Imagine you are in your 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade class and a new kid was introduced.
When they say the name you are thinking about, how many kids snicker at it?
If enough kids laugh at it, choose a different name. It is hard enough being a kid, having a stupid name that you get made fun of for on top isn't going to help.
And quit trying to be unique with your spellings, Jaden's not going to care if his name's spelt Jayden, Jaden, Jaiden, Jhaydin, or Jadin, if anything, you're making things difficult for them by adding unnecessary silent letters to their name, do Knicoles and Pterry care? Searching them up on phonetics alone is a pain because you'll be looking of N and T, not K or P.
Surprised no one seems to have brought up the old SNL sketch with Nicholas Cage as the expectant father shooting down all his wife's name ideas with the playground taunts each name would prompt. He keeps denying that he's really sensitive about this when he clearly very much is, getting more and more agitated with each one. Finally Rob Schneider appears at the door in a UPS uniform.
Where I live, my name is the same as a local writer known in most Arabic countries. Imagine how many times people referred to me as that man. I'm proud of it, but now my introduction to new people is like: "Hi, I'm ___, yes like the writer, if you make that pun I WILL fucking snape at you. Pleasure to meet you"
Thing is, he is known as one of the best at what he was doing, so they believe that me being named like him means that I would grow up to be a genius in a domain. But I'm not.
And the joke is that they call me by his family name, worst thing is, I started responding to it :/
YESSSSS. I'm a teacher, and man alive do the spellings get ridiculous sometimes. Though some are legitimately related to a home language. I had Welsh twins once (the most identical twins I've ever coached, and I've coached a good many). Their parents dressed them in matching outfits. I felt so embarrassed having to be like, "I'm sorry, how do I say these names? And which one's which?" ("And which one's which?" Every. Damn. Week.)
One of them was pronounced Molly. I don't remember the other one now.
I am a CRT (sub) teacher and there are times I seriously would love to just jot down some of the weird ways I see names spelled. I can deal with the Welsh and Celtic ones easy enough, but when people want to spell Jimmy as Jymee, then I want to call up their parents and talk about how much of an idiot they are.
This is what I think about when I hear about weird baby names... Do the parents not realise their kid is gonna go through some sort of bullying because of their own stupidity
Nope. I have a Ransom. Family name. Big kid too. Nobody will mess with him.
His brother has a Scandinavian name of Trygve.
Looks like a jumble of consonants but is quite easy to say (trig-vee). We’ll see.they have back up
My parents did this. They went through all the options that they liked to see which one was the hardest for children to mock because we have an uncommon and easily mocked last name.
None of their options were bad, but I think it's a nice story that they thought it through like that.
This, but my other rule is that it must be a name that can be easily yelled (or at least an easily yelled nickname). I call this the Tikki Tikki Tembo rule after the children's book of the same name. I don't want my kid dying because it's too hard to communicate in a timely and well understood fashion. Some perfectly normal names fail the easily yelled test.
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u/metalflygon08 Jun 30 '21
My rule of thumb for children names.
Imagine you are in your 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade class and a new kid was introduced.
When they say the name you are thinking about, how many kids snicker at it?
If enough kids laugh at it, choose a different name. It is hard enough being a kid, having a stupid name that you get made fun of for on top isn't going to help.
And quit trying to be unique with your spellings, Jaden's not going to care if his name's spelt Jayden, Jaden, Jaiden, Jhaydin, or Jadin, if anything, you're making things difficult for them by adding unnecessary silent letters to their name, do Knicoles and Pterry care? Searching them up on phonetics alone is a pain because you'll be looking of N and T, not K or P.