h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Noticed the Neo and Trinity, but think of the little girl I once booked into Hospital... Matrix.

H(thinks not much of text language too)F

I know it's not quite the same thing, but a woman I work with is called Jean. Not many spellings of that, really, are there? But it's amazing how many people on the phone say "is that G-E-N-E?". IT'S A MAN'S NAME!

Az: I'm with you, Jack would be my choice.

Deb

Dunno if you're British (I know Az isn't), but in Britain "Jack" has become an epidemic of a name. Every other boy born in the past 5 years is called Jack. I don't even know if it was started by anything like a TV show, as I don't remember any famous Jacks.

I have a bit of a dislike of people naming their child as a "nickname".

i.e. having "Billy" not "William" on their birth certificate. If you name your kid "Robert" you can always call them "Robbie", but it gives them the option of having a "dignified" name if they want one - (Chief Justice Robbie or Neurosurgeon Robbie just sounds a bit like something from a kids TV show)

But I am a complete pedant (not for lynch mobs - that's not the same as a paedophile!)

not = note

A young lady in my school has the classic example of how to spell a pretty name in an ugly way.

She's called Clurisa.

B

I heard a mother calling to her daughter "Chardonnay" recently. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. Snob that I am.

The 'Jean' thing reminds me: I am in a permanent state of confusion over how to spell my own mother's name.

She's called Judith - that bit I don't have a problem with. But everyone abbreviates it, and I still have no idea whether she spells it Judy or Judie...

B

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ANYTHING BUT CHARDONNAY!!!

I much prefer Alfster to my given name of Gordon Schumway.

A work colleague was called Gary Gray - his father thought it was funny Gary did not. So, when Gary had a kid he called it something sensible...Matthew Gray. Dear oh dear oh dear.

I told another friend to pass his choice of name for his first kids by me his second name was Dom***. He called his kid Conner. He did not tell me...so his nickname at school will be Condom...or it would be if I was at school with him.

My mother shortens her name to Judi, just to add to your confusion...

I used to think it was only "celebrities" who gave their kids daft names - I mean, as if Lorcan Quinn or Cruz Beckham aren't going to have enough problems when they go to school - but this thread has gone some way to proving to me that most people give their kids daft names.

I'm not quite as bad (or so I like to think) - I'd only like to give my kids daft *middle* names

i've known a few odd names: (or at least odd in North London)


Orlando: which usually got shortened somehow to 'orc-ee' or Lando (if we were in a star wars mood)

Portia: pronounced 'Porsch-a' as in the sports car, which just didn't suit a hardcore punk.

My cousin's daughter called Freya, i think its quite a nice name and kinda fits since they live in York.

I once heard a mum shout; "oi Randy stop running around" at her kid

I did give my son a proper name, and we were going to shorten it to a nickname, but there were so many kids given that nickname that he's just 'J' to us now. Which he spells 'Jay' when he has to put his name onto things like computer games, etc. When he was born I wanted to rename him Jack, because he looked like a Jack, but his dad didn't like it.

His 'step-mum' is called Angel. To me she looks more like a Horse with her long thin face.

I asked him what name he'd have if he could chose, and he would like to be called 'David Beckham'. David was the last thing he'd be called - it's his dad's name, and my dad's name and I hate it.

I used to talk to a 20 year old on the bus a lot - she was called Kylie, but I didn't have the cheek to ask if she was named after *the* Kylie.

"I used to talk to a 20 year old on the bus a lot - she was called Kylie, but I didn't have the cheek to ask if she was named after *the* Kylie."

If she really was 20 I'd be surprised... I don't think Neighbours was that big in 1984. Then again, Kylie had appeared in "The Sullivans", which wasn't exactly prime time... (please excuse my sad knowledge of Australian soaps of two decades ago. I met the twins out of Neighbours once, did I tell you? They weren't as sexy in real life...)

H.

Earlier on someone asked about the name Thor being used by a British family. My friends brother is called Thor - short for Thorfin. The other brothers are Magnus, Erik and Rognvald. They are from the Orkney Isles but have no Scandinavian ancestors for a good 10 generations or so.

A friend who is a teacher once had a Pochahontas in his class. Cute perhaps when you're 3 but she'll be about 14 now!

One that's stuck in my head was one of the Spice Girls, I think, calling their kid 'Phoenix Chi'. Hmm.

