<p>Two of my friends during elementary school: Penny Nickels and Dino Tsoris.</p>
<p>^ I knew a Penny Lane.</p>
<p>I knew a Candy Kane.</p>
<p>I had a friend in high school whose name was T. Literally, just the letter T. She went by Samantha in school. Her brother’s name was W. Her parents were strange but she was a really nice, well adjusted girl.</p>
<p>My fiance’s name is Jameson, which I did not think was a weird name but nobody can ever get it right. They always think it’s his last name, or think his name is Jason. He also has some bitterness about the name keychains and the like, they never have a Jameson. I must say I did not have much better luck even though I have a “normal” name, everything says “Jillian” and not just Jill. I am only Jill.</p>
<p>My mom is a court reporter and gets a lot of weird names in her line of work, though. She once typed a woman who had three sons all named Tyrone, and a woman named Peculiar Sprinkle. Seriously.</p>
<p>I knew a Rusty Nail.</p>
<p>Ema, I had the same issue. Always an expanded version of my name, never my real name. Everyone assumes my name is a nickname :(</p>
<p>
Storm Field was a meteorologist in New York in the 70’s and 80’s. And yes, that was his real name - his father was also a New York meteorologist, Dr. Frank Field.</p>
<p>How about Oranjello and Lemonjello- twins- I am dead serious!</p>
<p>^ Oy. </p>
<p>10char.</p>
<p>A friend who is a teacher had a little girl in her class who’s name in pronounced Shi Tay but her mother spells it *****head, (yes the I is in there) and the mother gets very annoyed when people question the spelling of her name.</p>
<p>LOl even this site won’t let me post her real name. Lets just say the “ay” part of her name is spelled “head” What was this mother thinking.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that story before, several times. I thought it was an urban legend.</p>
<p>Re: #30</p>
<p>Some immigrants may encounter issues when a perfectly reasonable name in their native language turns out to be or look like something insulting in English. For example, consider a Vietnamese boy’s name meaning “luck” and a Vietnamese girl’s name meaning “jade”.</p>
<p>Unfortunately it’s true. A few years ago my friend had her as a student in her kindergarten class. Apparently she’s not the only girl with that spelling of her name.</p>
<p>Is Ocean black and about 30 now? (I didn’t say African-American because her parents were from the West Indies.) If not, well, there are at least 2 of them.</p>
<p>My D knew a girl named Harmony Button. Her high school English teacher wrote a novel and named one of the characters after her.</p>
<p>There was another child who would be about 50 now whose first name was Vagina. </p>
<p>There was a fairly well known philanthropist whose name was Ima Hogg. [Ima</a> Hogg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ima_Hogg]Ima”>Ima Hogg - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>And a lawyer who was named Truly Luce. </p>
<p>At one point, there were about a dozen people named Chestnut Brown in the US army.</p>
<p>I work as a substitute teacher and taking roll sometimes can be a real challenge!</p>
<p>Many years ago my wife taught in Detroit public schools and many classes provided a phonetic rendering of names. Creative name invention was mostly then, at least in this country, an African-American phenomenon. Now we have name invention plus names from all over the world. </p>
<p>I became sensitive to this some decades ago when I went to a concert featuring a pianist with what seemed a really odd name: Radu Lupu. He’s Romanian. Unknown to us, he got sick and and was replaced by a Spanish player with the first name Gaetano. (Not as famous, don’t remember him.) The people I was with were Latino and I’d mentioned we were seeing someone with an odd name I couldn’t remember. They saw the sign and I remember seeing the look of shock when they thought I meant Gaetano was weird. I tried to explain but it was like something from Larry David’s series. BTW, one of my dad’s best friends was Transylvanian and spoke like a Dracula movie with long rolled r’s and sustained vowels. I had no idea Radu Lupu was Romanian. </p>
<p>But I have to say when I meet someone named Demetrius, I think of gladiators and Victor Mature and especially Groucho Marx’s comment about his chest versus Hedy Lamarr’s. (Though I have new respect given he had a torrid affair with Esther Williams.)</p>
<p>[snopes.com:</a> Funny Names](<a href=“http://www.snopes.com/racial/language/names.asp]snopes.com:”>Have Babies Been Named After Embarrassing Medical Terms? | Snopes.com)</p>
<p>Ocean is pretty common - SSA says in 2012, 54 girl babies and 63 boy babies were named Ocean.</p>
<p>
I’ve read it’s very much the reverse for “Osama” in several societies.</p>
<p>My prize for the guy who needs the most understanding in today’s flat world is one whose name is pronounced “uhnul” (the “n” having a different variation from what it is in English), but it’s almost always spelled “anal”.</p>
<p>My son’s best friend married a girl named Heaven. At their wedding, I had no trouble picking out who her Dad was among the crowd. Yes, he had the longest hair and wore a cowboy hat.</p>