when I was six I remember telling my mom I wanted to change my name to "Snow White".

She said I couldn't :(

I hate season names for some reason! In good ol' high school there was a Summer Mills, Spring Rogers, Wynter Anderson, and an Autumn Sampson.

(P.S. Last names changed to protect the innocent)

Gypsyboots (at the age of 2 1/2) wanted to name her soon-to-be sister Cinderella. I didn't let her - although she did come out blonde, blue-eyed, and with a fixation on Cinderella. :rolleyes:

This made me think of a similar story. My best friend growing up has a little sister 5 years younger than us. When her Mom told my friend and her older sister (who is 8 years older than the baby sister) that she was pregnant and asked them what they'd like to name their new sibling...I think she was a little mortified with the response she got. GIZMO! (Yes, their Mom made the mistake of asking them after they saw Gremlins in the movie theater).

One of my good friends in high school was named Wynter, and her best friend's little sister was named Autumn.

My grandma's sister-in-law (Aloha - pronounced Alo-a) gave birth to my mom's cousin (who has a normal name) but in the other bed in the room with her was a woman who couldn't name her baby girl. This was back when you could stay in the hospital for a week after a normal birth. Anyhow, said roomate still couldn't come up with a name for her baby by the time she left, so the hospital staff on the birth certificate had to put "FEMALE" as the first name and then whatever the woman's last name was. The woman took one look at the BC and said, (according to my Aunt Aloha) "Female, (pron Fem-alie) I like that!"

So, consequently my mom's cousins had a cat named Female growing up.

Let's not get too into the bad names discussion, I could regale you all with tales of my students' names. I've been teaching 7 years now...there's always at least one bad name per year. I even had a student get prego and then name her daughter, (yep you guessed it) Alizee.

DUMB.

Oh yeah, ETA, my mom works in sales and had a client for the longest time from Thailand or Burma...anyhow name was Phat Bui....yeah, "fat boy", that was funny when I was 12. She also had a teacher in school named Mr. Glasscock...god, what a horrible name.

I also had a friend who took German in HS. There was a sub one day with the last name Ball. He told the students just to call him by his first name...(in German, Mr. is Herr (pron. Hair)...Herr Ball. heheh

. . . and that's why you don't let your children name their siblings!

Hey, I suggested my sister's name...Sarah. Sarah was my best friend growing up. :) Some of us are not totally insane you know.

The author of one baby names book I have said that she asked her 4-year-old daughter to choose a name for their baby boy and she picked "Rainbow Boy". I doubt they used it....

A friend of mine asked her 3 year old boy what he wanted to name his baby sister. He came up with "Daisy Pickles".

Her quick thinking responded with, "That would be the perfect name for your new puppy". The kid was thrilled, but dad was in shock over of having an unplanned puppy.

Anyway, baby sis was named Sarah and puppy was named Daisy.

Not insane - just young. You were obviously wise and mature beyond your years!:)

i can't remember what channel it was on, but this thread reminded me of some show i saw not too long ago. it was one of those newsy-type shows and they reported that a pretty high percentage of parents decided to change the name of their kids after a few months all the way up to age 3.

is that something you (general "you") might consider if you found something "more suitable" than the original name you gave your hypotetical children?

I wanted to name my sister Daisy Karen. I was 3 at the time. My parents named her Rebecca instead.

We have a friend who has a child naming problem. Her children's names are Galileo, Mikki (like the mouse) and her daughter is Gypsy.

We get lots of clients in our office from south of the border. I've seen some strange names, but the one that really stands out is Heribertha.

So wrong.

I knew a kid named Peter Peters. Peter changed his name when he turned 18, but I can't remember what to (all I remember is that it was his mother's maiden name, and a WHOLE lot better).

My orthodontist was named Dr. Pryor. Scary.

My fiance works at a car dealership. One of the other salesman's name? Bill Cheatham. Yes, pronounced "cheat 'em."

I'd put my grandparents names... but they're my grandparents.

Speaking of grandparents . . .my grandfather was Bunice. For my great-grandmother's best friend - Boy + Eunice = Bunice.

We were threatened with being disinherited if we named a child after him.
Oh - and his middle name? Irl. That's right - Irl. Not Earl - Irl.

Oh wow! How could I have forgotten? My step-bro's wife is named Ercon. (Uhr-conn) Her parents are Ernie (Ernesto) and Connie (Consuelo), and they loved each other so much that they combined their names to name their daughter. What a great idea!

I do think that our grandparents' names in general are nothing like what we'd name our kids these days due to the sheer outdated-ness of some names.
(Although I had a great-grandmother named Elizabeth and one named Kate--although we found out recently her real name was actually Clara)

As for my grandparents:

Ethel, Sherwin (who had brothers named Milton and Monroe), and Albert.

I would name a kid Charlotte after one grandmother--but too many people in the family are already named for her. She's the only good one in the bunch! But if you look back--my grandparents had completely normal names for their generation. (Okay, maybe not Sherwin...but Ethel and Albert for sure).

