Batman Bin Suparman And Other Ridiculous Names For Children
Nov 27th, 2008 | By Bock | Category: SocietySilly names came up recently in one of our discussions, and regular contributor Savannah brought us the ludicrous “La-a”.
What’s that spell?
How do you say it?
Laaaah? La aaah? Laa?
Nope.
It’s Ladasha. LaDASHa. Geddit?
Clever or what?
I thought of another one myself: L’a. What do you think? Good, isn’t it?
Lapostrophea.
I like it. There’s a certain Greek-tragedy ring to it. A certain classical feel about the whole thing. The heroine Lapostrophea murders K&, and in a hissy-fit of remorse has all her hair re-tinted.
O my beloved Kampersand, what have I done to thee?
Ya fuckin poisoned me, ya bitch!
God, it’s tragic.
You know, at one time, you could rely on the tinkers to preserve the old names. It’s true. They were great. Nothing but Martins and Ellens, Francies and Bridgets, everywhere you looked. They even kept the old Irish tradition of the patronymic, identifying individuals through three generations. That’s Tom’s Martin’s Francie. And that’s Martin’s Francie’s Martin. And Martin’s Francie’s Tom.
It’s a great system. They use it in the Scandinavian countries and it works. All those Anderssons and Thomsons and Kristoffersens.
In Iceland they have matronymics and patronymics. Also excellent. Bjork’s full name, for example, is Bjorksttir, which means that Bjork is the daughter of Guðmund. And if Bjorrk has a daughter called Sigurd, the child’s name will be Sigurd Bjorksdottir.
Isn’t it excellent?
I know a fellow who lives on Inis Mór called Máirtín Cóilínn Tom. That’s what everyone calls him, and there’s absolutely no need for a surname. It is a first-class system.
However, I notice lately that the tinkers have started to abandon the Francies and the Ellens. They’ve moved on to trailer-park chic, and I have to tell you, it just doesn’t work. Beyoncé O Reilly, to my ears at least, doesn’t sound great, but I shudder to think what it will be like in a few generations.
Look. There’s Beyoncé’s Shakira’s Ladasha!
Somehow — and call me old-fashioned if you want — somehow, it just doesn’t do it for me.
The name Katelyn really kills me. You see, this name started off in Ireland as Caitlín, but when it went to America, the locals weren’t able to get their tongues around the pronunciation and so they changed it to what it is today. That’s fine. I have no problem with that.
What really pisses me off, though, is the fact that our people abandoned their language — not recently, but over the last two hundred years — and have now reimported the trailer-park versions of ancient Irish-language names. Thus, we have all these little Irish Katelyns running around the place, but not a single Caitlín. Isn’t that the ultimate bastardisation of a culture?
As for Colleen? Oh, please don’t get me started.
I do like this fellow in Singapore though.
There was a story from school days as Gaeilge called Jimin Maire Thadhg. I don’t think they were tinkers though.
No. You don’t need to be a tinker to have the three names, but they did keep the tradition alive in parts of the country where it would have died out otherwise.
Snopes is highly sceptical of the Ledasha thing. And don’t forget the infamous “Shannon, you’re a corker!” from Far and Away.
Snopes can fuck off.
hey, sugar, i’m glad you enjoyed that little bit. i don’t know where darwin is from, but sadly, in the african american community there are names just like that and worse! xoxoxo
Let me assure you, it isn’t just the African-American community, though that community does seem to have generated quite a lot of nonsense that’s being copied on this side of the Atlantic. On the other hand, the African-American community also gave us the Blues, Jazz and Rock’n'Roll, so I can hardly complain. The balance seems to be emphatically on the positive side.
Darwin lives in this town and my people will deal with him later. Quietly.
In fairness to Mr Darwin, he is an excellent exponent of all the musical forms mentioned above,and so we must forgive him quite a lot.
funny how you get Colleens, but there are no Buchalls around.
also, my sister refused to consider the name Denephew if her baby was born male. she was ok with Denice though.
I have a friend here in Brisbane who is a family court lawyer. She has kept a record over the past twenty years of names that parents inflict on their children. The current crop includes: Pony, Briar (both girls) Princess -with a surname of Rule and Calypso. A large per centage of the people she sees have had their licence to keep pets taken away!
I’ve heard of a Shaneefa. A combination of shannon and aoife.
But with all of the class replaced with tesco value cheese flavour.
And who can forget Dan Paddy Andy from The Man Of The Triple Name?
Er…anyone?……right so..
a friend of a friend knows a pochahontas o’connor
hate hate the americanisation of irish names, it’s spelt a particular way, pronounced a particular way, don’t change it!
kian from westlife used to be cian from westlife but it was changed for the uk market cos they couldn’t get their heads around the ‘c’ being pronounced ‘k’ and were pronouncing it ’see’, as in ’see-an’, enough said
Like the R’n'B (I’m pretty sure the B stands for bollocks) singer Ciara. I read about her before and thought she must be of Irish origin with a name like that, then I heard it pronounced ’sierra’ and assumed it was just people from outside of Ireland reading it incorrectly. But nope, that was it, sickened I was.
Then again ‘Keane’ is pronounced ‘Kane’ in many parts of Mayo.
That’s because the surname Keane is just an anglicisation of Ó Catháin.
La-a was one of the best ones yet.
For my part,
there’s Shy-anne instead of Cheyenne (after the Native American Indian Tribe)
also, Shi’thead (watch how you prounce with the apostrophe…)
and,
Le’monjello, Or’anjello
(mother had twins, and she really liked the hospital’s orange and lemon jello)
As I work a baby unit, I’ve seen some others, but these have been the best so far.
Snopes said you can eff off too.
Er, what’s wrong with Snopes? Seriously.
I thought they were ok.
It’s a bit of an in-joke.
Oddly many of the African American names ARE in fact built on the names of the mom and dad. So if your parents’ names are robert and mary it could be bertma or robma etc. That’s why they are often unique.
One of my son’s here in the US is Dara and he would love to kick Dora the Explorer’s head in as she is screwing up how people pronounce his name left and right.
Barrick for BaRock drives me up the wall but I know it’s payback for the US pronounciation of EYEraq
It’s hard to live in two worlds
African-American or not, it’s still bullshit.
I was at the birth party(as opposed to christening) of a child named Geronimo.I spent the whole day sneering,but it’s not really funny.Well maybe just a bit.