Odd children's names (odd names of children, not names of odd children to clarify)

[Jay 2K Winger]

My mom loves to trawl through the baby names boards on Yahoo. For some reason she thinks I'll be amused by the stupid names that people come up with, instead of shaking my head and despairing for the future of our society.

There was one that still sticks out as the worst, and was something like "Ur Hiness Icee Eight Special K." ("Your Highness I-See Eight Special K") It hit all the alarm bells:

* "Creative" spelling
* A name that sounds like initials ("I.C.?")
* A number
* Future "street name" ("Special K?")

[Kit-Ginevra]

When I worked for MajorBank, employees who called us would often times come through already verified and their names would pop up on our computer screens. If they did, we were to greet them using their names. One day a woman named Enid came through and I did as I was supposed to do. She got all excitd because I actually pronounced her name correctly. I laughed and told her I'd better know how to say the name because I had both a sister and a grandmother with the name.

That's an easy one. E-Nid. No biggie....How else could you pronounce it? Ennid?

[mathnerd]

Kit, you'd be surprised how many people butcher the pronunciation. I watched my sister deal with it her whole life. A few common ones are "eh-nid" with emphasis one one syllable or the other, "eh-need", also varies what syllable they emphasize "ee-need", and so on and so forth. It's astounding how many ways four simple letters can be pronounced.

[MoonCat]

Friday I had an old lady tell me her name was "Sophia." Normal, you say?

She pronounced it "So-FY-uh."

First time I've ever heard that. I suppose if it's your name you can say it however you like. Hell, call yourself Raymond Throat-warbler Mangrove if you want.

[blas]

Trend whore parents are just the worst.

Just examples, not picking on anyone in particular, but I give it about 5-10 more years, and local graduating classes here will have 50% of their students named Madison or Mason from that trend of the later 2000s/pre2010

Then around the same time or shortly after were the Easton and Westons, followed by the Dalton and Peytons for boys. Olivia and Emma came back for quite a while for girls. Around these parts, there was no originality for a while, those names were as common as Ashley and John once were.

[Seanette]

Friday I had an old lady tell me her name was "Sophia." Normal, you say?

She pronounced it "So-FY-uh."

I used to have a boss who did that. This was among the least of her annoying traits.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Sports commentators often try to make the names sound like the original pronunciation so Michael Schumacher ends up as Mi-ka-el Schumacher or Ayrton Senna as Ireton. Gets quite annoying after a time.
And whilst we're on it,the number of times I've seen Judge Judy and someone said they were fighting in Eye-rack.Grrr. Now just to kill off 'lee-sure time' and 'the scenic rout' and all will be well in the world.

[fireheart]

Sports commentators often try to make the names sound like the original pronunciation so Michael Schumacher ends up as Mi-ka-el Schumacher or Ayrton Senna as Ireton. Gets quite annoying after a time.
And whilst we're on it,the number of times I've seen Judge Judy and someone said they were fighting in Eye-rack.Grrr. Now just to kill off 'lee-sure time' and 'the scenic rout' and all will be well in the world.

When they had either the Sydney Olympics, Athens Olympics or the Manchester (?) commonwealth games, there was a swimmer by the name of Pieter van den hoogenband. It was quite amusing as you'd hear the guys in the commentary booth saying his surname with the long o sound (as in hoot) only for the announcer at the actual location to start pronouncing it with the short o (like hog)

So he went from hoogenband to hog'n bands

[EricKei]

We had an Andi back at the newspaper -- real name: Candace

Kinda like Colin Powell -- To the best of my understanding, his name is pronounced the normal way, not like "colon"...It's just that he knew that correcting the reporters (especially when he had, *ahem* more important things to worry about) would have made him look pretty vain.

[mjr]

I used to have a boss who did that. This was among the least of her annoying traits.

My wife told me that several years ago (before we met), she used to work Customer Service for a cable company.

She said she worked with two women whose names were spelled "Monica", but were pronounced differently.

One was pronounced "Monica", the other was pronounced "Moe-ni-ca" (hard O).

But if you write it out, there's no difference in the spelling.

[Jay 2K Winger]

One was pronounced "Monica", the other was pronounced "Moe-ni-ca" (hard O).

"It's pronounced Bouquet!"

[Aragarthiel]

"It's pronounced Bouquet!"

I loved that show!

[telecom_goddess]

I did want to name my kids unique and strong names so I went with Chelsea, Leah and Molly. MY real name on the other hand is always pronounced wrong and spelled wrong, first AND last. *sigh*

[Kit-Ginevra]

I did want to name my kids unique and strong names so I went with Chelsea, Leah and Molly.

Especially unique if they're boys :P

[mathnerd]

MY real name on the other hand is always pronounced wrong and spelled wrong, first AND last. *sigh*

Even if it's a common name, that can happen. My middle son has a name that, while not as common as John or Andrew, is still common enough. The trouble is that it has two common spellings. Now, if you know anything about the name, one is more common as a last name and the other is more common as a first name. Additionally, one spelling hails from one country and the other hails from another similar and nearby-to-the-other country. I spell my son's name the way that's more common in the US as a first name, which makes sense, since that's where I live. Even though that's the case, most people default to the other spelling, which is seriously annoying.