Names

*hears pin hit carpet*

*packs slippers & toothpate and heads for the hills*

*decides to make loud distracting noises and vigorous arm movements near another thread*

*remembers there are no hills in Chigwell, hides behind cat*

My grandmother was called Fanny. It used to be an attractive name. I can only kiss the ground and weep with gratitude that I was not named after her....

Huub pronounced Hoob, Wolfie :-) Ghastly handle.

Karl seems to have legged it. Probably just as well. Kai's a lovely name. *she said soothingly*

Nimrod Ping is a mate of mine. He was the councillor for our ward (Regency) for many years in Brighton but sadly has to retire due to illhealth. His father and grandfather were also called Nimrod Ping! There will be no more Nimrod Pings though as he is not of that persuasion.

gay ping?

Cam Ping?

Tai-Ping?

......................................sorry......................................

In a perfect world maureens, duanes, kylies and darrens would be put down before reaching adolescence. If parents failed to learn from this brutal treatment and continued to name their children after Australian soap actors, members of boy bands and girl bands, cricketers and country and western singers then the parents too would be put down. There is no point to this policy by the way. *flees*

Having four sons and naming them Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John.....I'd stay away from that family.... Or having four daughters named Patience, Charity, Chastity, and Constance. With the exception of Charity, I'd stay away from that family as well..... By the way, my mother's first name was Constance. She had no sisters. Still, dad should have known something was up; sadly he found out too late. Fetus, Markus, Lukas...can't decide between the Bible and Rome. and one more Sean and I scream....... *continues in tradition of pointless posts*

Jim Tim and Kim Someone I met the other day had named their eldest daughter Charley after their (still-living) dog, and had called their son Harley - so they have a Charley, Charley and Harley.

Harley? isn't he David's son? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet but who wants a dozen red splatshits on Valentines day? There's a Hugh Janus in my novel and I've once signed into a hotel as Hugh G Rexion. I think the worst thing a parent can do is pick a name that suits the baby they're christening and not necessarily the adult they will become. We can all see the Tinkerbells of this world growing into thirty stone wrestlers with bad piles and a tattoo on their backsides that reads, "peter's in the pan" and another on the chest that reads, "once I hit you, you'll never land"

I've told this story before, but here it goes again...a classic: I used to work for Xerox. One day I was looking through the company's internal phone directory for Mr. Young. Just before the listing for Young, P. , there was a listing for a Mr. Yoo. First name: Duck. He worked in product engineering. Duck Yoo. I would assume he was a Chinese fellow. I was tempted to call him to see how he answered the phone...hopefully not: "Duck Yoo! Can I help?" or something along those lines. I never called, a missed opportunity if there ever was one.

When my son (named Frank) was playing football as a boy we came up against a team that had two brothers playing for it called Barnabus and Gladius! Still I've got a Mattie (female and very happy with her name), the aforementioned Franklin and Alice Susannah Christabel Frazer (her Mum went to the pub on the way to the registration office!). Frankie's second name is also Frazer. Is he mad? Probably.

Jean once had a patient whose surname was Kneebone. Her parents had called her Lucy.

mY mUM'S NAME IS mARY PHILOMENA SO SHE DECIDED TO CALL ME JANE ( NICE AND SIMPLE) APPARENTLY ALTHOUGH i HAD A CHILDHOOD BEING CALLED JANE THE PAIN AND PLAIN ETC ETC JANE SHANE ELAINE THERE ARE KIDS IN THIS SCHOOL CALLED PRINCESS AND KING AS WELL AS DESTINY AND HILERIAN OSUWARE AND OLUKETELE THERE IS NO POINT (I'M FEELING NIHILISTIC)

My daughter is called India simply because my mother was born there. I have had some strangely hostile reactions from people who think the name is pretentious. My middle name is Hermione which is now oddly trendy. I did recently meet a little boy called Othello which I thought was very very cruel.....

I knew a bloke called Sonny Jim once.... it must be great to have parents with a sence of humour. I have a nephew with a middle name 'Bond' He almost died at birth and the father had to name him in a hurry and without his wife's input. As he's a James Bond fanatic, Bond was chosen. I think it's a great name and will probably help him to 'pull' when he's older.

I like Bond. It's strong, intriguing and yes, guaranteed to be a babe magnet....

thinking about sequences of names, there was a letter in When Saturday Comes a few years ago speculating what the team announcement would sound like if the goalkeeper and back four were called Barr, Babb, Burr, Barber and Moran. well i liked it...oh and i think india is a fine name too...my dad is an indian parsi and their tradition is that the father's first name is given to the children as a middle name. i only found this out relatively recently and was pleased that i had unwittingly carried it on by calling my son alex robert. however my relations in india thought it peculiar that my daughter's middle name wasn't also robert..

