Horrible Baby Names

• OSH

  

  Midstate01;1764671 wrote:I actually like a lot of those names. Lol

  I understand how some can...sorta. Usually it's just trying to be "trendy" or "clever" with names.
  
  Personally, I like names to have more meaning to them and be real names. For instance, Kinley, it's a shortened version of McKinley (or MacKinley) and is a surname. It's absolutely fair to have a surname be a first name, nothing taking away from that. But, to me, it's just a bit of a stretch for THAT name (or some others). Same goes as Tinley (or Tynley), a surname...rare, but it is one. But the name never really existed in the States until recently because someone wanted to be "trendy" and then...everyone had the same idea.
  
  Names are important. Kids are stuck with them the rest of their lives. It's cool maybe for a kid, but I just cannot imagine calling a 35-year-old Graydon. My wife and I had some major talks about this stuff when we were having kids, and especially with her as a teacher. We didn't want to stick kids with a name that is horrific and everyone just scratches their head about. We went with some family names that have meaning to us, our family, and also actually exist. We did our own little twist on them a little too, but nothing out of the norm (and they still aren't "popular" names).
• Fab4Runner

  

  I don't mind trendy names, but I do dislike crazy spellings. A girl I went to HS with named her son Kohwyn. I hate it so much.
• Commander of Awesome

  

  sportchampps;1764748 wrote:I had an ex coworker who went into labor two weeks early on OSU vs Michigan Gameday. She and her husband scrapped the names they had planned and named the twin girls Scarlet and Gray.
  
  When we have a kid we are leaning towards Landon or Grayson for a boy or Kennedy for a girl.

  Kennedy seems like a really popular name recently. I know of 3 ppl that have had a girl in the past yr that named their girl Kennedy.
• Fab4Runner

  

  Commander of Awesome;1764789 wrote:Kennedy seems like a really popular name recently. I know of 3 ppl that have had a girl in the past yr that named their girl Kennedy.

  It was ranked 139th in 2000, and was 54th last year. There were 4459 baby girls named Kennedy in 2014.
• Commander of Awesome

  

  Fab4Runner;1764793 wrote:It was ranked 139th in 2000, and was 54th last year. There were 4459 baby girls named Kennedy in 2014.

  Ooo what was top 3?
• Midstate01

  

  I like unique names. I have 72 cousins.. so like not having so many people with the same name. But I 100% agree the names with the stupid Dash's and what not are awful.
• Fab4Runner

  

  Commander of Awesome;1764794 wrote:Ooo what was top 3?

  I'm so glad you asked!
  
  Emma
  Olivia
  Sophia
• Laley23

  

  R.E.L
  
  Pronounced Ariel.
• redstreak one

  

  Being an athletic director who is responsible for making programs and announcement sheets for PA kids names and pronunciations are a freaking nightmare! We have had mad parents come to the press box or scores table and yell at our guys for mispronouncing their poor precious kids names! As for miy kids, Jacob, Ali and Benjamin
• Midstate01

  

  redstreak one;1764841 wrote: As for MIY kids, Jacob, Ali and Benjamin

  I see what you did there...
• sportchampps

  I'm surprised to hear Kennedy was that popular.
  
  Brother and Sister In Laws named their kids Bennent (After the last name in the movie Ted) and Blakely (After someone in San Andreas)
• cruiser_96

  

  Actual middle name on a transcript I recently read: Iloveja
• Wally

  My first name is Tom. I bet nobody has named their kid Tom in years.....
• GOONx19

  

  Wally;1765654 wrote:My first name is Tom. I bet nobody has named their kid Tom in years.....

  Thomas came in at 54th most popular boys name of 2014.
• sherm03

  

  Forgot about my favorite horrible kid name, Semaj. He played for Xavier the last few years. I refused to call him Semaj when talking about the games, and would only call him "James Backwards."
• Ironman92

  

  Family at school (with already 2 bad names)...named newborn brother Yellen
• Zunardo

  sherm03;1766053 wrote:Forgot about my favorite horrible kid name, Semaj. He played for Xavier the last few years. I refused to call him Semaj when talking about the games, and would only call him "James Backwards."

  That's pretty funny, I like that. My wife has a unique middle name - Jamese, pronounced "ja-MEESE". Apparently when she was an embro, her parents were expecting a boy, and the boy's middle name was to be James (her father's first name). When they found out they had a baby girl, they swapped out the boy's first name for a traditional girl's name, and just altered the middle name.
  
