The Weird, the Bad, and the Ugly: Name Discussion - Merge

[OkToBeTakei]

I know we like to snark on fundie name choices.

Interestingly in New Zealand the Department of Internal Affairs can veto this.

In 2008, New Zealand's family court ordered that a nine-year-old girl whose parents had called her "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii" should have her name changed because it was embarrassing and "makes a fool of the child".

The have banned 4Real, V8 and Lucifer.

Now while I do agree that some children need to be protected from their parents stupidity at times, is this common elsewhere? I have no idea if there are banned names in my country.

Admittedly some of them made me laugh.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4real-zealand- ... ml#Px9V5RV

[hywelis]

Now while I do agree that some children need to be protected from their parents stupidity at times, is this common elsewhere? I have no idea if there are banned names in my country.

Here in Italy, as far as I know, names have to be in line with the baby's gender. E.g. you can't name your baby daughter Andrea, because that's a male name in Italian.

Also, you can't give your son the exact first name as his father, if the father is still alive. That makes sense to me because it saves the kid from a bureucratic nightmare later on.

Geographical names (i.e. India, Asia and so on) used to be banned but they've been allowed since, I think, ten years or so. You could still get away with names that were theoretically "geographical names" but that no one recognized as such, for example you wouldn't have had any trouble naming your daughter Sharon or Adelaide.

Hywelis

[uber frau]

Adelaide has been a name for a person for far longer than it has for a place. (just saying).

Restrictions on names are still fairly common in parts of Europe, especially Scandinavia.

In Australia the rules are mostly quite fair (nothing obscene or offensive it is open to appeal.) There is a really stupid rule that disallows accents and non letter characters though, which is ridiculous, especially considering how nonWASP the place is.

[salex]

http://mentalfloss.com/article/25034/8- ... aming-laws (didn't break the link because it is mental floss)

Interesting laws in several countries, several that contradict some naming conventions/fads in the USA. It says in Denmark, you can't use a last name as a first name, but I know that the tradition of using a grandmother's maiden name as a first name is not uncommon in some groups in the USA. I have friends who did it and I contemplated it if we had children, because I liked the sound of several of the combinations.

A couple of places disallowed first names that were not gender specific, which would have killed a few names that have been popular in the usa over the years. I always thought it was interesting, and I understand it to a point. I wonder if nick names are as common in those countries, because even if you can't name your child "Moxie Crimefighter" in those countries, you could still call her that as a nickname at home, even if her given name was Mary Louise.

[OkToBeTakei]

Wow I had no idea. Especially Italy and the repeat of the Father's name, fascinating.

The fundies would be spinning if the government controlled their ability to name their kids :lol:

[nelliebelle1197]

My husband is from New Zealand and this happens over there all the time. We go at least once a year and there is always an article in the paper like this.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Japan has a list of acceptable characters to use (all the "common use" characters plus 200 or so extra ones that pretty much only happen in names). Mainly this is for font reasons, to be sure that your name can fit everywhere your name needs to go.

But of course the "common use" character list has plenty of terrible characters in it, so you can name your kid any sort of horrible thing and it's technically allowed. There are web pages out there devoted to snarking on bad names. Some of them are just crazy readings, as in there's no way you'd guess that the name is pronounced the way it is from the characters they give (often these are puns, they are really terrible) and some of them you wonder if the parents are very educated or not because they pick characters that are pronounced fine and all that but have awful meanings, when a very similar character would be said the same way and be far better in a name.

Hopefully little Talulah... can just go by "Tallie" or "Tal" or something like that and get along pretty normally.

There's a baby page that made the rounds of the internet a while back, someone named their kid "Urhines Kendall Icy Eight Special K" (if you google it you can find the birth pages, it was huge for a while) and I remember thinking if I were him, I'd just go by "Kendall"!!

[LadyBlue]

I sometimes visit a baby name snark board. There is a lot of really bad names out there.

