Interesting spellings.

Washer, tier, bier and pier all rhyme with gear. Why wouldn't 'Kier' in 'Kiera'?

(I am Irish so would spell ir Ciara anyway)

I think Euniq is meant to be "Unique".

Oh the irony of being one of 200 Uniques in a given year.

What is Euniq supposed to be?

Flogging I think you're right, especially with the Kiera as Keira, they would be pn differently.
Kiera - Key-ear-ra
Keira - Keir (to rhyme with gear)-rah

Surely most of those are just down to the parents being illiterate morons??
Spelling your child's (well established) name phonetically just makes you look thick, not different.

I've met both a Teighlour and Euniq.

"New" or "edgy" or different spellings just make me think someone is trying too hard to be cool or clever when actually it just makes them look silly.

All my children's names are the traditional spellings. It was important to me, I am sick of spelling my names. All are correctly spelt yet people like to add a letter every now and then .

I agree, AndHarry. Annabelle is too frilly, but it's the more popular spelling. Mine is a non-frilly one, too!

I have an Annabel. Everyone spells it Annabelle but I think it looks fussy, I wanted Amabel but didn't want her to be forever correcting people. May as well have gone for it :o

I turned on a game show halfway through a few months ago, and there was a contestant whose name badge said 'Keight'.

I was for a minute, then realised it was probably pronounced like Kate

Is Abu welsh? The u at the end in Welsh is pronounced "i".

Anabel means disabled in Welsh (almost, it's anabl)

Gems I have seen in our local paper are Frayar (Freya?) Jaymes, Harri, Loocus (Lucas?)

Abu for Abi... No idea, as I say it as 'Ab-ooo' not Abi, but apparently it is!

Anabel would surely rhyme with arable.

I liked Annabel for a girl, and I do understand Annabelle etymologically.

Isn't Annabelle much more usual than Anabel? Anabel looks wrong and a bit too close to anal for my liking!

Jorja just looks daft, I don't care if it's legit.

What about Annabelle? How many superfluous letters in there? Anabel looks nicer and Must be easier to spell.

I know of an Emilee, her sibling is called something beginning with K and ending in lee (a yooneeq spelling) and they wanted them to match.

I met an Emilee the other day. I have to admit that the spelling did make me raise my eyebrows a bit as I've never seen it spelt like that before. I have no idea whether it is a legitimate alternative spelling.

I love names and the etymology behind them, so I'm cool with accepted variants, international variants, names from other alphabets/cultures/languages. The names that make me wince a little internally are where people have chosen to change a name to a spelling they prefer (so a pure choice, not influenced by culture/background) but the chosen name simply doesn't follow the rules of English. I appreciate those rules are often complex and sometimes contradictory, but they do exist and I'd guess that over the course of a person's lifetime, they are going to come into contact with more people who do recognise and understand the basic/general rules than those who don't and are therefore going to automatically apply those rules to names that they hear or see written down. So to use Jena, as mentioned above, as an example: she is going to spend a proportion of her time correcting the spelling of her name to people who hear her introduce herself first and assume it's spelled "Jenna", and correcting the pronunciation to people who see it written down first and assume it will be pronounced "Gina". All because her parents wanted to be yooneeq.

"zacariyya for example ... but they are actually foreign spellings"

I one knew a Hindu girl called Neeyantee (rhymes with chianti). I couldn't help thinking that since the original version of that name would have been written in an entirely different alphabet, it wouldn't have hurt to transcribe it in English as something a but more streamlined!

Maison

Not saying it's good or bad
It's bad, JS.

Aydan is an Arabic name. Cathryn is an acceptable variant. La-a never happened.

I met a child called Karman (carmen) whose mum wanted her to be unique (yes that's what she said). I didn't point out that her child's name should have been pronounced car-man.

Maison is another one. I read it as maison as in French for house rather than mason which is what they were going for.

Some of the odd spellings we come across are international spellings of similar names, kacpar, danyall, zacariyya for example, might look yooneeq at first glance but they are actually foreign spellings. There is no excuse for most of these though.

lighthouse you should be so relieved you spelt it Molly. Any of your other variants were bloody horrible.

These are all people I've actually met (all ages):

Jayson
Mea (pronounced Mia)
Symon
Cathreen (pronounced Cathryn)
Luci
Jena (pronounced Jenna)
Jaymie (boy)
Jaimee (girl)
Lea (pronounced Leah - I thought it would be Lee)
Nikola
Nicolla
Ashlee
Lukas (wouldn't be unusual in Germany but this one is English)
Mai
Charli
Sofiah (soFEEa not soFYEa!)
Sharne
Katlyn (Kate not Kat)

From The Apprentice. Chiles for Charles.

Sanity - I've seen a new baby Ayprill on my face book today too - the mn world is smaller than we think!!!