“Mist, Anfer, Benjamin - come now’

[LaurieFairyCake]

Fuck off seriously

how much of a twatty area do you live in that the above are NORMAL names

even more beggaring belief is that BENJAMIN was the bloody dogs name

No idea what type of kid ‘Anfer’ was - could have been either a girl, boy or ‘fluid’ at about 4 years old

I’m not outing myself in my area by the way by posting this, I’m on a campsite

I’ve heard of twins called Dolce and Gabbana

Overheard in my leisure centre's cafe: "Denim, Denim, come and eat your cheesy chips!".
(I think he turned out to be Denholm but, many years later, I still shout it upstairs to get my DCs down for tea.)

Florian is a common male first name in Germany and several other European countries. It’s also a saints name.

Liverpool are, hopefully 🤞, about to sign a fabulous young German footballer called Florian Wirtz so it will be a name heard and seen a lot more widely in the UK.

Anfer sounds very nicknamey to me, from a longer name or a mispronunciation.

I also work with a Florian and I think he is French.

We are not British and DS1 has a name completely common in other European countries, but considered “posh” in the U.K and he has been laughed at by other parents in the playground, at school and called gay all his life. Always by a certain demographic which seems to have a massive chip on their shoulders when it comes to name and just generally unable to cope with names which aren’t than frequently heard in playgrounds or whatever.

I know an Elvis, Maverick, Memphis, Mistee, God, Geeq (pronounced Geek), Haze, Breeze, Pixie.
No little Johns or Lindas. Times change.

I’ve met two Mavericks while my kids go through primary school.

Children never blink at any name in my experience. I’ve in city and rural areas over the last few years and come across all sort of names from various ethnicities and passions (one family named their children entirely from Star Wars) and nothing has ever met with comment.

The one that I remember most was when DD started talking about a girl in her class called Jism. I’m afraid DH and I did boggle at that but it turned out to be something different she’d got wrong.

Who on earth pronounces Ocean with a hard ‘c’?

Really sad to read about your son, there are a lot of ignorant people around. My DH and I are both English but our DS has a Scandinavian name, which most people will have heard of, and fortunately people think it’s cool and really suits him, so he has never been teased or bullied because we chose a ‘different’ name for him 😊. Was always the only child in his school with the name 😁. I love names that are not commonly used and have never regretted our choice. I have a name that is not commonly used but again one that people would know 😀

Many years ago when my dsis lived in London, my dn had a crush on a little boy in her class.
She would come home every day singing the praises of Jiggajigarny. What his real name was we never did find out.

Am so glad I have the most boring name on the planet 😂 I have a friend who named her daughter sage and her family refuses to call her that

That’s quite poor of her family.

Have you really though?

It wasn’t with a hard C. Not all accents put on emphasis the C in Auction.

The Telegraph's birth announcements usually have some cracking names - "Tarquin and Fiona announce the arrival of Rollo, brother for Jago and Horatio", usually born at the Portland Hospital or Lindo Wing. Though my favourite Telegraph name remains Ptarmigan!

Googling says Anfer is a German/Jewish surname. Maybe it’s in memory of someone?

I rather like Benjamin for a dog. 😁

I really like this. Luckily I am 46, so it won't be used for any poor, unsuspecting kid.

I had so many names I loved that were like this: Ember, Archer, Lyric, Sonnet, Amity, Amaryllis. Luckily DH had very traditional tastes so he brought me back down to earth and our kids have relatively normal names 🤣

I quite like them , nicknames or not , I can think of worse things to be called .

Unfortunately there's a lot of that around, as is clear from MN! I hope your son ends up in a more enlightened environment.

My dogs are called Colin, Geoffrey and Flora 🙂

Dd went to school with a Myst

And the shower gel called Irish Mist would have taken on entirely new connotations. It got renamed Irish Moos, which to English ears sounds about as cow-related as Irish Dung, but Moos is actually moss.

And of course Germany has quite strict laws on naming children, so you couldn’t call a baby there Mist even if you were stupid enough to want to.

Thinking of alternative spellings I Googled Ampher and, well, maybe they are Star Wars nerds? - see here:
starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ampher

Re: dog called Benjamin - the person who named it was obviously a Beatrix Potter fan who wanted a rabbit, but the rest of the family insisted on a dog.

I do this with my daughters (19 and 20) when we’re at airports or in busy shops etc. Demon is a favourite, gets some right looks.