The BBC provides a selection.
What do you call some of the most unlucky people in Britain?
Justin Case, Barb Dwyer and Stan Still.
It sounds like a bad joke, but a study has revealed that there really are unfortunate people with those names in the UK.
Joining them on the list are Terry Bull, Paige Turner, Mary Christmas and Anna Sasin.
And just imagine having to introduce yourself to a crowd as Doug Hole or Hazel Nutt.
The names were uncovered by researchers from parenting group TheBabyWebsite.com after trawling through online telephone records.
. . .
Researchers also scoured phone records in the US and found some unlikely names there too.
Spare a thought for Anna Prentice, Annette Curtain and Bill Board the next time you sign your name.
A string of Americans also have very job-specific names, including Dr Leslie Doctor, Dr Thoulton Surgeon and Les Plack - a dentist in San Francisco.
A spokesman for TheBabyWebsite.com said: "When the parents of some of those people mentioned named their children, many probably didn't even realise the implications at the time.
"Parents really do need to think carefully though when choosing names for their children.
"Their name will be with them for life and what may be quirky and fun for a toddler might be regretted terribly when that person becomes older or even a grandparent perhaps."
There's more at the link.
Some of those are bad enough . . . but the worst I ever heard of was the poor New Zealand girl named by her ignoramus parents, 'Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii'. She was so embarrassed that she refused to use her name at all, and eventually went to court to force her parents to allow her to change it. The judge agreed, needless to say.
Peter
8 comments:
For many, many years in the Las Vegas phone book there was a listing for Goldfish T Bogglesworth.
My friends and I thought that it was a codename for a safehouse--after all, who would name their child that?
As far as we can tell, Goldfish moved to Florida about four or five years ago and is now in LADY LAKE, FL 32159.
A substantial number of years ago, my brother in law was in charge of the payroll accounting for a fairly large paper company; he told me it was truly frightening to contemplate what some people had apparently named their children. His personal favorite, he said, was a gentleman who went by the unfortunate handle of Francis Dewey Dick.
"Just imagine," he told me, "what that guy's life must have been like during elementary school."
Then there are Moon Unit and Dweezil Zappa, ol' Frank's kids...
I had a classmate in high school whose father named her Penny Grinnen Barrett.
For an extensive collection of awful (yet hilarious) names given to unfortunate individuals, head over to Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing. :D
As one who was named for my parents friends, I am a firm believer that no child should be given a name, or allowed to legally adopt a permanent name, until they are sixteen.
Rug Rat, Pup, or Hey You will do just fine until the child has achieved some semblance of reason.
Texas Governor Jim Hogg's lovely, gracious, and talented daughter Ima should serve as a caution for parents.
At least Miss I. Hogg had only brothers, so there is no truth to the assertion that her sister was named Ura.
Stranger
I know of a bloke who named his son Richard which of course got shortened to Dick,to bad his last name was Head,poor Dick Head.
Two genuine bad names;
Sandy Foote (close friend)
and
Honey Butz (teacher)
Heard in a commercial on a Texas radio station:
Dawn Bogus, Certified Public Accountant.
Personally I dispise the use of nicknames outside of the intimate family. And even there I can just barely stand it.
Why would you mangle the identity of a person who has a perfectly good name?
I admit (grudgingly) that it helps to differentiate between people with the same name, as is the case with societies who have a tradition of naming babies after ancestors according to set of traditional rules. In one case a community of nearly 4000 people had only 18 male and 16 female names in use.
As others have noted, naming your baby is a BIG resoponsibility for the parents. You either bless or curse your child for life with its name. Not only with the name proper, but also with the deeper significance of that name.
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