Over the years, I've semi-regularly stopped over to read a blog called "Baby's named a bad bad thing". If you find some of the names we as a society are burdening some of our children with ridiculous, here is the place to go to read comments and snark from other like-minded souls.
We all want our children to be unique and special, but there are limits. Naming the poor thing something that no one can spell or pronounce is not "unique" and definitely not "special". It more likely borders on child abuse.
We have the proliferation of "y"s inplace of every other vowel when said vowel has a generic ə sound. Madison becomes Madysyn, Katherine Kathyryn, etc., etc., etc. You have the strange syllabic emphasis as in the (hopefully apocraphyl) tale of the woman who named her daughter "Female", pronounced to rhyme with tamale. You have the "African" names, which probably have never been seen by any African tribe or nation. You have children saddled with names like "Moon Unit" and "Pilot Inspektor".
You get the idea.
Today's OMG WTF were they thinking moment comes from I don't know where, because the new's outlet doesn't specify a state. The tale itself is horrific - an illegal immigrant nephew kills his aunt, his cousin, and her husband in brutal fashion, so bad that the crime scene folks say it's about the worst they'd ever seen.
But the sister of the husband, who has the sensible, handsome name of Michael is called this: Derquiasha. The mind boggles. I don't know her. She is probably a lovely woman. But I have absolutely no idea what her mother was thinking when she put that name down on the birth certificate. I won't say I have no idea how to pronounce it, I do, but it's probably wrong.
Years ago when I worked for H&R Block, one of the other preparers had a regular customer who, every year, had his electronic filing rejected because his daughter's name wasn't spelled the way Social Security thought it was spelled. This happened even when they got a new card for her from SS and copied the name exactly. It took at least two tries to file his return every. single. year.
One year the preparer asked him about the name. He said that his wife, who had walked out on them years ago never to be heard from again, had been "going through her African history phase" when the daughter was born. The tax preparer asked if the daughter liked the name and he admitted that she didn't. The final decision was that he would take her to the court house after the return came in and let her choose a new, legal name. I don't know but I bet it didn't have a "q" or an apostrophe in it.
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