[ems]

Funny, I just read this one:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/gl ... d-ban-them

[GodsKnickers]

I wish they banned some names here. My aunt is a homeschool visit teacher (supervising teacher) for a homeschool board here in Alberta. She visits an uber fundie family that has 8 kids with crazy stupid fundie names. My aunt is fundie/fundie-lite but she really doesn't enjoy having to visit this family in the slightest, lol. She says they are really weird. My aunt doesn't typically get gossipy about anyone, ever, much less express dislike about people, so for her to say anything about this family....

Anyway, all their kids have ridiculous names like Hallelujah Christ is Lord, Jevhovah Jirah My Saviour, Praise The Lord, and so on. Seriously. Those are their actual, literal names. No normal middle names either, like Susan or Robert or whatever. It's insane.

[Jinger Jar]

Here are some names of students I have had over the years. They are not nicknames. They are the names on the official school records:

* Bismark

* Hennessy

* Hennessy's younger brother Cognac

* Micheal

* Chardonnay and her twin Merlot (in the same class)

* Jackiechan

* Labria

* Uhree'kah

* Mareebelleiquah (try spelling that one quickly on a hall pass)

* La'Montrez

* Mayflower

* Uranus

These are the ones off the top of my head. I am sure I have blocked others my mind won't allow me to remember.

I get wanting your child to have a unique or memorable name. I also get naming a child after a special event or time in your life. One of my brother's middle names is Apollo because he was born the same week as the first moon landing. Victorians used to name children after cities where they were conceived. We had an elderly neighbor named Vienna because that's where her parents did the horizontal bop that resulted in her birth. Her sister was named Florence for the same reason.

But at some point your child is going out into the wider world, you know? And it's hard enough for kids to get their start in life without saddling them with a name that's really hard to pronounce or spell, or a name that sounds like a body part that people don't usually discuss except with their doctor. Or booze... Why would anyone name their kid after booze?

My husband's best friend is due in June, and she and her husband are going to name their son Spyder Beau. Seriously. Spyder. Beau. They're going to call him Spy for short. And neither one of their were high when they came up with this name. I jokingly told me husband that at least they're not naming him Spyder Webb. :doh:

[GodsKnickers]

I was watching an episode of House Hunters today (nothing else on) and there were triplets named Ever, Soul/Sole (not sure on the spelling) and Pace.

Okey dokey then.

[AuntCloud]

For hours of fun, I recommend this (linkie not broken):

http://notwithoutmyhandbag.com/blog/cat ... babynames/

Priceless snark all-around.

[Joan of Snarc]

There was a little girl in my son's kindergarten class named Thumb.

:wtf:

[Bloo]

For hours of fun, I recommend this (linkie not broken):

http://notwithoutmyhandbag.com/blog/cat ... babynames/

Priceless snark all-around.

There is an associated message board which I'm a member of. It's amazing what parents try to get away with- and succeed at:

Millionz'a'Dollaz

God

Genocide

Arayan Justice

Adolf Hittler (first and middle, apparently addressed as both)

Ya'Highness

I personally know a sibling set of Hallelujah, Praise, Blessing, and at least one other sibling with a name in that vein. Middle names were likely of an ethnicity I was unable to pinpoint.

Oh, and Praise is a boy.

[Phukktifano]

Horrible names are not just a fundie thing, I know a set of twins Penn & Pencil (called Cilla), a Joushua, a Sahara-Lynn, a Phaedra, an Elmo and an Ossifer. The only really cringing fundie name I know is Charity Chastity Lastname

[Jenny]

Reading thing makes me glad my parents were boring and gave me the most popular baby girl name of the year. I graduated with 3 other Jennifers in a class of 200. One of them even has the same middle name and last initial. My class also had 6 Sarahs, which was the #5 name for girls that year.

I don't think anyone had an outrageous name. Maybe we just lived a a boring area.

