One day, my husband who is a personel officer in the U.S. Air Force, had a large class of young officers to out-process. (completing the paperwork regarding the officers’ move from one base to another.)
In the process of overseeing the effort he became aware that one of the young officers waiting his turn was a Major Bunns. Anticipating the possible effect of this name on the airman about to process the Major’s paperwork, Hubby approached said airman and gave advance warning. He remained standing nearby as the Major sat down. The airman asked the Major’s name. The Major answered. At this point the officer out-processing at the next station turned to Major Bunns and said, “Hey Harry!”
Some parents are unbelievably cruel when naming their children. For instance, James Stephen Hogg, governor of Texas 1891-1895, named his daughter Ima. (Although, contrary to popular legend, he did not have another daughter named Ura.)
At least no one would ever name their kid Moon Unit, right? :roll:
I can remember seeing an interview with a retiring registrar who when asked what he remembered most about his career replied that he’d once spent three hours unsuccessfully trying to talk a Mr & Mrs Carte out of calling their son Orson. It would probably be classed as child cruelty these days.
I knew a guy in college named Martin Filardi, but naturally, everyone called him Marty Filardi
I personally knew an old man in a nursing home named Harry Cox…
And my favorite “almost”-- my aunt tells the story from her nursing school days of an undereducated woman who had just given birth to a little girl. She had heard the doctors and nurses talking and liked the sound of a word they used so much that she wanted to name her new baby Meconium… they talked her out of it (Google if necessary!). Oh, by the way, the family name was Brown !!!
Hope you get over the lurgy soon Dubhlinn old chap. Nasty stuff.
On topic… When I used to shoot for GB there was a chap from Scotland turned up for one of the national trials. His name was Wayne Kerr. When we saw the kind of scores he was making on the 25yd range, no-one laughed.
Many years ago, when I was living in Duluth Minnesota, I had a very good friend whose Grandmother mother was a notorius speed demon. One summer I took a trip with my friend down to the Twin Cities to visit the State Fair with his Grandmother, who was driving. True to form, she kept the pedal to the floor, cruising around 80-85…this was back when 55mph was the speed limit on most Interstates.
My friend and I were loving it!!! But eventually we were sighted by a Minnesota Highway Patrolman who did what he should have and gave chase. Grandma slowed down and pulled over to the side of the freeway to await the enevitable.
When the patrolman got to her window he asked if she knew why he had pulled her over, to which she replied: “…to sell me a ticket to the Highway Patrolman’s Ball?” His response was sudden and curt, “Ma’am, highway patrolmen don’t have balls!” After a few seconds of silence, laughter errupted from the back seat (us) while grandma simply smiled at the patrolman…who by now had realized the content of his statement.
He then smiled himself, and after a few words of caution, let Grandma off with a stern warning, but no citation. We laughed about it the rest of the weekend but were made to promise her that we wouldn’t tell our folks about it. To this day, it is one of my fondest memories…and I still haven’t told my parents about it.
My sister is the assitant to the registrar for international students here in Windsor and she gets students from China and some have the very nice names in Chinese but when translated or written in English it turns into a whole different thing.
One example was: Yu Fuc, being that in China the family name comes first, then the first name. Either way my sister as kindly talked to these students, with help from students on campus, explaining why they might want to pick a first name that doesn’t embrass them.
I worked with a man named Peter Eaton and one named Dick Pullen. Then there was a girl named Linda Lay. I worked with a girl who was about 6 foot tall. Her name was Sharon Long she hated her name and was waiting for the time when she got married so she could change her name. She then became Sharon Sells.
My father and his wife are both retired school teachers.Teenage pregnancy was on the rise again during their last few years of teaching and they would often tell me of unusual names the young mothers had chosen.Two that I remember are Lasagna ( It was young moms favourite food) and one chosen, as young mom explained,because it sounded exotic ,romantic and mysterious…Latrina
One of the women my wife used to work with was a young, attractive, Vietnamese lady whose English skills were still a little weak. She couldn’t quite understand why her given name caused so many pained looks; after all, if you’re Vietnamese, Dung is a perfectly ordinary name.
My wife went to school in Hong Kong - in her day, it was usual for every student to pick an English-language name to use since much of the instruction was in English. Though there were a few odd-sounding choices, the thing that native English speakers tend to notice is that most of the kids didn’t know the customary nicknames - to them, Jim-Jimmy-James, Tony-Anthony, William-Bill-Billy, Liz-Beth-Elizabeth, etc, were completely unrelated.
I recall a conversation my wife had once with a woman from mainland China - the other woman asked if she was ashamed of her Chinese name, since she normally used an English-language name at work. My wife’s reply was that she was VERY proud of her Chinese name - and didn’t want the hear it mispronounced all the time. Quick quiz for non-Cantonese speakers: how would you pronounce “Seung”? I have NEVER heard a non-Chinese person get it right from the spelling alone, and most English-speakers can’t quite do it even after hearing it pronounced correctly.
Getting back to non-standard names: my mother loved them. Of three brothers, only the youngest got a more-or-less standard given name. But she got him with the middle name. We are, oldest to youngest:
Dana Lee (Not too bad, but there was a period I went by “Lee”)
Cameron Charles (He didn’t mind unti he was told Cameron means “Gourd Nose” in Gaelic. True or not, that one hurt - he’s always been a bit sensitive about his schoz)
Eric Kindel (Not bad except he’s a flaming redhead - imagine all the times he’s been called “Eric the Red” or been asked to kindle a fire with his hair)
I love my mother dearly. But what was she thinking? Was she trying to get even for labor pains?
What about that one basketball player, Thalamus McGhee? His folks apparently must’ve thought it sounded Classical or something, enough so that it led them to name their son after a gland.
I met a young man in AZ years ago who had the not altogether inapproriate name of Hugh Fox… he was quite handsome, very sharp and actually quite grounded… I remember he noted that I was certainly not the last of those and commented, “You have no sense of mortality.”… I denied it at the time, but it was a strong lesson once I finally got a grip on it. I’ll never forget that.
