Baby Names - You're kidding Right???

[Midnight Kitty]

A friend of ours processed energy vouchers (used in the midwest to help poor people pay for heat in the winter) and encountered a woman, a single mother with a daughter named "Female."  The mother pronounced it "Fee-mal-lay."  Sounds pretty if you say it right   Our friend asked the mother how she came up with such a unique name and the mother said, "The hospital named her.  Isn't it a lovely name?"

My friend did not mention the mother's nationality, but she's not a native speaker of the English language, which is the only explanation I have for her mistake.

[blue2000]

My name is a little unusual, and I like it. The only beef I have with it is that it is my middle name. My parents refused to use my real first name. I think they should have just reversed the two. Of course, now I go by a nickname, which just confuses people more.

But on the topic of names that sound good, but have bad associations, my name is one letter off from the name of a disease. Of course, my brothers loved this idea. They still call me that sometimes.

[ChristiKayAnn]

a slight veer here --

How about the parents that tell you right from the birth of the child. We are naming him Dakota but we will call him Cody.   Why didn't you just name him Cody in the first place?

Or --

do the name the child and then only call them by their middle name to the point that no one in the family even remembers that middle name is not their first name?

Hahahahaha. That is so funny! DH's parents did that to him, and I still have yet to figure it out. The named him "R" but *always* intended upon calling him "K".        He doesn't even know why. What made it worse was that for a long time he went by "R" at work, and that's where we met. So after we started dating he asked me to call him "K". It was weird, but I got used to it. But then I had to explain it to my family who did not get it. Now everything's fine, but I will never do that to my kid.

However I will say if a middle name somehow starts to be used as a nickname of sorts and it sticks, fine. But to name your child something w/the intent upon calling them something else makes absolutely no sense to me.

Another note on spelling...my name is fairly common (really big in the early 80s as at one point there were 5 "megs" living in my sorority house), but the spelling of it is not unusual. However people often assume it's spelled all sorts of different ways. It always makes me scratch my head. I always spell names the "normal" way unless the person tells me otherwise.

My sister is Catherine Elizabeth and she has been called Beth from birth. This is because my grandmother had a fit when she heard that my mother intended to name her Constance Elizabeth and call her Connie Beth.

Grandma insisted that since my sister was the last grandchild planned if she was a girl she should be named after her mother (Katherine) since 4 of us had been named after my grandfather's mother (all 4 of us have the middle name Ann, G. Grandma's name was Annie Sally) but what she failed to recognize eventhough my mom pointed it out more than once is that I am named after G. Grandma Katie. My middle names are Kay Ann because my mother and birth father didn't like the way Christine Katherine Ann sounded with his last name (too long and clumsy) so they looked in the name book at nicknames for Katherine and they chose Kay.

The result is that mom named Beth, Catherine just to shut grandma up and now hates the name so she never used it.  you never know what the story is behind using a middle name verses the first name. Beth was 19 before she found out why we didn't use her first name, so it is possible even the owner of the name doesn't know the story behind why they are Middlename not Firstname. (Mom didn't want to sow dissention between Beth and grandma sense she wasn't in the running for worlds best grandmother anyhow, so Beth didn't know this story until I told her when she asked me, because mom would never tell her why she wouldn't call her Catherine)

[baconsmom]

We had a test for any name we considered for Bacon: we stuck it onto the end of two diametrically opposed sentences.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, [insert name here]."
"Now appearing on the main stage of the Eager Beaver Gentlemen's Club, [insert name here]."

If it was more appropriate for the second sentence than the first, we ditched it. Don't know what we'd use for a boy's name, though.

And yet, somehow, you decided to name her after a breakfast meat...

(runs away quickly laughing her hiney off, remembering the story of "Bacon")

Hee! But wouldn't a president named Bacon be pretty dang cool?

[baconsmom]

It seems the creativity should be for middle names.  You want to call your child be a weird name, make it the middle name, and then you can use that one.  Then the child gets the unique name without the hassle, and can just start using the first name when he/she wants no fuss. 

My mom regrets not naming me "Mary Christmas" to this day - I'm a Christmas baby, and it would have been neat to have this nifty little almost secret name.

[Shoo]

My mother wanted to name me after my great grandmother, so she was going to give me the middle name Lee (G Grandma's name was Leona).  However, when my mom wrote my name down for my birth certificate, she ran the middle name right into the first name (and didn't capitalize it either) so I ended up with an unusual first name and NO middle name at all.  So my name is Tamilee.

[Cyndi]

I'm having visions of my old "Mutilate a name game" thread....

[Suze]

ok here goes with the cousins names

Johanna - Mom
John - Dad
Elizabeth JANE - first baby
John (but we will call him Jack?) second baby

Dogs
joshua
jacob
jessie

Do we sense a theme going on here?

Why didn't they name first baby - first name JANE if that is what they wanted to call her all along?

and I know Jack is a nickname for John  but with all the trouble Dad had in his life with his name (John (something) Henry) you would think that he would not want to subject his child to the same jokes.

It is one thing if you sort of end up with ashort version of your name despite efforts not to.  I gave up years ago and live with Susie (Suze) Even at work - I thought that I had gotten them all to go with Sue when I first started working there, but then all of a sudden there were three of us and one wouldn't answer to anything BUT Susan, one was Sue and then there was me. (I gave up, I'm Susie now and forever)

It didn't help any that when I started there, too many of the women I worked with had watched me grow up, and I was Susie.

But before my friends kids quite got it right i was "Aunt Tew" for quite awhile.

