bizarre_first_names epitome of incomprehensibility I'm moderate on this topic. On one hand, people can be too judgy about names they consider bizarre. On the other hand, a few parents seem to go out of their way to dole out names that'll be a headache for their kids, their kids' future teachers, etc. reddit has r/tragedeigh: "Tragedeigh = a given name that has been deliberately misspelled or completely made up to appear more unique than it actually is." The ending "...than it actually is" isn't the clearest, IMO, but I guess they mean that the overall concept of changing certain letters so that a name stands out isn't unique. Or that trying to come up with a unique name is a shallow way of expressing uniqueness. But the changing-letter thing doesn't have to be unreasonable. My piano teacher had a daughter she named "Sydney." It makes sense, since "Sidney" is usually a masculine name, while city names tend to look more feminine or gender-neutral. And what's wrong with a Y instead of an I once in a while? My 60-something colleague on the artisans committee is a Francyne, not a Francine, and the world hasn't ended. The counterpoint would be a girl who signed up for a craft activity back when I was doing day camp stuff. Her first name was "Oceann." Now, it wasn't pronounced oshi-ann. It was pronounced the same as "ocean." I remember thinking it was a pretty name...but why add the extra "n"? It's confusing. I wouldn't mind being named Ocean. But Oceann? No. But now that I write it out, I realize it's still somewhat arbitrary and subjective what a "reasonable" name is. I mean, some people might think my mother weird for giving me a Danish/Norwegian name when 1) we do not live in a Scandinavian country 2) we have no Scandinavian ancestry unless you go way, way back (Aunt Sarah did one of those DNA tests and discovered her maternal DNA came from the Norway region - but this is like centuries ago) 3) and it means Christian while I'm more agnostic (it's okay, God made me that way) But I kind of like "Kirsten" - I'm used to it, plus I appreciate that it's an existing name but not super common. Or in other words, that it's just a little bit weird. Then again, so is my last name, and I didn't used to like it - just because it sounds a bit goofy*. "Kirsten" sounds slightly foreign, here in Canaduckia, but it doesn't sound inherently goofy. And it was more a headache for my mom than me: she'd always correct people who pronounced my name as "Kristen" or "Kerstin," while sometimes I wouldn't even notice. *I mean, "de l'Incomprehensibilité" is a bit odd, don't you think? (okay, okay, that's not my real surname, though the real one is also probably French) 240813 ... e_o_i On this topic, I had a classmate in CEGEP called Vanity. Maybe to be playful or rebellious - "vice" instead of "virtue" - or maybe like the mirror? But if you're going to reclaim a maligned trait, "vanity" feels...well, superficial. And a little boring. At least I can make sense of it. I don't really get Oceann with two Ns. 250616 ... e_o_i Oh oh oh, and a boy at the Christian school, several years my junior? Haggai. Yes, it's one of the prophets in the Bible. But it opens up various avenues of mockery even if they're about things that shouldn't be mocked ("hag," as if old women are gross and witchlike, plus "gay" for the homophobes). (Note: I just spelled "homophobes" as "homophones." Words that sound the same = anti-LGBTQ, apparently. Or me = needs sleep and shouldn't bother blather with late-night thoughts.) 250616 ... ovenbird A guy in my high school English class was saddled with the name "Adonis." Even the teacher cracked a joke about it (which is how you know things are really dire on the name front). 250617 ... raze i guess i can see parents who call their kids things like "moon unit" and "audio science" thinking, "man, this will really set them apart." the problem is it tends to work too well, leading to a lifetime of mockery and humiliation at the hands of narrow-minded people. and all for a meaningless novelty of a name they never asked to have. the only example i can think of from my own life is someone i once knew insisting she was going to name her first child "abcd" (pronounced ab-suh-dee). she either forgot all about that, or good sense prevailed and she settled on something musical but much less likely to lead to her daughter wishing she could tear her mother's face off with a potato peeler in later life. 250617 ... nr mike schur was on amy_poehler's podcast recently and talked about how you have to clear names to be used for characters in television shows. you either have to use a name that a lot of people in the world have, or a name that no one has. if it's a name that just one or two people have, it could seem like the character was based on a real person with that name. so he often decides just to go with names no one has, which result in brilliantly bizarre_full_names like: judy zappossoppazzappossopaz officer randy killnose mona-lisa saperstein trodd frankensteip tyrion fonzarelli toni toné strunkfuster gretzky-susan pelligrino typhoon montalban ssassandra ssassnorp summer olé-kracken frogfrong 250617 ... e_o_i I grinned at "ssassandra" - it has the sass of sassafras, plus a random double consonant at the beginning for the vibes. Names with resonance - for me, "Adonis" recalls a grocery store where I found cheap elderberry tea imported from Poland. If I had a classmate who should have been named Adonis, it was wavy-haired Tadzeo who looked like he belonged on a romance book cover and had messy handwriting (if I had only gone to the reunion of "reunions" I could have seen who I remembered, if anyone from the "English side" besides Maeve was there...). But yes, I guess the myth would weigh the poor guy down with an expectation of beauty. Like Aphrodite for a girl. Or Aphrodite for anybody. And you can imagine an Achilles getting "So, how's the heel doing?" from various acquaintances. Sometimes parents can be selfish with names, like with other things. A few overemphasize that children are shaped by their parents to the point of ignoring how they're separate people, and that's not fair whether it's about names or anything else. But the point where they gets selfish is fuzzy and subjective. E.g., it doesn't bother me to see a Kaelynn instead of a Calen (and it's rather interesting to decipher what marks one as more feminine and the other as more masculine - the "lynn" ending, for one). And there are some names you expect to have a number of spellings (Caitlin, Megan, etc.) But some "creative" spellings are confusing enough to make me think "okay, enough already." ... Also, I wasn't clear on the second syllable of Haggai - it's pronounced "guy" rather than "gay" in English. But someone could see it and think "ha ha, that looks like..." At which point, the shadowy Queer Academy, which plots to teach the Theory_oF_Nerdy_Names in schools (of fish), will send an agent to jump out of a closet and yell, "Homophones over homophobes!" as one does. 250617 ... e_o_i edits *where THAT gets selfish 250617 what's it to you? who go blather from