  The one first name I rolled my eyes on was Jaxton - I saw one of ladies on my high school alumni forum name her kid that a few years ago. I could almost understand Jaxson or Jaxon as variant of Jackson (although both still extremely pretentious), but that extra "t" in the middle set my teeth on edge.
  

  redstreak one;1764841 wrote:Being an athletic director who is responsible for making programs and announcement sheets for PA kids names and pronunciations are a freaking nightmare! We have had mad parents come to the press box or scores table and yell at our guys for mispronouncing their poor precious kids names! As for my kids, Jacob, Ali and Benjamin

  As a PA announcer for high school and college basketball, I am right there with you - and I'm the one who ends up doing the work trying to learn pronunciations at the last minute. The only rule of thumb that seems to work is to guess how a name will be pronounced, and than say it totally differently, which will end up being correct. I will say after 20 years I've gotten somewhat better at guessing.
  
  One difficulty that comes up often is having a young man with a first name that starts out "Da" or, like Dashawn, Daquan, or Damarco. My instinct is always to start with a soft "dah", and then accent the second syllable. That seems to me a logical rule, but it's just as likely that the person says "DAY-", accenting that first syllable.
  
  Had one kid where the last name was something like Lepinin. Apparently the kid was Hispanic - it was pronounced something like "Len-yin", but not quite, because he kept correcting me - I guess I didn't sound like a native speaker to him. He kept saying, "Sir, it's a Hispanic name, it has the tilde over the "n", you know!" My mental reply was, yeah kid, I've known what a tilde was for 30 years before you were an itch in your father's pants, but there is no way the "p" is silent in a Spanish surname like that, and I can't glide in the path between a short "e" and a short "i", I can only do one or the other.
  
  Parents - yeah, they can be challenging. For about six years, I had two sets of cousins with the same last name involved in sports in high school. Their fathers were brothers with the same last name. The problem was that each family pronounced their last name radically different. One had the traditional English pronunciation that 99.9999% of Americans would use without thinking, the other used an affected French pronunciation that you never hear. Of course, the first of the athletes I had to announce was on the French side of the family. I couldn't figure out why this lady kept yelling from the stands every time I "mispronounced" his name. I was told later that it was his mother, and that she was very fussy about the French pronunciation. I heard it might have been the mother's idea to change the pronunciation from the "regular" one, and her husband went along with it, but I never confirmed that. I dunno, maybe it sounded more debonair or something. Fortunately, I got to know the kids in both families, and they always took it in stride and just laughed when I forgot who was who.
  
  I've had this happen several times - I ask someone with a difficult first name how to pronounce it, and then I write it phonetically beside the printed name on the sheet. They will look at it and right away say, "That's not how it's spelled". I will say, "It'll be spelled correctly when it comes out of my mouth". It usually takes a few seconds, but then that person will say, "Ohhhhhh .....".
  
  I worked an all-star football game a few years ago where the most common first name was Marquis and several variants - probably had 8 players with that name. Invariably, each one of them told me to say "mar-KWEESE", emphasizing the "w", which threw me for a loop. I had always assumed when seeing the word in school that you gave it the traditional French pronunciation of mar-KEE or maybe mar-KEESE. Then along came an Ohio State basketball player in the mid 1970's named Marquis Miller, and he pronounced it like Marcus. You never know, that's why you always ask.
  
  Sometimes I'll ask about a difficult name, and none of the coaches or other players can agree on how it's pronounced - so I'll go right to the person, and then the person will say, "Either one is fine, I don't care." That drives me bonkers when they say that.
  
  It's a lot of work, but it keeps me out of hot water most of the time, and every once in a while you know it's worth it. Had one college basketball player with a very unique first name that I would never have guessed correctly, but I got the correct pronunciation ahead of time and nailed it during the starting lineups. After he came out of the game, then checked back in a few minutes later, he turned looked me dead in the eye, tapped the table, and said, "Thank you". My brain wasn't quite in gear at the moment, and I said, "For what?" He said, "For saying my name right. Nobody ever does."
• Raw Dawgin' it

  

  Fab4Runner;1764526 wrote:I know a girl who named her son Lyric (awful all by itself), and named her daughter Melody. #why
  
  Know any really bad ones? We've all heard the Lemonjello and Oranjello stories, so I am talking real babies that you actually know.

  Trendy white people names are horrible and black people generally give their children names so everyone knows they're black before anyone even meets them.
• jmog

  My mother in law used to work in the labor/delivery ward in a hospital in rural Mississippi.
  
  Without commenting on the ethnicity of the woman, a woman came in and had a girl, she named her daughter Arm.
  
  A couple years later she was in again and had a boy. She named him...and I kid you not...Penis.
  
  Some brother and sister down in Mississippi grew up with the names Arm and Penis.
• sleeper

  

  jmog;1766617 wrote:My mother in law used to work in the labor/delivery ward in a hospital in rural Mississippi.
  
  Without commenting on the ethnicity of the woman, a woman came in and had a girl, she named her daughter Arm.
  
  A couple years later she was in again and had a boy. She named him...and I kid you not...Penis.
  
  Some brother and sister down in Mississippi grew up with the names Arm and Penis.