I guess I should have mentioned that I was 13 when she was born. :) Had I been between the ages of 5-10 it would have been Leia or Barbie.

There was a family a few towns over with four daughters: Happy, Jolly, Frausty, and Holly.

I don't know about that--at our church there are a million rugrats, and they sound like a senior citizen's quilting group--Margaret, Martha Lee, Mae, Charlotte, Delilah, Addie Rose, Lillian, Frances, Georgeanne, Corrine, Clara, Eva...I could go on for quite awhile if I had the church directory in front of me. They are all kids under 5. My grandmas were named Emma and Ethel, and I know Emma is really common now, but I grew up in a town where there were 15 old German women named that!

Every boy is now named Will. For the last 20 years.

At least for me, it sounds like your town is doing a lot better than most of the rest of the U.S. If I watch one more "A Baby Story" or "Bringing Home Baby" and see a Kayla, Arianna, Arabella, Gianna, Madison, Mackenzie, Brianna, Kaylee, Kylee, or the like- I'll serious throw up. Why would people think "I'm giving my child such a cute and unique name!" when 500,000 other little girls born that month will have it? Why not just go back to "Jennifer" and "Ashley" if you're going to be like that?

It's going to be funny when everyone in the nursing home is named Tiffany or Caitlyn and the homecoming queens at the high school will be Edna and Florence.

I graduated with Roger Moore - although my classmate would have been born before RM was really famous, so can't fault his parents on that one.

Jacqueline Susann talks in her first book about her friend Last-One. The kids in the family were named Lebanon, Harlem and Portland (after where they were living when they were born). The hubby didn't want another kid so he named Last-One, Last-One. When the mom got pregnant again he was really fed up and named the last kid Period.

I used the "graduation" test - how will this name sound when announced at graduation? How will it look on a resume'? - when naming mine.

I worked with a guy named Frank E. Frank. He never told us what the "E" stood for.

One of my good friends is married to Joseph Joseph.

Two of my high school classmates: Piddney Kobs and Nimrod Funk. Why would you do that to a kid.

Names of students I or teacher friends have had in the past.

2 brothers names Jail (pronounced Ja-eel) and Prison (pronounced Pe-ree-son). I used to laugh when the mom would get uptight over everyone mispronouncing their names. She was a flaming idiot.

Dijonnaise (like the mustard), her brother Dijon, and little sister Dojonaise. The parents were idiots.

My personal favorite, Jack Inoff. No joke. He used to be a student my mother-in-law taught over 20 years ago. The guy is probably in some serious therapy now because his parents gave him that effed up name.

I also went to junior high school with a girl named LaCola. The problem is that in Spanish, this means "the ass" so she was mocked horrendously.

Oh hell I remembered some. What about bad spelling? I'm talking:

Kody
Kaleb

and things like that.

ugh...I know a Kourtney, and then there are the Kardashians (from "Keeping Up with the Kardashians"): Kris, Kourtney, and Khloe (Mom kept the K's coming with Kim, Kendall and Kylie).

Seriously, parents, Don't Trick Up Your Child's Name.

I used the exact same method as SWTX... how will it sound at graduation, how will it look on a resume, and I went one step further... would it look good on a doctor's coat?

Ask any Kristie/Christy/Cristi... it is a beating to have to always spell your name. So why do we get so many variations on names these days? I just can't keep all the Jaden/Jaydn/Jaydon etc straight.

Don't give unusual names if you are a stickler for the pronunciation, either. My boss named his son Raoul, which is a family name (French, pronounced like "Rowl"). They freak out because people see it and assume it is pronounced "Ra-ool". Instead of just letting it go in casual conversation, they have to give the entire family history, blah blah blah.

Great article on bad baby names--

http://coaches.aol.com/kids-and-fami...14104809990001

I hadn't thought of the resume thing but I had heard about standing with the door open and yelling "Can XXX come out to play?"

There was a kid in my 6th grade class named Ortwin Klose. Thankfully for him he was good looking (at least at age 11).

Crazy parents!

How about taking a perfectly good name like "Emily" and making sure the kid's life will be all about having to spell "Emmaleigh".

One of my sisters swears that when she was a social worker in Charlotte, she had the jello kids (orangejello and lemonjello) among her caseload.

Snopes says there was a pitcher for the Astros with the lastname of Lemonjello... http://www.snopes.com/racial/language/names.asp

That could be entirely possible... my BFF's grandfather was an OB/GYN in the Charlotte area and often suggested crazy names to new moms who hadn't picked out names yet. Those were a couple of them, along with Chlamydia and Gonorrhea. :eek:

There was a Today show story about this. The guy in the story suggested that people who want to name their kids something "unique" should go out and introduce themselves as the potential name and see what kind of looks they get. I think that guy wrote a book, which may have already been discussed in the thread, so my bad if I'm being redundant.

I went to school with a girl named Kizzie Butts. She was a real sweetheart, but I always felt so bad for that name and how some people were mean to her because of it.