (last name) – fellow student in intermediate school

Chariti (last name) – former coworker

This could be considered sort of traditional, but why spell it with an “i,” for pity’s sake?

Monday Muse – on same shift to help check voters at a polling place. Definitely her real name, because it was right there in the voter registration list.

Galadriel Allman – college. This actually sounds sort of normal if you know she’s Duane Allman’s daughter… you know how musicians are.

Royeric (last name) – college. I guess his parents couldn’t decide whether to name him Roy or Eric and decided to give compromise a bad name.

Given the college I graduated from (Sarah Lawrence) you’d think there would have been more people there with odd names, but I can’t think of any, at least not names they were given by their parents (there were plenty of people with names such as Raven, Silver, and Wednesday, but those were self-selected).

-D.

This is the most amazing discussion I’ve seen on the baby name board I read. Someone wrote in to ask whether “Messiah” would be a good name for a boy (as if it would matter what the gender was). Someone else responded with the following:

“I’m not sure about Messiah cause the nicknames that come to mind are Mess, Messy, and Siah.”

Yeah. Because the only problems with the name Messiah are those pesky nicknames.

Unbelievable.

Thanks again for your great site.

-C.

We once had a client who named her child Des’Unique.

-P

I work for a very large health insurance company and just have to laugh at some of the names I see. Having grown up with a “different” name myself, I have sworn for years that I would never do the same to my child. Traumatic name-related childhood experience #172: A substitute teacher in the fourth grade called me “Melvin” during roll call.

Here are just a few of my favorites:
Jynelta Snodgrass
Candy Canary
Mary Christmas (this one was even accompanied by a comment of “‘Seriously!'” by the claims examiner…)

Some are funny enough on their own, but are much funnier when taken in the context that they were submitting a request to cover Viagra/Levitra/et al (drugs for erectile dysfunction):

Randy Johnson
Harry Johnson
Richard Johnson
Dr. Harden
Dr. Drain

-Merin (pronounced just like Erin…)