  We all know the ethnicity.
• Ironman92

  

  Zunardo;1766557 wrote:That's pretty funny, I like that. My wife has a unique middle name - Jamese, pronounced "ja-MEESE". Apparently when she was an embro, her parents were expecting a boy, and the boy's middle name was to be James (her father's first name). When they found out they had a baby girl, they swapped out the boy's first name for a traditional girl's name, and just altered the middle name.
  
  The one first name I rolled my eyes on was Jaxton - I saw one of ladies on my high school alumni forum name her kid that a few years ago. I could almost understand Jaxson or Jaxon as variant of Jackson (although both still extremely pretentious), but that extra "t" in the middle set my teeth on edge.
  
  
  
  As a PA announcer for high school and college basketball, I am right there with you - and I'm the one who ends up doing the work trying to learn pronunciations at the last minute. The only rule of thumb that seems to work is to guess how a name will be pronounced, and than say it totally differently, which will end up being correct. I will say after 20 years I've gotten somewhat better at guessing.
  
  One difficulty that comes up often is having a young man with a first name that starts out "Da" or, like Dashawn, Daquan, or Damarco. My instinct is always to start with a soft "dah", and then accent the second syllable. That seems to me a logical rule, but it's just as likely that the person says "DAY-", accenting that first syllable.
  
  Had one kid where the last name was something like Lepinin. Apparently the kid was Hispanic - it was pronounced something like "Len-yin", but not quite, because he kept correcting me - I guess I didn't sound like a native speaker to him. He kept saying, "Sir, it's a Hispanic name, it has the tilde over the "n", you know!" My mental reply was, yeah kid, I've known what a tilde was for 30 years before you were an itch in your father's pants, but there is no way the "p" is silent in a Spanish surname like that, and I can't glide in the path between a short "e" and a short "i", I can only do one or the other.
  
  Parents - yeah, they can be challenging. For about six years, I had two sets of cousins with the same last name involved in sports in high school. Their fathers were brothers with the same last name. The problem was that each family pronounced their last name radically different. One had the traditional English pronunciation that 99.9999% of Americans would use without thinking, the other used an affected French pronunciation that you never hear. Of course, the first of the athletes I had to announce was on the French side of the family. I couldn't figure out why this lady kept yelling from the stands every time I "mispronounced" his name. I was told later that it was his mother, and that she was very fussy about the French pronunciation. I heard it might have been the mother's idea to change the pronunciation from the "regular" one, and her husband went along with it, but I never confirmed that. I dunno, maybe it sounded more debonair or something. Fortunately, I got to know the kids in both families, and they always took it in stride and just laughed when I forgot who was who.
  
  I've had this happen several times - I ask someone with a difficult first name how to pronounce it, and then I write it phonetically beside the printed name on the sheet. They will look at it and right away say, "That's not how it's spelled". I will say, "It'll be spelled correctly when it comes out of my mouth". It usually takes a few seconds, but then that person will say, "Ohhhhhh .....".
  
  I worked an all-star football game a few years ago where the most common first name was Marquis and several variants - probably had 8 players with that name. Invariably, each one of them told me to say "mar-KWEESE", emphasizing the "w", which threw me for a loop. I had always assumed when seeing the word in school that you gave it the traditional French pronunciation of mar-KEE or maybe mar-KEESE. Then along came an Ohio State basketball player in the mid 1970's named Marquis Miller, and he pronounced it like Marcus. You never know, that's why you always ask.
  
  Sometimes I'll ask about a difficult name, and none of the coaches or other players can agree on how it's pronounced - so I'll go right to the person, and then the person will say, "Either one is fine, I don't care." That drives me bonkers when they say that.
  
  It's a lot of work, but it keeps me out of hot water most of the time, and every once in a while you know it's worth it. Had one college basketball player with a very unique first name that I would never have guessed correctly, but I got the correct pronunciation ahead of time and nailed it during the starting lineups. After he came out of the game, then checked back in a few minutes later, he turned looked me dead in the eye, tapped the table, and said, "Thank you". My brain wasn't quite in gear at the moment, and I said, "For what?" He said, "For saying my name right. Nobody ever does."

  No one tl;dr'd?
• BRF

  

  Ironman92;1766647 wrote:No one tl;dr'd?

  I was just about to. I like your past tense on that.
  
  tl;dr
• Zunardo

  BRF;1766650 wrote:I was just about to. I like your past tense on that.
  
  tl;dr

  LOL. Took me a minute. Sorry about that. That's why I'm not on Twitter.:laugh:
• BRF

  

  Zunardo;1766724 wrote:LOL. Took me a minute. Sorry about that. That's why I'm not on Twitter.:laugh:

  I actually read it.
• Tiernan

  Saw a sign last week outside of a Detroit HS on Rt 24 honoring the Student of the Month - Dynastasia Murphy. How much you wanna bet she ain't Irish?