I worked under someone at an old job who named his son Jaxon. And kept pictures Jaxon drew and signed on the wall of his office. So every time I needed something from him, I would have to see Jaxon’s name in his office. And I hated it.
Reminds me of the article about black Americans visiting Africa and being devastated that they weren’t “welcomed home” but rather just treated as visiting American tourists.
It’s to add a little uniqueness, and avoid them being the 14th Erica in the classroom, but not going so far as to not give them one of the “normal” names.
Or they just think it looks prettier. It doesn’t have to be about accomplishing something beyond “I like how that looks”.
You’d be surprised how little it actually matters. It just means they have to spell it for people occasionally.
My name isn’t common here, but it’s also perfectly well known and spelled in the traditional sense.
I have to spell it for people, and often use a middle name for takeout orders. That’s about the extent of the burden of having an unusual name.
My last name is also perfectly common, and I need to spell it as well.
I’ve seen a lot more “burden” on people with alphabetically late names, since they often are last in line for stuff.
Because you hate your child but don’t believe in abortion. Just yesterday, I avoided spelling my preferred email on a phone call because a company already had a different address on file.
Ex and I once joked about this subject. We decided it’d be funny to named an unwanted child Paisley.
Hm. In my experience, -eigh has always been pronounced -ee. In most cases, Leigh is a homophone of Lee, as it comes from an English word meaning “meadow”, and you’ll find many pronunciation guides that confirm this. Not that I find it all that intuitive, I would have assumed it to be pronounced -lay myself, like sleigh or eight. English is dumb like that, and if you or anyone else wants to pronounce it -lay, nothing should stop you.
I’m all for unique and clear identifiers for everything, including people, but jesus christ, imagine yourself in elementary school having a weird name. Why would parents choose a hard mode for their progeny?
I guess if everyone has a weird name, that doesn’t matter. Maybe kids don’t make fun of weird names anymore. Who knows, maybe it’s the Johns and Marys who get made fun of for having uninteresting names.
I’m a big proponent of normal/semi obscure normal first name, weird middle name. John W Smith if you work in sales, J Wolfgang Smith if you’re an author. Perfect compromise.
We gave our daughter a somewhat disused but normal and formerly not uncommon name which was the name of a plant. We just wanted a name that wasn’t religious but still normal enough that she wouldn’t get bullied for it (she got bullied anyway). We realized later that it actually made sense in terms of her ancestry because her mother has a plant name, her grandmother has a plant name and her great-grandmother had a plant name. One long lineage of plant names.
Honestly being bullied for a weird name just feels like victim blaming. It’s just someone else’s shitty behaviour we’re expected to dance around? That was the one problem with the name.
I don’t disagree, but it’s also a parental responsibility, in my opinion, to help your child avoid bullying. It’s not possible to avoid entirely, but there are definitely ways to make it worse. And a weird name is one of them.
Dude I see you around here on the regular, so I’ll mention that this is ironic for me to read this, because we also named our daughter an old, obscure but “real” name that is also a plant (a flower, specifically).
It’s from France, so I asked a French friend before using it if it was ok to use and not a weird name, and they said “sure it’s ok, but it’s like an old grandma’s name no one uses anymore.” And that’s when I knew it was the one!
Same boat. I think I guessed it, and it’s absolutely killing me knowing I’ll never know if I’m right. But also, my brain itch doesn’t trump doxxing a person (or even a squid) or their kid.
It’s a pretty common practice where I live for a kid to be named after someone for their first name, but go by their middle name. So I think it’s perfectly fine to have one normal name and one weird name in any order.
A. John Smith is an accountant. Atreyu J. Smith is a musician who wears leather pants and some sort of studded headband.
In the fall of 2019, Vandyck sponsored the Marijuana Pepsi Scholarship for first-generation African-American students at UW–Whitewater.
If someone with a brand name… name… starts a same-industry business in their name, or offers a scholarship for nazis, I wonder what kind of recourse the original brand has.
My name is a standard name, but super uncommon here. It’s not that bad, since I got picked on about as much as anyone else. It’s not like they won’t just because your name is unremarkable.
If you don’t get bullied for your name, you’ll just get bullied for something else. At least with the name you can blame it on your parents, maybe. Kids are assholes.
Except a kid like that automatically has a free pass for eternally being pissed about their father and their father before them not also having had that name so they could be "… the third’!
I’m proud to be an American, where at least I can name my kids Yungblud Founding Father Lee Awesome. I won’t forget the Kanyes and Jason Lee’s who named their kids weirdly. And I’ll gladly stand up next to Pilot Inspektor and Jermajesty!
I’m having trouble finding articles about it because search engines have become terrible, but I’ve heard trans people talk about how the Swedish law has been used to transphobic ends (and, yes, racist ones too because common names in immigrant communities weren’t on the list). There’s few gender neutral names on the approved list and getting a gendered name approved for a name change is difficult and leaves the door open for outright transphobia - and legally changing your gender required surgical sterilization in Sweden up until the end of 2012.
this sounds like FUD to me, sweden’s government is generally very progressive when it comes to stuff like this and the system is just there to prevent people naming their kids “allah”.
If anything the way we handle names is great for trans people because getting your legal name changed can be done from the comfort of your computer, largely.
perhaps we have a list of “accepted variations of names” where that is what is legally recognized. Though the body will have to regulate it properly of course.
Harm doesn’t come from names, harms comes from people.
Last thing I need is government regulation for naming my child. (It is very strictly regulated where I’m from. So a classroom of 30 kids has 6 “Johns”)
I thought “mispellings of basic white girl names” are funny enough, but nope, we now have mispellings of words that are not even names. Triniteigh… What’s next, Conflagurayshawn?
Do these parents not realise that they are naming real humans that will also be adults one day? Like, just imagine a grown-ass woman named “Brexleigh”.
What irks me the most is the effort these idiot parents will go to give their baby as basic a name as “Allison” or "Ashley"
Ashlie
Ashlee
Ashly
Ashleigh
Ashlea
Ashli
Ashely
Ashlei
Ashleah
Asheleigh
Ashelie
Ahshlee
the list goes on and on and on
No amount of vowels is going to make your kid’s name stand out when at the end of the day it’s the same pronunciation as the most common, basic form of it.
that’s + auto suggest is a good way to avoid getting someone else’s email at work. when I started at my new company of 300ish people there were 12 with my first 3letter name
A baby name from Amazon would be like “BABY CHILD YOUTH LIL ADULT 6LB 7LB 8LB DOCTOR OLYMPICS ATHLETE FAMOUS TALL INDOOR OUTDOOR EASY TO CLEAN CUTE COLLECTIBLE FAMILY 3-PACK”
I have a half-baked outline for a character who goes by C. M. Mil’naire and is really embarrassed about the fact that his full name is actually Cash Money Mil’naire. I have no idea how to use him, but I love him too much to not keep around.
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