I knew a Richard Raper. As an adult.
Name changes aren’t that expensive 😒
luckily you can change your name
It’s a child not a vanity plate
So many people don’t understand that children are people and people have rights. You are responsible for your children, you don’t own them. If you don’t like that, simply don’t have kids.
To the people downvoting this, you are the problem.
Children are people, not your property. You owe your kids a loving, caring, and supportive environment because it was your choice to have them. They did not choose to be born, they did not choose you as parents, they do not owe you anything. If you treat them well, they will support you and love you. If they do not, then you did something wrong.
If you think your children owe you anything, don’t have kids and go see a therapist.
I think they are downvoting because of the implication that having a not-cringy legal name is a legal right. In almost all places, it isn’t. The general sentiment of the comment is correct - you shouldn’t do stupid bullshit to your kids for your own amusement. But saying it is a “right” is incorrect in a very weird way.
I do think its a right for people to not have stupid cringey names. Thats part of why you can legally change your name. Unfortunately, as far as I am aware, children are not granted that ability and are thus stuck with their shitty name their parent gave them.
Do I think naming your child Jahckqylynn is child abuse? No, but should children be condemned to 18 years of living with that name because their parents are cringey and dumb? I also think no. Now naming your child Margarita Corona? Yes that is fucked up and borderline child abuse
They can legally change their name before 18, in merkkka anyway. But yea its harder as a minor, and outside of last name changed for marriage its a lot of beaurocratic bs, ie time and money. I dont mean to counter your point, its a valid point. But for any Jackleneighs or whatever the fuck whod rather be Jackies, or Jackies whod rather be James, its possible sooner than 18. Again it be easier to wait tho…
Well… I think that point could be argued. Both the EU charter and the German constitution say right at the start in article 1 that “Human dignity is inviolable”. I’d say that giving your kid some dumbass name violates their dignity. So it is very much a legal right.
At my job, I come across a lot of children’s names. So many, that I can actually sympathize with parents who want an odd name. Names are supposed to be a unique identifier, so if you wanna name a kid “Revolution Fighter” or “Czarlanda,” I get it. I can certainly find a kid with that name in our databases faster than I can find a “John Anderson” or an “Adam Wu.”
What really kills me is parents who name their kids a normal sounding name, but with an insane spelling. I’m talking like “Shelley” spelled “Schelei” or “Alexander” spelled “Alexzander.” You’re not being clever or cute, you’re just going to make your child’s life unnecessarily harder as they have to spell their name out every. single. time.
We still have about 5 years before the first wave of incorrectly-spelled Khaleesis start showing up at county courthouses en masse.
What is the correct spelling? Is that even a name?
It’s a title given to Daenerys in Game of Thrones, the Doth’raki word for “queen”. Her subjects call her that but a lot of dumbasses thought it was her name.
Khaleesi is the title of a fictional character in Game of Thrones, but not a proper name.
I read this a while ago (scroll down into section II for the graphs) which conducted a survey to see how happy people were with their names. The consensus seems to be that, for the most part, people just want names that don’t annoy them constantly. Very common names rank lower than less common names, until the names become very uncommon. More normal or traditional names rank higher than more modern or creative names.
The conclusion I drew was that people want a normal name spelled a normal way, that is not too common. Why? Because if your name is too common, you are always confused with other people (cue saying “Michael” in a crowded room and having 5 people turn towards you). But if your name is too uncommon, people will constantly mis-spell and mispronounce it, so you will constantly either be correcting people or having to ignore it. If you have a common name with a unique spelling, then people will always misspell your name unless you spell it out for them. And of course, if you are named after a sci fi character or a name that rhymes with your twin, you will probably be bullied for it in middle school.
So if you are naming a kid, your best bet is to look through the current common baby names and pick one somewhere between 100 and 1000 most popular, after eliminating weird spellings or names that can easily be turned into mean nicknames. Bonus points if you can tie the name into your cultural heritage or you have an admirable anscestor to name your kid after.
I have a first name that’s been in use for a couple thousand years now. I’m happy with it. They’re classics for a reason.
A simple safe bet is to choose a name from a related language.
For example, Renato is common in Portuguese but not in Spanish, however no Spanish speaking person is going to misspell it (and to this example, I doubt anyone speaking a European language would)
I have friends with really common names, like Mike and Robert Jones common. They don’t want to change it, but it has been a tremendous pain in their asses. It’s annoying to be the 3rd person in your class with the same first name, but imagine having a high school class with someone who has the same first and last name.
That spelling of Alexzander a lot of times comes from non American countries (maybe Czech? Unsure)
Look at Alex Lifesons real name lol. I cant spell it
He has a Serbian name though, which is definitely not the same as just spelling it weird on purpose.
Not actually why they did it. I can quote the parent here, because for some reason they felt the need to immediately justify the spelling. “I just thought it’d be cool to do something different.”
name out every. single. time.
