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!

Friday, June 10, 2011

Survived by...

I just read an obituary for a really nice guy (I don't know him, so I really have no idea if he was a nice guy or not), and I discovered another place to find strange and unusual names. They appear in the "survived by" part of an obituary. When someone dies, a family member lists everyone still left in the family, so you get to see a conglomeration of either normal or abnormal names that all go together. This man who died had several grandchildren, but I could tell which ones were siblings because their names all started with 'K': Khloee, Krew, Koen, and my absolute FAVORITE, Kwincee. Really? None of those names are supposed to start with 'K'. Chloe, Crew (don't know why anyone would name a kids that), Cohen (really a last name), and Quincy are the normal spellings. If the parents of these poor children wanted to give them 'K' names, there are plenty of normal names to choose from. Kimberly, Kenneth, Keith, Karen, Kyle, Kevin, Kristin - I could go on and on and on - but you get the idea. Anyway, now I have a new place to look for weird names and name spellings. If you like that kind of fun, check the obituaries in your local newspaper!

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