I don’t have any problem with Nickolas - that’s a perfectly reasonable variant. Now if they’d spelled it Neekoelahs I would.
Readers of that other thread can read that my oldest was born in Germany. His middle name is my last name (which is also a common German last name) and was not on the approved name list in Germany. I had to get a letter from the American consulate assuring the Germans that for an American baby this was a perfectly fine middle name.
I agree you shouldn’t give your kids names that will make them be teased. I went to school with an Annabel Lee and her sister was named Vivian (was it better that it wasn’t spelled Leigh?). I’m sure if they’d had a brother he would have been Robert E.
@jym626 I’d be shocked (but not upset) if there was any Jewish blood in the family. There just weren’t Jewish people in that region, and the family can trace back to the 1700s to that isolated area. There are no other Jewish names in the family tree. His dad was Sam, and before that was Henry (who was a Baptist minister), and before that Nathaniel. Ira’s siblings were Bryant, Mary Elizabeth (Mamie), Bobby, and Walter. I suppose it will always remain a mystery.
I had to stop and think about Peter being a possibility for ridicule. Perhaps that would be a regional thing too. I know many Peter/Petes and it’s never struck me that way. More Peter Pan in my thoughts …
In the most recent election, my H didn’t know who to vote for for judge. They were all women candidates and he picked the ones with the “stripper names” - Desiree and Monique. It turns out that I voted for them too because they had been recommended by every good government group. Watch out, they may be on the Supreme Court one day and you can kiss your assumptions goodbye!
My grandmother’s name was LaFon. The only other person I’ve ever heard of with that name was Al Gore’s sister who died a number of years ago. I never heard the story on how she got that name. She was not French, either.
I knew a man named LaFon. Needless to say, he didn’t like it and went by ‘Bill’.
One criteria for baby naming should be "will my kid get teased unmercifully in school with this name? " Layla is one of those names. And if you have the last name of Dover, you should stay away from Benjamin. If your last name is Head, please don’t name your child Richard and if your last name is Hunt, please scratch Michael off the list.
I grew up with a Frank Neil Stein (and of course kids abbreviated the middle name to the initial) and Katherine Litter was of course called Kitty. Really folks. Just, no. Don’t do it to an innocent baby.
Post edited by jym626 at 5:06PM
Ha! Yes, and if your last name is Balls, ‘scratch’ Harry, off the list.
Voting for judicial candidates on the basis of name alone can be a sordid business. Several years ago, in Los Angeles, a very well-respected Superior Court judge named Dzintra Janavs lost re-election to a challenger with a conventional name. The challenger was singularly unqualified; she had very little legal experience and her main occupation was running a bagel shop. There was no question but that Judge Janavs lost because of her unusual name, and it was generally accepted that the challenger had chosen Judge Janavs to run against because of her name. It was terrible.
(In CA, judges are technically elected, but they are generally initially appointed by the governor and only have to appear on the ballot if they are challenged. Only a tiny percentage of sitting judges are challenged. It drives me crazy when people say they decide on who to vote for based on name alone!)
There was a guy named Pat Head running for some city office around here several years back. Someone took a can of paint to all the nearby yard signs and changed the “a” in Pat to an “o” . I still laugh remembering driving by all the Pot Head signs.
I grew up with a family of three girls. Names were something like: Thelma, Thady, and Thump VonThump (I really couldn’t think of any Th names… the names are common American names but start with a different two letters… the youngest one’s name is really in her last name like that though).
I don’t understand it and I don’t like the sequence or rhyming names.
Yesterday a friend was telling me about a person she was doing business with whose name she didn’t think twice about seeing it in emails. But when she said his full name out loud she almost laughed.
The last name is Zahore. And it really doesn’t matter what first name you pair it with.
I knew of a Harry Butz, too. His daughter, Sandra, said that a sense of humor ran in the family. She went by…Sandy Butz (she did like going to the beach).