[selkiewoman]

   The southern end of my southwestern state has a long tradition of unusual names.  My husband grew up with guys called Ruby, Pearl, Doris and Marion, and just about anything you could prefix with a D' or a De.  Nowadays it's the million variations on Madison, McKenzie and Katelyn, plus any Lovecraftian combination of random letters and sounds the parents can dream up.  Our paper puts out a quarterly section of local 1-year birthdays - we seem to run 25% to 30% names that could be remotely considered normal.  The latest had a little boy named Cash, which doesn't seem too bad until you noticed the last name is Profitt.

   When my daugher had her 3rd little boy, the nurse told her there had already been 3 Nevaehs that week, so they were getting somewhat accustomed to that one.  They were, however, floored by the advent of little Abcd, pronounced 'Absidy'.  To top it off, the nurse had mentioned this to another patient who was enthralled by the beauty and uniqueness of the name and decided on the spot that that was what she was naming her new daughter.  

   My son had a friend called 'Carl Carl Carl.'  At least it is fairly easy to spell, and no confusion over sex.  Another of his friends was christened 'Raskolnikov' (after the axe murderer in Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'.)  He also went to school with Galadriel, Tristan, (brother to Raskolnikov), and Sparkle Arkle.  My friend has a grandson named 'Royal Dannon.'

  I could go on, but this is already beginning to look as if I'm making it all up.  I'm not, though.

     Selkiewoman

[Midnight Kitty]

I think that until you've had to live with one of these you-neek names, you don't understand what a pain it is.   I never ever thought my name was cool, I thought my parents were stupid.

I love the *creative spelling.*

My mother chose an unusual spelling of a fairly common Anglo-Saxon name for me.  So I go through life correcting the spelling.  It's a real pain.  I asked her why once & she said she named me after her Chinese roommate in college.  I work with many Chinese people & I asked them about the Chinese pronunciation of my "Chinese" name.  They said it isn't a Chinese name at all, but that many Chinese like to spell Anglo names *creatively.*  This conversation was held in a Chinese restaurant & it degenerated from there.  At the end, we were joking that "we're all Chinese."

I will never forget the associate professor who "got smart" with me on the first day of class.  She was calling roll, checking who was present against who was enrolled.  She got to my name & I replied "present."  She said, "Doesn't your mother know how to spell *Kitty*?  I replied, "Yes.  She didn't name me *Kitty.*"

[Brentwood]

How about the parents that tell you right from the birth of the child. We are naming him Dakota but we will call him Cody.   Why didn't you just name him Cody in the first place?

I don't see that as much different from my parents naming me Catherine but calling me Cathy, or naming my brother Anthony and calling him Tony. It think it's pretty common to give kids a "formal" name, but call them by a shortened form or a nickname.

I would disagree. I think those are two different scenarios. "Cathy" is short for "Catherine", so logically when coming u with nicknames that makes sense. In DH's case, "K" is *not* a shortened version of his first name. They are two different names entirely. To me, his parents should have just named him "K" with his middle name being "R" since they never had any intention of calling him "R." (and, "K" is not a family name. It was actually DH's dad's best friend's name from childhood. Follow that?  so it's not like there was a family connection or something).

I'm referring to naming a child Dakota and calling him Cody for short. Cody seems like a natural nickname for Dakota, as Cathy is for Catherine.

[Brentwood]

Here at my children's school there is a girl named Kevin.  I felt very bad because the first time that she brought me some paperwork with her name, I told her "Oh, go back, they've given you your brother's paperwork.  This is for Kevin."  I felt so terrible when her friends said that her name WAS Kevin.  I was new to the school and still learning their names.

She does have a brother who attends, and it wasn't uncommon for people to grab the wrong one.  I have always wondered why her parents chose that name.  She has two older brothers and one younger brother, I believe the older two have fairly common names and the younger one has a slightly uncommon, but not unheard of name. 

Susan

There is a female broadcaster/reporter in Minneapolis named Kevyn Burger.

[Shoo]

I knew a girl who named her new baby daughter Kevina.  I don't know how you can look at a sweet little baby and think, "She's so precious.  She looks just like a Kevina."

[Brentwood]

I have a friend named Sean. Pronounced Shaun. That's a pretty common spelling, but it doesn't look anything like it sounds, does it?

It probably does if you're Irish.

Sean is the traditional spelling. Spellings like Shawn and Shaun are the variations.

[megswsu]

My sister is Catherine Elizabeth and she has been called Beth from birth. This is because my grandmother had a fit when she heard that my mother intended to name her Constance Elizabeth and call her Connie Beth.

Grandma insisted that since my sister was the last grandchild planned if she was a girl she should be named after her mother (Katherine) since 4 of us had been named after my grandfather's mother (all 4 of us have the middle name Ann, G. Grandma's name was Annie Sally) but what she failed to recognize eventhough my mom pointed it out more than once is that I am named after G. Grandma Katie. My middle names are Kay Ann because my mother and birth father didn't like the way Christine Katherine Ann sounded with his last name (too long and clumsy) so they looked in the name book at nicknames for Katherine and they chose Kay.

The result is that mom named Beth, Catherine just to shut grandma up and now hates the name so she never used it.  you never know what the story is behind using a middle name verses the first name. Beth was 19 before she found out why we didn't use her first name, so it is possible even the owner of the name doesn't know the story behind why they are Middlename not Firstname. (Mom didn't want to sow dissention between Beth and grandma sense she wasn't in the running for worlds best grandmother anyhow, so Beth didn't know this story until I told her when she asked me, because mom would never tell her why she wouldn't call her Catherine)

There will always be some situations w/convoluted explanations. But in most cases it's the parents making a conscious decision to name their kid "x" w/the intent to call them "y". In DH's case, there was no rhyme or reason to it. Which is why it makes no sense!   

Posted by: CathyF 
I'm referring to naming a child Dakota and calling him Cody for short. Cody seems like a natural nickname for Dakota, as Cathy is for Catherine.

Oh, ok. I can see what you're saying. That makes more sense.