Author Archives: notwithoutmyhandbag

i came across a birth announcement recently where the parents named their daughter shesperfect (first name) and virtuouspassion (middle name). umm yeah…

-H.

Hi – My great-grandmother’s name was Icie Green. The name of one of her daughters?? Flossie (who is now Flossie David, living in Ozark, Alabama). That’s my grandmother. No one knows where in the heck she got these names – but that side of the family is Georgia/Alabama cracker from way-back, so no surprise, I guess.

Barbara

Three gems from just one short newspaper story. All were kids under 11:

J-von
Jahi and Mars (siblings)

I am a database administrator working with personnel data. …

After analyzing large amounts of names I think that the Dutch, because their language sounds like English, have the funniest names. I think that modern Australian names (they are infatuated with place-names and have their own history of strange words) are pretty warped as well. Some of my all time favorite names (these aren’t babies, they’re young adults):

Bent Strange (Dutch)

Kill Voort (Dutch)

Dern Smrz (Eastern European, note lack of vowels in last name)

Dick Fagley (this is a common name!) also Rick and Mick Fagley in my database.

Arlche (pronounced Alicia and spelled just like that)

Lightwave (pronounced Latweeva)

Lakita Martin (Lockheed Martin? The aerospace company?)

I have 4 people in my database whose first name is LaTrina (is that a ladies Latrine?)

Nafloyd

Tosmo Smoot came in with Blonda Tooms. Neither realized that their names were reversed spellings of each other and they were friends! Tosmo DID tell me that he met an Osmo once.

One of my favorite names is apparently not uncommon in Jamaica: Tardo. Yup, Tardo.

I know a few Australian kids named:

Keagan, Teaghan, Ashy, Twilly, LaRissa (is that Clarissa? oh no it’s not), Hayson (Hey Son!), Killen (Killing?) and Still. Still was supposed to mean something like “Stoic” in Australian English but I am reminded of the liquor still.

-D

I am from Ohio, where our nightly lottery telecast is hosted by Beneatha Barkley (I think that’s her last name). What was her mother thinking? Did she think this child would be beneatha contempta?

My ex-husband’s white trash family was a treasure trove of bad names. His mother’s first name was Haven and she had brothers named Ace, Wig and Hack (real names, not nicknames). It’s that eastern Kentucky inbreeding thing, ya know?

I have a small business researching Quarter Horse pedigrees and have certainly come across some weird horse names in the course of it. The strangest one yet is Fridgit De BS De Ber. Maybe I should go to one of these baby-naming boards and toss that one out there. It would probably catc h on like wildfire, but then again, maybe not. There are no Ys in it.. ……

-K

One of your entries reminded me of a high school classmate in Marietta, Georgia, named Unique Supreme Gore. Google doesn’t find any evidence of that guy, but while looking for him on classmates.com I found another good one. The guy I always knew as Duan Dove turns out to be named “Duankiest”. I have no idea how that is pronounced; it sure as heck looks like “Da Wankiest” to me.

– Karen

I went to school with a girl called Silvia Sylvia. Her mother preferred the first spelling, and her father the second, so they simply gave her both.

-Rachel

My parents were convinced I was going to be a boy, and were going to call me Christopher Robin (see! I escaped a fate worse than death, there…) They had not picked out a girl’s name. Then, when I proved to have one less penis than necessary for the definition, my dad, who had been reading a sci-fi book, said, “How about Alia?”… So I am named after a cute little toddler who kills her grandfather and, in order to prevent herself from killing her brother, commits suicide.

When my parents read the second book–where she goes crazy– they wrote the author a panicked letter but he reassured them that it was a real name… it means exalted one in Arabic, which is very nice. He didn’t mention that, in latin, it kind of translates as The Other Woman…

-Alia

…and in Hebrew it (though usually spelled Aliyah) means literally “ascent” or more generally “immigration to Israel.” Exalted other woman flies to Israel…interesting….

I work in a job where I call a lot of people (wth their permission! not a telephone marketer!)… Yesterday, I very carefully did not call someone named Clay Granitte. I knew I couldn’t not giggle.

-A

I worked in the children’s department of my local library system for the past two summers, and I’ve seen some hum-dingers. The worst had to have been from the English family, whose eldest son was named Rusty. Rusty English.

We had a Kanydah, a Prettany, a Tiarra, one Matailba, a Karizma, a Shaianne, and a Cochise. I also recall seeing a Seneschal at one point. Some of these names were truly horrifying.

-Emily