Parsi are very regal people, Robert. You should be proud to come from such fine stock but yes, I would draw the line at calling my daughter Robert...reminds me of Bob in Blackadder....

I love the name 'India'. Mt physiotherapst has recently given birth, poor woman, to a boy child she named 'Mees'(pronounced Mace). Now this sounds fine in Dutch but, unfortunately, in English it means...er...Tit. '...and hows the little Tit today, then?' And so on. One can only hope that he doesn't emigrate to th UK in later life...

Oh dear...poor little mite. A least he will always be abreast of developments. (sorry) One of my Dutch friends has a baby called Huub. I have no idea how to pronounce it and I keep putting off phoning her....

He/she is, no doubt, the centre of attention. bum bum (groan).

i named my son gene, when he was five, with his long thick blond hair he had to introduce himself as " gene. g. e. n e. and i'm a boy " he loves it now though, at fifteen.. the next boy i have will be called havoc...i like the idea of creating havoc.. xx

Some people at my high school had interesting names: Norwood Druck Parker Balou and my personal favorite: Heidi Hough.......pronounced as in "heidi heidi ho"

That would be a comedy register, Justyn! I like Parker Balou though, he could be a sleazy detective in a paperback novel...

Yeah, an old Parker was a bit of a character...kind of the school tough guy....though I can't recall him ever hitting anyone....it was more a matter of the reputation...and he left school in about 9th grade, which is almost unknown in the U.S.....so it's hard to say what ever became of him. That could make an interesting story by itself. Norwood Druck was another peripheral character, though not nearly so bad. I should send him an email....he is listed on my high school web site. I never knew Heidi. It was a big school. There was another guy....Roy Wildermuth....nothing unusual about that name in my high school....he ran a pirate radio station out of his dad's den or garage...it broadcast over the whole of Cincinnati...completely illegal, but it was a really good station.....you could pick it up on the last available AM frequency on the car AM dial (fm was only for classical music and religious shows in those days...hardly anyone listened to fm in a car...or even had it on the radio dial). They called it WCIN, "sin" radio. No bad for a bunch of teenagers. Between songs you could here the screen door slamming in the background as someone went out for more beer, presumably. I often wondered where his parents were during all of this, but it was fun to listen. I contacted him last year... he is much more staid these days....semi-retired in Rochester New York (oddly, I used to live there but not at the same time). I'll have to go back to my yearbook. There were a lot of these kind of names...it was a large high school, so I didn't know all of them personally. Another name experience: I was standing in the bar of this large seafood restaurant in Stamford Connecticut called the Rusty Scupper one evening. Over the loudspeaker they announced very loudly, over and over: Will Mary-Anne Bimbo please come to the front desk! Mary-Anne Bimbo, please come to the front desk! It was actually her name, not a prank. Poor girl. Just in case it doesn't mean the same thing in British English, "bimbo" is slang for a "woman of loose morals."

We had a Heidi Booth in my school.... she was a lovely girl, lived round the back of our house.. had a very oddd german mother who shouted a lot..... my mum and dad used to say "are you going round to see Heidi... BOO!!!!!" at me all the time. It was very wearing...

What about the Brighton politician called Nimrod Ping!!! That's beyong cruelty. Does anyone know what his parents are/were called?

I generally like being Eamonn, except when I get junk mail addressed to Eamon, Aemon, Amon, Raymond, or, from Sainsburys, Mr. Amen Collins. ( I still have that letter ).

Lee & Flo?

My ex husband used to get (still does i suppose) mail addressed to Mr. S. RingSwell. How apt.

lee ping hahahhah...how about mo?

I do get upset at "pretentious" names, but I shouldn't really, otherwise, we'd all still be called Earnest, Wilfred, Ethel and Winifred (apologies to anyone with those names), but the point is we move on I suppose. However, "celebrities" do annoy......Brooklyn, Romeo, Phoenix Chi, Kai........the list goes on. It's a bit like bumping into old school friends on the internet, like Nigel who married Sharon, "oh yes, we have two little ones, Rasputin and Babooska - it's Russian yew know" Yes, and I bet the dog's called something equally exotic. Then again, maybe "Sharon" was considered exotic and pretentious at one time.

*Kai........the list goes on* *sharp intake of breath* *peers around for karl*

*gasps* *drops pin*