Unfortunate names

A few weeks ago, I read the post Naming your child could be catastrophic from fellow Bol-anon blogger Edik.

In that post, Edik shared how he encountered some weird sounding names of students while doing a scrapbook project for a school.

Edik himself has an unusual name for somebody in the Philippines. Nowadays, it seems that Filipino parents have a penchant for unique names for their children.


On a similar note, I blogged a couple of years back an article by a British journalist who poked fun at Philippine names. In particular, he talked about “fun” names especially in the Filipino-Chinese community. Names like Magic Chiongson, Chica Go and Van Go.

This British journalist described his homeland, UK, as staid and boring and full of people named John Smith.

Well, it’s not totally true. I should know having lived in the UK for the last eight years. Yes, there are lots of people named John Smith. But, there are the fun names, too.

Or rather, there are also unfortunate names in Britain. Justin Case, Barb Dwyer and Stan Still are just a few examples.

Imagine introducing yourself to people as Terry Bull or Anna Sasin.

No, I did not make these names up. I got it from a BBC article, Most unfortunate names. Read it and have a few laughs at the expense of these people if you are that cruel.

My favourite from that article is from one of the commenters. Her name is Susan and she’s a lawyer. She is married to Robert who is a banker. His surname is Mee. They are known to the public as Sue Mee, a lawyer and Rob Mee, a banker. Talk about irony, huh?

Before parents decide on that unusual name for their child, they should take heed from the advice from the same BBC article:

When the parents of some of those people mentioned named their children, many probably didn’t even realise the implications at the time.

Parents really do need to think carefully though when choosing names for their children.

Their name will be with them for life and what may be quirky and fun for a toddler might be regretted terribly when that person becomes older or even a grandparent perhaps.