AIBU to ask why parents give deliberately unusual spellings of otherwise common names?

[Ihateasthma]

Why do parents give their DC names which sound normal but differently spelt to the normal way?

Maddyline for Madeleine
Febee for Pheobe
Pheo for Theo

You have shot yourselves in the foot from day one as you get angry, roll your eyes when others spell their names the normal way. If you gave DC the normal spelling- you wouldn’t react like this

Then when the DC are older they do the same thing and say “it’s spelt ….”

I think it sometimes happens when people hear a name they like, but have never seen it written down, so end up spelling it as they hear it.

Me too! But she really suits it and bizarrely doesn’t know many others with the same name!

Would you go back and change it if you could?

To save money later in life on personalised pencil cases, water bottles, book marks etc. They won't ever find their names.

My brother and his wife had a 'Jakson'

Apparently (and not my words) 'Jackson' is very 'common' and they wanted 'something 'different' and 'unique'

Not my taste in name (and they give the poor little sod a really bad middle name which isnt spelt properly either so the whole name just looks odd when written down) but ill never forget my father saying 'the spelling is awful,plus dad's name is Ben!'

Apparently it stems from 'Jacks son/Jackson' so by my father's logic,he should have been called Benson' ('and fuck knows how they'd have fucked about with the spelling of that name')

Caused a huge row that took about a year to cool down again-i could see both sides but my father should have kept his mouth shut

The poor little sod is going to spend his life saying 'its jackson but without the C'

Could have been easily avoided but tame compared to some of these

At least it's not Jaxxon.

I can't find anything with my name spelt the way I do. (A quick Google suggests it's common in Europe) My sister got me a keyring one year with my name on

Oh I quite like that spelling. One of my favourite books is by Elisabeth Luard and I think I agree that it looks nice written down without the z.

I have never heard anyone insert an R into Sian as described by PP - Sharn. Where do you live that pronounces it like that?

I am South coast and everyone I know with that name is pronounced Shahn.

Like on the Simpsons and they only had bort licence plates 🤣🤣🤣

Sharn and Shahn are pronounced the same to me. It depends on your accent.

This seems odd to me when the spelling of the name literally dictates the pronunciation.

Depends if you have a rhotic or non rhotic accent.

Everyone would have the same accent if it only relied on that.

The link between spelling and speech in the English language isn’t reliable anyway.

It’s not the English language, firstly.
That’s the point. It’s not merely “a” leaving pronunciation open to interpretation and regional differences, it’s “â” which dictates pronunciation.

Well we don't all speak like you do on the south coast. I don't say baath either, it has one "a" so I say bath.

They only show names with at least three entries, so it is possible that there are one or two.

Arron/Aron and Aaron have different pronunciations though, or should.

Just leaving this here.

I've no idea why it's just trans women - all the trans men seem to choose ordinary male names.

Non binary obviously don't want anything associated with a gender.

Same here and I think I have a fairly "normal" accent

It's not at all. It's a very old Hebrew name.

Aaron is the 'modern' version created by the Celts.

You mean "non binary people" not just "non binary". Actually I prefer all of these names to some of the horrors on this thread (Emaleigh, Henrey, Issac etc) At least they are recognisable words and easily pronounceable. Plus River and Forest are sometimes given names - Jamie Oliver has a son called River for example.

That's a very odd thing to be pedantic about. I'm female & a woman not a female person & a woman person that's just weird.

I just think of dogs I've known with the non human names.

On that theme pets seem to have the more human names now.

My friends adopted 2 children with normal names but unusual spellings. Example: Rachyl instead of Rachel and Zoiee instead of Zoe. (Not the real names) When the adoption was finalised the judge agreed that the spellings needed to be changed and for the sake of the children but that their names remained their names. I think the birth parents wanted the children to stick out and be easy to track down. This is apparently quite common. I think the children will thank their parents (my friends) and the judge for changing the spellings.

Until my DC started school I thought all the weird spellings were made up, but there are genuinely quite a few phonetic and phonetic-defying spellings here

Ds2 received an invitation for 'Phio', written in an adult's handwriting (I guess that would actually be pronounced Fy-o)