[Lulu]

A friend told me there are children at her children's school called Charlie and Sharlie, they are brother and sister. But also the horrible, horrible spelling, throwing in k, z, x etc Once witnessed a woman at a child's party, not even her child's, introduce herself and her son to everyone as they arrived by spelling her sons name because everyone wanted to know that her son was soooooo special that she spelled it with an x.

[lipstickgoalie]

I went to high school with a Candy Barr. My mom went to high school with a girl, and I can't remember the correct spelling of the last name, but phonetically it was Ima Mary Whore. Teaching hockey class I have had tons of Jaxons, Braxtons, a Canden, a Jet, and my personal favorite, Coal. (Yes, spelled like that)

ETA- I can't believe I forgot about the best one of all- I had a kid whose llegal given name was Skate. Good old Skate!

[lilith]

Horrible names are not just a fundie thing, I know a set of twins Penn & Pencil (called Cilla), a Joushua, a Sahara-Lynn, a Phaedra, an Elmo and an Ossifer. The only really cringing fundie name I know is Charity Chastity Lastname

I love the name Phaedra, and its not a made up name, it's from Greek mythology.

[Joan of Snarc]

Reading thing makes me glad my parents were boring and gave me the most popular baby girl name of the year. I graduated with 3 other Jennifers in a class of 200. One of them even has the same middle name and last initial. My class also had 6 Sarahs, which was the #5 name for girls that year.

I don't think anyone had an outrageous name. Maybe we just lived a a boring area.

Have you ever heard the song "27 Jennifers" by Mike Doughty?

1nN_5kkYR6k

[bananacat]

Should this really be on the Snark Board? It seems like it should be in Chatter instead.

Names change over time. It happens. In most cases it isn't a big deal. There's no objective way to decide that this certain set of names is ok while this other set is too trendy. And it's not a new thing either; it's exactly the reason that we have names like Liam and Wilhelm which seem different but are cognates and used to be the same thing until a string of parents used super trendy variants and they each became different names in their own right. Same deal with my own name, Megan, and all of its variants, from Margarethe to Daisy. And doesn't anyone remember historical figures like Cotton and Increase Mather from history class? Tons of people have had names that were new and trendy at the time. Many of them caught on and eventually became old-fashioned. Many of them died out but still didn't prevent that one specific person from becoming historically notable.

People can use nicknames. Talula probably just goes by Talula. As long as it's not obscene, I think the various levels of government should just butt out and let language change as it will. And don't even get me started on the places that try to force gender roles by not allowing any crossing of names.

Also, if this type of change and innovation didn't happen, we'd all be using the same few names for billions of people. I'd rather see some novelty than an endless list of people all with the same name. Where I work, I am so thankful that my coworkers are Kristen, Christian, Christine, and Christopher because at least I can differentiate between then easier.

[Scone]

My husband is from New Zealand and this happens over there all the time. We go at least once a year and there is always an article in the paper like this.

Wait, really? I live in New Zealand and I don't think I've heard of this happening more than a handful of times. I mean, everyone knows about Talula, but that's really the only time I remember ever seeing the name-veto thing come up in the newspapers.

I have an acquaintance whose new little daughter is named Khaleesi :confusion-shrug:

[OkToBeTakei]

I love the name Phaedra, and its not a made up name, it's from Greek mythology.

Yup I like it also.

I heard of boy girl twins names Darrell and Shedarrell :shock:

I'm beginning to think some kind of legislation is required.

No I do not think it should be in chatter. If I did I would have put it there thanks.

It whilst amusing as chatter subjects are is also snark and political. Discusses parenting and should naming be legislated to some extent. I can see that going down really well in some fundie circles. Not.

[javafriend]

As a teacher, I've come across many interesting names. I understand that parents want to give their child a name that is special to them but there are few memorable names that were very silly and some that seemed cruel.

In the very silly category, I've known a set of twins named Joe and Joseph and a boy named A'Million. In the cruel category, I worked with a boy named Pretty and his sister called Ana - although her actual name was Marijuana spelled backwards. The worst was probably a little guy who was saddled with the name Whyzdum.