My motives for writing this blog are purely selfish. I have spent the last six years of my life substituting for absent school secretaries and office managers in elementary schools. My first task each morning is to write tardy slips for latecomers. I ask each child to tell me their name, and I write the name on the tardy slip. They may say “Julie.” So I write “Julie.” “No,” they say. “Not like that. It’s J-E-W-E-L and then a ‘line’ and then E.” I write out “Jewel-e” – and I think, what were the parents thinking here? Don’t they realize that no one on the face of the planet is going to spell that correctly when they hear it? Doesn’t the thought enter their heads as they’re gazing on the face of that sweet infant in the hospital that every time that kid is late for school, some poor secretary is going to have to cross off “Julie” and write “Jewel-e,” wasting her precious time – which she will need to fill out Samyul’s, Kenidee’s, Leica’s, Zachgary’s, Maecin’s, and Eian’s tardy slips? Yes, not giving your child a stupid name will be of benefit to the child as well, but that doesn’t really matter to me. I would just really like to go to work someday and have the world make sense again. I want to say, “What’s your name?” and hear, “Michael” and be able to confidently write “Michael” and not hear, “No, not like that. It’s…” Is that so much to ask?

Enjoy my blog. Laugh at the strange names. Laugh at the idiot parents who gave these names to their kids. Whatever you do, just do NOT put any of these names on a birth certificate!

Saturday, November 6, 2010

A Sample of Insanity

Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous parents have gotten in naming their children, here are some names I pulled from a list of students at ONE school yesterday. Mind you, I only had time to look at about 10% of the kids' names. When I was a kid, there may have been one or two kids in my whole school with what I considered to be weird names. This list shows just how insane things have become:

Makeila, Lydea, Mishel, Asiaa, Naudya, Mackenzi, Julya, Mariyah, KaShayla, Paizlee, Kailli, Talaysia, Amaiya, Turin, Shawnia, Lunder, Kaydance, Domanick, Siarah, and Eadaoin.

Some of these are perfectly good names if you just hear them spoken aloud and don't have to look at them. "Michelle," for instance, is a very normal name. "Nadia," "Julia," and "Dominic" - also very nice names. Even "Sierra" and "Cadence" are names most people have heard. But the way they are spelled makes me a little crazy.

"Asiaa" is an example of the thinking that if one vowel is good, two of the same vowel in a row is better. I can understand the reasoning behind placing two a's are at the beginning of a business name in order to get prime placement in the phone book - as in "Aabsolutely A-1 Antiques" - but at the end of a first name, those two a's make no sense.

"Talaysia," "KaShayla," and "Lunder," I'm pretty sure, are made-up names. It's generally a bad idea to give your kid a made-up name, and I'll write more about that later. But at least Talaysia's, KaShayla's, and Lunder's parents made their names pronounceable - tuh-lay-zhia, kuh-shay-luh, and lun-der. I have to give them credit for that.

"Turin" - really? You named your kid after a burial shroud?

Wasn't "Paisley" unusual enough as a name? Did you have to spell it weird, too?

I met the little girl named "Shawnia" in person. She pronounces her name the same way Shania Twain pronounces her name. I wondered - if you're going to name your child after a celebrity, why don't you spell the name the same so people will realize that's where you got it? (Not that I approve of Shania's parents' choice in spelling...)

I'll come back later to "Makeila," "Mackenzi," and "Kailli." I could write a book on these three names alone - you wouldn't believe what I've seen...

No comment for now on the rest of the names in the above list. I think you get the idea that I will never run out of material for this blog. The insanity is just beginning. Stay tuned, especially those of you who haven't yet procreated. The school secretary you save from pulling her hair out may be ME!
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3 comments:

  1. KarraeNovember 7, 2010 at 9:27 AM

    I don't know if I should be offended... :D My name is made up. Even though it is spelled just like it sounds, nobody has ever pronounced it right the first time. This is really funny though.

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  2. CarolNovember 7, 2010 at 3:21 PM

    Thanks, Karrae! Glad I gave you a laugh, and sorry if my rant hit close to home. At least, like you say, your name is easily pronounceable. Too bad not everyone knows the rules of pronunciation in English...

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  3. KarraeNovember 9, 2010 at 6:53 PM

    haha. Is it going against myself to say that I plan on giving my children relatively easy names just so they don't have to go through what I did. I do enjoy the compliments I get though. :D

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