What the Hell's in a Name?

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Le-a--how do you pronounce it?

Leah?

Lay - a?

How about "Ledasha"?

This child attends a school in Livingston Parish, LA. Her mother is irate because everyone is getting her name wrong. When the mother was asked about the pronunciation of the name, she said, "the dash don't be silent."

Reason contrasts the most popular child names of 1950 with 2007 and tosses in a bizarre baby-name anecdote:

My favorite, probably misheard, baby name: In the late 1990s, in a park in Huntsville, Texas I swear I heard a mother call her son Darvon. Given that Huntsville is a prison town (indeed, a death-chamber town) filled with a large substance-abuse community, that made some sense to me.

Here are two of our bizarre-name anecdotes:

1) A friend was walking the streets of Chicago when he came upon a mother and her unruly kid. Fed up, the mother yelled at her daughter, "Spatula! I got two words for you: Be-HAVE!"

2) Another friend, also a Chicago-ite, teaches in the rough part of town. With the new school year beginning, she was calling out the names on the roster when she came to one pronounced "Absidee," -- spelled "A-B-C-D-E."

Anyone reading this have any to contribute?