“Czarlanda,” I get it. I
Names aren’t supposed to be unique. Your whole name doesn’t even need to be unique. And when you adda middle-name or two, no matter what basic ass names you’ve chosen it’s gonna be unlikely that anyone within reasonable distance would be named exactly the same.
Thank God my country has a law preventing this type of child abuse
Worst I’ve seen: Shithead
Pronounced: Shih-theed
Spelled: Shit head
Sometimes things dont translate well to English. Like the common Indian surname Dikshit
I had a kid in high school with the same name. It was a normal name in his country. Everyone just started calling him Shitty and he embraced it lol.
This next guy, hes a real poth ead.
One of my favorite court transcripts is Sheppard v. Speir.
The Court: All right. Now, do you have some objection to him being renamed Samuel Charles?
Sheppard: Yes.
The Court: Why? You think it’s better for his name to be Weather’by Dot Com Chanel-
Sheppard: Well, the-
The Court: Just a minute for the record.
Sheppard: Sorry.
The Court: Chanel Fourcast, spelled F-o-u-r-c-a-s-t? And in response to that question, I want you to think about what he’s going to be-what his life is going to be like when he enters the first grade and has to fill out all [the] paperwork where you fill out-this little kid fills out his last name and his first name and his middle name, okay? So I just want-if your answer to that is yes, you think his name is better today than it would be with Samuel Charles, as his father would like to name him and why. Go ahead.
Sheppard: Yes, I think it’s better this way.
That was a wild read, thanks for sharing. I’m so glad the kid had a father that cared, and that he got the custody and succeeded in changing that name!
Read the whole thing. That was wild. I think, alone, Weatherby (said together) isn’t the worst name I’ve ever heard but all the rest is cuckoo banana pants. Based on what came out of the court proceedings that woman had some PROBLEMS.
cuckoo banana pants
Taking that for my next kids name!
I feel like the most shocking part of all of this is that this woman who is in and out of jail, has 3 other kids, and can’t hold down a job for more than a few weeks managed to get a whole-ass trial about this.
Dr. Marijuana Pepsi wrote a whole thesis on unique names.
Cannabis Coke is way more badass
But she dropped out of grad school for some reason.
It says in her Wikipedia article that she completed her PhD.
She realized she could make more money dancing.
Must’ve cracked
Jazz Cabbage RCCola was a great tambourine player tho
Ganja Moxie is still looking for direction in life.
And on Wikipedia you can read about Marijuana’s farm.
Did these casuals even check if xXPussySlayer42069Xx was taken?
Been taken since the early 90s. I’ve always been proud of my username/email I’ve been using since 96. No numbers or anything. (Not this name by the way)
I choose to believe this is the real xXPussySlayer42069Xx
The legend is among us.
I attended my kids award ceremony (he’s 10) and there were multiple girls ages 11 and 12 called Khaleesi and I shook my head
I get naming your kid after a cultural figure, but it drives me nuts that so many people believe her name is khaleesi.
Plenty of people might actually think that, but Prince, Queen, Princess, and different variations in different languages are common enough names already. It’s possible plenty to most of those people just like the title and know it’s not her actual name. Not directed at you, just some people might not realize that the phenomenon was popular before GoT existed.
Particularly when the spelling of Daenerys already had a major “millennial parent” aesthetic.
When choosing my son’s name I had two rules:
- No super popular top 10 or 20 name. There were plenty of very popular choices that I liked as names. But, I figured let’s try to find something at least a little unique for various reasons.
However!
- They shall not need to spell their name every time they tell it to somebody. This implies a few things, like choosing an established first name people have heard before rather than making something up, and using the common spelling of that name.
I had a very similar strategy, except I was trying to avoid top 50. I once told a stranger my kid’s name and they said “I like it. Unique, but not weird”. That comment made me so happy!
Yeah, I wasn’t very particular about how far up the list. Top 50 was probably too much in most cases.
Looking back for my son’s birth year, his name is just barely in the top 100 for boys. So top 200 overall.
That’s actually more popular than I expected it to be, but it is definitely in the very broad sweet spot we’re talking about.
Looking back at my birth year, my name is in the top 10! That’s even more surprising because it didn’t feel that way at all. I think there was one other kid with the same name in my graduating class of hundreds. Yet I distinctly remember there was one class one year that had SIX "John"s.
edit: that’s six Johns out of a single classroom of maybe 30 people at most, not a different graduating class. They were in my grade!
This seems rational and thoughtful.
Thanks! That’s usually what I’m going for.
I wish I was named kitchenaid whiskey jones
You can always change it
I know someone with relatives in China where they gave their kids nicknames that roughly translate to “first baby”, “second baby”, etc. They’re all middle aged adults now and they’re still addressed by the same nicknames. So you have kids listening to their grandparents talk about “second baby” and imagining a baby, but then you meet them and it’s an old man.
