1. Give a fake name at Starbucks:
2. Answer to any name that sounds remotely like theirs:
3. Live forever frustrated that extended family misspells their name after YEARS:
4. Answer the same questions about their names over and over again:
5. Redo, reapply or resubmit official documents because of a clerical misspelling:
6. Get pathetically excited and immediately fall in love with a total stranger for getting their name right:
7. Succumb to being called the wrong name:
8. A girl I work with gives her name and then automatically spells it when asked for her name. Its routine for her. She has to do it or they’ll just ask again and again.
9. Playing the knockout game
I got 6 out of the 7. Its a pain. Parents: don’t do this to your kids.
Set X's house afire with bacon?
My father, who had an evil streak, named my sister Ingegerd. It’s a medieval Swedish name not even used in Sweden. It’s pronounced Ing-E-Yaird. She spent a lifetime explaining it, spelling it and saying it over and over. (It contains a sound not used in English, so most people can’t “hear” it.) Finally, at age 55 she changed it to Ingrid.
My name is Bern, the capital of Switzerland. I’ve had problems and I feel it isolated me from early grade school companionship because nobody could say it. I’d have been much happier with Dan, or Bill.
Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1BJfDvSITY
“And while I appreciate the diversity of names, a little part of me cringes inside when I hear a parent call to their daughter, Anais. Her life is going to be tough. “
But it is the right of Holder’s people to make up weird names.
My name is Gurn Blanston
It doesn’t matter if you have a weird name, mine is fairly common and people still misspell it or say it wrong.
“Seven? Yeah, I guess I could see it. Seven. Seven periods of school, seven beatings a day. Roughly seven stitches a beating, and eventually seven years to life. Yeah, you’re doing that child quite a service.”
- Jerry, in “The Seven”
I’ve done 2, 4, 5, and 7 and my name is perfectly normal. If I went to Starbucks I’d probably do #1 too just for the fun of it.
All seven apply to me, though my first name is normal and my family has been in America for almost 400 years, I have a French last name that everyone has trouble with.
Then there is the story of Texas Governor JIM HOGG naming his daughters IMA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ima_Hogg
My first name isn’t particularly unusual, but the spelling is (it’s Scot, with only one t). It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even bother correcting people when they spell it with two t’s, unless it’s at the bank or something similar.
I have a real common name and I hated that growing up. There were always five or six other girls with my name in my classrooms. The teachers would resort to calling us “(Name) 1, (Name) 2,” etc.
Once I worked at a company where the women sitting in the desks right next to mine had the same name as me, and several other women in the company also had the name. Someone circulated a joke memo saying please not to hire anyone else with that name.
I always yearned to tell someone my name and have them say, “Oh, what a pretty name!” But it never happened. I felt ordinary and dull.
So there must be a happy medium!
Mooslime names don’t translate well either, for instance;
1) M’Balz Es-Hari
2) Haid D’Salaami
3) Hous Bin Pharteen, his cousin I-Bin Pharteen
4) I-Zheet M’Drurz
Gotta be rough.
It is particularly galling when the spell check automatically tries to change my Latvian name of Guna to guano. Sheesh!
I worked at a welding shop with a guy named Spike Nail. No joke, I carded him. His sister Penny was employed there as well.