I grew up Catholic and my first name wasn’t “acceptable” so my parents made up on the spot a feminized version of a saint they’d prayed to while trying to get pregnant. I guess that was ok with old father whoever because it was allowed. I have never seen or heard it anywhere and I never, ever use it. Not even the initial if I can get away with it. To make matters worse, my sisters thought it was funny to change it to “Banana” which they occasionally call me to this day. I never understood-the rest of them had perfectly “normal” saint names for middle names…
I guess that is Hortense in Latin. A “flowery” nickname like Pansy would not be too far-fetched for someone named “Gardener” 
m2ck, I absolutely, 100% promise that neither of them are saints’ names.
The first name may be very, VERY stretched to a saint’s name if you change the language, gender, and meaning. (By that I mean they have the same first syllable and that’s about it.)
The middle name is a Filipino surname.
Anywho, my only point is that priests don’t seem to much care anymore. At least not the priests in the churches I have seen baptisms in.
I knew someone who hated her first name so much that she never used it. She just took another name, without legally changing it, I think. After she died, her adult kids only found out that she had a different legal first name when they saw her birth certificate.
A friend’s grandson is named Spinoza. Yikes!
I guess he is lucky he didn’t get Baruch; although I’m not sure which is worse…
You have to be committed to name your kid Spinoza because you’ve pretty much established the pattern for all of your kids. You just can’t call your second kid Bob
Meta-comment: I’ve been really enjoying the comments on Catholic naming traditions and saint’s names and all—I’ve learned a lot. So despite my eye-rolling earlier in the thread, I’d like to say that on the whole I’m being happy about it all right now.
There was a Catholic cardinal with a surname of Sin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Sin
We have TWO, count 'em two (!) friends who named their sons Basil. My husband says, we hang out with a buncha strange people.
Pronounced bæzl or bezl? If it’s the former, then it’s just a British name (e.g., Basil Rathbone) that’s finally made its way over here. If it’s the latter, then it’s an Apple-like food reference on steroids.
I’ve mentioned this in another thread, but my S had 2 good friends in HS who were Nigerian. They were named Precious and Melody (both boys). I thought that it was commendable that neither of them took a nickname or more American name. Nigerian names are commonly “attribute” names and sometimes don’t translate well into English.
I never understood that concept. My mom has a fairly common name in her country, but one that is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, and is fairly difficult to pronounce for English-speakers. On more than one occasion, she’s been asked what her “American/English name” was, to which she answered, “I don’t have one.” When asked how people dealt with the pronunciation of her name, she’d reply, “They learn.” 
Similarly, I’ve had a few run-ins with teachers over my refusal to adopt a name in foreign language classes (not the foreign version of my name, which I don’t mind, but a new name altogether), stating “My parents spent a great deal of time picking out the right name, so that’s the one I’ll use.”
I thought it was fun to pick a name in a foreign language class. To each his own.
My bff name is Pauline. She doesn’t use it at all on anything except, I suppose, legal documents. She uses Pamela on formal things (like her wedding invitation for example) but it’s Pam on mostly everything else. I don’t believe she changed it legally but unless she has told, you would never know her real first name. About the only thing in common between the two names in the first letter.
My father’s name was Robert but never went by that name. From very early in his life, he was called “Bunch” and that’s what he was called for the rest of his life. We were always told it was because he was a “bunch of trouble” as a child.
One of his brothers was named Walter but went by “Polly”. Another brother was named Clarence but went by “Bit” (short for Bitty Boy because he was the youngest). The oldest son was Phillip who was sometimes called “Gump”.
I’ve always let the Germans and the French to pronounce my name their way. Why irritate people or make it difficult for them? Sometimes when I hear stories about what people have named their kids I think the Germans had the right idea to have a list of approved names! (There was some flexibility if you could show that your name was okay in your ethnic group.)
@mathmom, when I lived in France for a while after college, I also let the French call me by their version of my name. If I had decided to make that an issue, it would have been a constant battle.
A tweenager in my extended family has a name that’s fairly uncommon in the US. That’s rather surprising because it’s quite common in both French and Spanish cultures. It is less common, but not unusual in the Netherlands and in Brazil. i don’t know if her parents realize it, but the pronunciation they gave it is not how it is pronounced in either French or Spanish.–or Portuguese or Dutch, for that matter. I’ve never said anything to her parents about it.
I keep thinking when she gets to high school and starts a foreign language, some teacher is going to tell her the correct way to pronounce it and she’s going to be annoyed with her parents. (There are actually at least a half dozen women in the US who have the same first and last name, but most of them live in places with large Hispanice populations and she doesn’t. }
On the other hand…their Anglicized pronunciation is close to that of a body part that usually isn’t mentioned in polite convesation. So far, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has teased her about it. If it becomes an issue, she can switch to the Frencch or Spanish pronunciation!
“I thought it was fun to pick a name in a foreign language class.”
Me too…but I wonder if @skieurope has ever studied Chinese. You really have to have a Chinese name, because there isn’t any way to transliterate most English names. You couldn’t put your name on your homework without a Chinese name.