Category: Bad Baby Names

My parents were pretty good with first names since we have such a peculiar last name – Hamburger (yes, just like the food but you’d be surprised at how many spellings people can come up with – well, maybe not). We got tons of prank calls asking for “fries with that”. My mother specifically named my sister Mary Patricia even though she liked “Patricia” so it wouldn’t be pointed out during role call (“Hamburger, Patricia” = Hamburger Patty) and shockingly, my sister, who goes by Tricia, was not teased in this way until she went to college last year. I’m a victim of the common name-uncommon spelling trend – Karin Elisabeth – do you know how many pronunciations there are for this? I don’t even bother to correct the spelling any more unless it’s on a legal document.

Anyway, it’s the series of last names “married into” that makes it so funny. Obviously, my dad’s family name is Hamburger. His older sister married a Loignon (french for onion), his baby sister married a Bull and he married a Cowherd – that’s right, my mom went from Cowherd to Hamburger.

-Karin

Our last name is Cox… you can imagine the time we had picking out baby names. What fun to find all the names that just won’t work….

Anita
Moira
Holden
Chase

These were some of our funniest ones… Moira was high on my list, for a girl, until we realized how bad our last name really is.

~ Judi

I loved your site! Many laughs with my husband reading beside me. I thought I’d send you a few.

My grandmother and grandfather were crazed when it came to baby names.

My mother and my two aunts are (in order of birth):
Lura Lee (No idea what posessed them.)
Rene Chrystelle (Rene pronounced REEN. Apparently they actually knew someone else with this name.)
Geri Lynn (This one is not so bad unless you know that their last name was SPERRY. It has also been a family scandal as Geri was one of my grandfather’s ex-girlfriends!)

YIKES! And oddly enough, my aunt Chris’s (as she is so graciously known!) daughter named her daughter Chrystelle too! Luckily they call her Christy.

Keep up the good work!

Cate

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

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

-H.

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

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

J-von
Jahi and Mars (siblings)

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