I also vaguely know someone named after a certain virginal goddess, which is ironic I guess.

Kids will stretch incredibly far to find a bad wordplay on any name, and will probably have access to words you don't even know to get to it. For many years at school I was 'Glun'.

Xan, our language has Old Norse roots too, so we're keeping Freya .

I can understand parents changing the spelling of a name to make it easier on the kid. The old Irish name Aingeal is a good example, since it is pronounced "Angel" and means "angel." So why not just call her "Angel" and be done with it?

My parents tried to do this with me and failed miserably, but they had good intentions. I have the second-most common male name in the world (the first is Muhammad), but a Google search on my spelling yields 24,000 hits. About 3,000 of those are all belong to a particular pro sports celebrity from Sweden, and a lot of the rest of them are girls or people who have it as a last name. Most importantly, though, almost nobody, pronounces it correctly. I've been called so many variants of my own name that it's quite irritating, and so I go by the shorter form.

My parents were thinking well when they looked at the traditional spelling and decided that it was not phonetically correct. Then they made some blinkered decisions regarding what it should be, and the result was less phonetic than the traditional. Ye gods.

The new trend is not to make it easier, but make it harder. Jaykob is not easier to decipher than Jacob.

Back on weird names, I have a nephew named Dakota. Dakota is a pair of states with a national monument and mile after mile of absolutely nothing else. My family instantly decided he would be known as Cody around us.

My wife and I named our daughter without pouring over name books and stressing ourselves over it, and we refused to give her a silly name. We wanted something common enough to be recognizable, but not so common that she would have to stop responding when people called her name in public (as I have to). We just lived our lives as normal, and whenever we heard a name that we thought sounded nice, we put it on a list. The day we found out the sex, we played around with combinations of the listed names and picked the one we liked the best.

If she had been a boy, my wife had already decided on the combination she liked: Damien Alexander. We liked Damien because you never hear that name anymore, not since a little boy with that name was the spawn of the devil in "The Omen." It was while watching this movie that my wife decided she liked it and we added it to the list. I feel in the context of this thread to note the difference between hearing a name for the first time (she'd never seen the film before) and liking it, and naming someone after a character.

Been teaching for 31 years and I can't recall when parents didn't used stupid spellings for names.
At first I thought it was because dad was smashed when going to register the new born but I then realised that some of it was down the the fact that they just couldn't spell the name that they had supposedly chosen with such care....

I've never seen so many ways to spell Kylie,Kayleigh.I've even been shouted at by children who spell their name Kayleigh but like it prounounced Kylie....

And I ask you how many ways can one pronounce Corrinne?or Alicia?Then one gets the comments like it's Sara to which you reply that it is spelt Sarah but they can't see what difference that makes...

They then complain that I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SPELL.....

Then after 35 classes per week of about 30 odd students they want me to call them by their chosen pet name as well....This when as a supply teacher I don't have the same timetable two lessons running let alone a week.Who the hell has time to learn names,faces AND nicknames?

Bah! they are lucky I don't call 'em by their surnames which what I had to put up with at school.

That one reminds me of an old buddy of mine whose birth name was Darwin. It was supposed to be Darren, but his mom was too stoned from the epidural and other pain relievers to spell it right at the time. He was nicknamed after a cartoon character he quite resembled, and he much preferred to go by that.

I remember one night we were chatting up some girls at the club, and the one he was talking to was just as determined to learn his name as he was to keep it to himself. When he left, both ladies turned to me, and not seeing how it could do any harm, I told them his real name. The one thought it was quite nice. When he came back and she told him so, he was furious. It was the first time I understood how badly he hated it.

That's a great idea, Kaz, naming oneself...

I gave my youngest son *five* Christian names so that he could choose one, and he later chose the last of the 5. (He'd had the first up to the back teeth!)

I wish my parents had given me more...

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Good question, but some to be avoided are NSU, STD (though once it meant Subscriber Toll Dialling - in the 1980s), CSI, and anything which is a business or an organisation (I have a nephew MTA who used to be known as Motor Trade Association.)

There are children called after pretty words their parents heard in hospital, such as Angina...

My daughter-in-law has the middle name Jean, and unfortunately, it rhymes with her married surname. (Which is so simple, but always mis-heard!)

As to initials, my mother was N.O.E.F., in the days when one's initials were monogrammed on one's schoolbag. At school, she was always known as 'No Food'.