A number of traditional names the world over are literally “first son”, etc. Not to mention all the names that mean “so-and-so got me pregnant with this one.” Normal names are only normal because we’re used to them, not because they aren’t made-up bullshit.
70% of the names have a meaning usually, at least the most used names in Italy have a meaning in a way or another, so i suppose it’s the same for all the countries
I think people in English have lost the connection between their name and its original meaning. No one thinks about the fact that naming your kid “Peter” is the same as naming him “Rock”, or that a brook(e) is a little river.
I think it’s for all languages, if the name is not very similiar or the same to the original word or meaning it’s hard for someone to make a connection. So yeah, i agree
We don’t teach meaning of names anymore that’s the big one. My coworker just had a kid and ran a list of like 5 names past me. When I pointed out what each one means and their origin he firmly threw all of them out the window and was horrified.
It was mostly random bullshit names with weird spellings.
He ended up naming his kid Herma. Which he claimed sounded nice, when I asked him if he knew what the word ment he said no.
His new daughter has a very unfortunate name.
His kid but like man… That’s goanna suck later in life.
Is it not just feminine of Herman? Nothing comes up on Wiktionary.
From what i gather herman is germanic for “army/warrior man” and herma is a feminine version. Both derived from the greek god, Hermes.
In my family (and some friends families too) sometimes we came up with a name and think about the meaning of that meaning too, idk how much common is it tbh.
I think it really depend on the culture
I think everyone knows what Brooke means. Brooks (the rivers) are nice. And it is now a common name. So Brooke is a reasonable thing to name a girl. Similar to Rose or Ruby.
A British singer just had a baby boy and named it Forever Sugar. Wild.
Do people just hate their children? There’s so many good names to choose, just the longest list of them. There’s nicknames upon nicknames, but every goddamn child has to have a combination of letters that’ve never been used before. Look, I’m not saying that everyone should name their kids Edith and Edward, but we also don’t need a bunch of Brekinleighlynnes and Jahckxsonz running around. I feel very passionately about this subject. Pick a name that’s either been used before (that isn’t ass), or at least a name that sounds like a fucking name. I feel very strongly about this subject.
Having previously worked in child protection for almost a decade I can tell you that children with these kind of misspelled names are over-represented in the children we received reports about. I worked at a report intake and assessment hub and did over 5000 reports in my tenure there, and I saw SO MANY of these kinds of names.
Not all kids with these names end up being abused or neglected, but a lot of abused or neglected kids have these names.
They just think they’re the only people that matter in the world. Main Character Syndrome is a wild drug.
This whole post triggered me.
I love my mum and dad very much.
But it gets somewhat tedious when you have to spell your name quite possibly over a hundred thousand times in your lifetime.
My name is is 8 letters long. 15 if you want to count my moddle name and spaces. Unfortunately i have a very uncommon first name, and an even less common last name that makes me 100% the only person on earth with my name.
Ok BobBarkerBagels, we know it’s you.
(I think the math checks out - it’s very late or very early)
Yeah, it’s annoying to spell my 5 letter last name once in a while. I can only imagine it gets quite a bit worse with increasing frequency and letters. If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your first name?
If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your first name?
Mother’s maiden name as well, if you please.
Would also love to hear your thoughts on your first pet’s name?
Oh, and your 3rd grade teacher’s name, just to compare.
It’s a valid question in a convo about names. I’m curious lol I understand the need for privacy, it’s important. I asked if they’d be willing to share, I just like crying at Tragedeighs once in a while.
As someone with a long name, the bane of my existence is signing online forms without a touch screen. I just had to sign off on four different consent forms online for a new doctor’s office - using my mouse.
I usually take time with my signature, but for this I did the lazy thing of a stylized first letter, followed by a squiggle. I don’t like doing that and don’t want to do that… but I’m tired, y’all.
My oldest has a name from one of my grandparents’ ancestors (I think their grandparent or great-grandparent) that’s not common in my country (my grandparent was an immigrant). The name is easy to pronounce, but unfortunately there’s a celebrity with a similar name, so people always mistake it for that name.
The other two are very common here and haven’t caused issues. But the one foreign name has been a serious problem, but fortunately my kid loves their name, and it’s unique without being a pain to spell.
Actor Rob Morrow named his daughter “Tu”. “Tu Morrow”. Seriously.
Actors are notoriously dumb. I’m friends with a famous person and it’s sad when you realize they’re usually just surrounded by people kissing their ass and afraid to tell them no, you’re wrong. People are so shallow they’ll agree with anything if it keeps them in their company. No one is truthful around them. One of the reasons we got along was my “ability” to be real with him, as if that is actually a talent i have or something. Truly sad that people think so much of celebrity when they’re just people.
of their 18-month-old son, Somersault
Better than naming her “2” I guess?
Tula works with Tu as a nickname, but just Tu… eh
See you later today Tu Morrow!
