British Office Compiles List Of Odd Names

[MrsSpringsteen]

British Office Compiles List of Odd Names

Mon Sep 12

Horatio Hornblower is an odd name, but consider his siblings: Azubia, Constantia, Jecoliah, Jedidah, Jerusha and Erastus. Rene Jackaman, archive assistant at Cornwall County Record Office, found all those names after coming across a real-life namesake of C.S. Forester's fictional naval hero in county census records.

The Hornblower name has been on record for centuries.

Inspired by that discovery, staff and researchers at the Cornwall Record Office compiled a list of more than 1,000 unusual names found in censuses as well as in births, deaths and marriage records going back as far as the 16th century.

"My all-time favorites are Abraham Thunderwolff and Freke Dorothy Fluck Lane," she said.

Other discoveries included Boadicea Basher, Philadelphia Bunnyface, Faithful Cock, Susan Booze, Elizabeth Disco, Edward Evil, Fozzitt Bonds, Truth Bullock, Charity Chilly, Gentle Fudge, Obedience Ginger and Offspring Gurney.

Levi Jeans was married in Padstow, Cornwall, in 1797.

Other remarkable duos in the marriage records included Nicholas Bone and Priscilla Skin, joined in wedlock in 1636; Charles Swine and Jane Ham in 1711; John Mutton and Ann Veale in 1791, and Richard Dinner and Mary Cook in 1802.

 

[JessicaAnn]

Strange names I have encountered

Annie Reeks
Joe Buttweiler
Tom Humpage

 

[U2SavesTheWorld]

I posted this in another thread but I have:

Cathy Cmunt
Rosemary Cinnamon Sage (true story: she was in my high school class and she just got married and had rosemary and sage on all the tables)
Rose Bush
Dunklin Buttsy

These are people I actually know.

 

[JessicaAnn]

Dunklin Buttsy

That's just mean

 

[U2SavesTheWorld]

I know. Just say it outloud. I mean, it just invokes pity.

 

[Carek1230]

I worked for a guy named Allen Butts, knew an auto dealership family who named their daughter Lisa Ford (get it-lease a ford?!)

 

[Tilli]

I used to go to school with someone called Paul Brain. When they read his name aloud on the register it was P.Brain

 

[discothequeLP]

Elizabeth Disco

 

[melon]

There's an old urban legend that still claims to have some truth in it. Still, it's a semi-amusing story:

When I was an Assistant D.A. in Philadelphia, I prosecuted a guy named Nosmo King. He told the judge (who had asked) that his mother had gone into labor on the Broad Street subway and, having the last name King, saw the sign and thought it was a sign from above... We also had a juvenile named Female (pronounced FEH-muh-lee). A woman detective friend of mine, back in the days when women officers handled only juvenile matters, responded to a call of a missing teenager. In interviewing the distraught mother, my friend asked the mother the girl's name. The woman said the girl's name was (phonetically) "Femily." My friend, trying to calm the woman down so she could get all the information, said "oh, that's very similar to my name. My name is Emily and I was named after my maternal grandmother. Who was your daughter named after?" The sobbing woman replied that those nice people in the hospital had named her daughter, putting the name on a little bracelet "Female Johnson." Emily said the hardest thing was not laughing when the woman was so obviously distraught.

Melon

 

[Palace_Hero]

I knew a Joe King, for real.

 

[sallycinnamon78]

Hmmm. Baby names and urban myth: http://www.snopes.com/racial/language/names.htm

A classic example is found in the 1981 movie pilot of the TV series Cagney & Lacey. A prostitute gives her name to the desk sergeant but, as he's not familiar with fuh-MALL-ee, he asks her to spell it. "F-E-M-A-L-E," she offers. "That's Female," he says in disbelief. "Yeah, well my parents had twelve kids," responds the woman. "By the time they got to me they'd run out of names."

A properly folkloric version of the fuh-MALL-ee tale would have it that the parents saw the "name" on the baby's bracelet. Not being able to read well, they sounded it out badly, it fell on their ears prettily, and thus Baby was named. Alternatively, they interpreted what was written on the bracelet as the hospital having already named their child and the matter now being out of their hands.

As the 1917 example shows, this legend has been around for dogs' years. Names reported to have resulted from misinterpretations of the written word:

Asshole (ah-SHOL-ee)
Clitoris (cla-TORE-us)
Enamel (EE-na-mull)
Female (fuh-MALL-ee)
Gonorrhea (gu-NO-ree-ah)
Lemon Jello (le-MON-juh-lo)
No Smoking (NAWS-mo king)
Orange Jello (or-AN-juh-lo)
Pajama (PAH-ja-mah)
Shithead (shaw-THAYD)
Syphilis (suh-PHYL-lis)
Testicles (TESS-tic-clees)
Urine (u-RIN-ee)
Vagina (va-GEE-na)

Names reported to have resulted from overhearing an unusual but flowery-sounding term:

Chlamydia (kla-MID-e-ah)
Eczema (EX-suh-ma)
Latrine (la-TREEN)
Meconium (muh-CONE-knee-um)
Placenta (pla-SENT-a)
Urea (YUR-ee-ah)
Vagina (va-JAI-na)

Either way, the tale swings on the fictitious parents' lack of education and how this leads them to choose a totally unsuitable name.

I've got some pretty bad ones that are actually real... scarily enough...

I too knew a Jo King at school (Joanna). There was also Teresa Green. Poor girl. Not to mention the obligatory Mike Hunt. The worst was Ed Butt. Seriously. Cruel parents or what??!

My friend never forgave her hippy mother for her initials. Her name is Amy Sunshine Sutherland.

I remember when I used to work at a petrol station, we had a customer who held an account with us - his name was spelled 'Dikshit'. I went home and told this to my mother. She told me that she nearly married a man whose surname is, apparently, pronounced along the lines of "Rah-shee". Unfortunately, the spelling was RAKSHIT. Thank God she had to sense not to go through with it.

 

[Schmeg]

My friend once introduced me to a Richard Headly, who was affectionaly nicknamed Dick by his high school friends.

 

[BluRmGrl]

I was in school with a girl named "Velveeta Clayton" - yeah, like the cheese food product - while my brother's class had "Passion Sparrow". Seriously, some parents just do not consider the unfortunate consequences.

 

[sallycinnamon78]

Crikey. That reminds me of the old Velveeta ads in the US... I came back to then UK 13 years ago and I still remember all the words to those godforsaken jingles. Could be worse though - they could have named the unfortunate kid 'The Clapper'.

 

[Axver]

The last name on one side of my family is Cockburn.

 

[sallycinnamon78]

Please tell me it's pronounced the British way and not the American way... I'm sure you understand why I say this!