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 ….”

Isnt Emilia polish?
My sons key worker at his respite placement is Emilia and i think shes polish.

Yes some Brazilian names are wayyy out there in comparison. All the kids named after Michael Jackson are Maikol, Maikel, Maicow, Maicon. Wanderlei anyone?

I think it's linked to socio economic status in Brazil too, right? I know in the Netherlands you get kids with Italian-ish and English-ish names (but no roots in another country) and that is definitely considered a class indicator, as is unnecessary double barrelling. E.g. Lorenzo, Marcello, Delano, Dexx, Destiny, Kimberly/ee/ey, Djayden (because the letter J is pronounced as yay so they add a d to make a J sound ('dzy'). Turns out all my Dutch cousins love these names, my extended family is more chav than I thought 😂

Of course everyone likes to think they've named their children the best.

I judge the people that have an issue with it. Thinking them stuck up kunts Oops have I spelt that correctly 🤔

I've actually heard of someone whose dd was called Yunique.

Go on… tell us what you named your children?!

I just checked on GenesReunited and there are 16 UK birth records for Febee and 3 for Pheo. So it does happen!

Yes this was Brazil! And yes there are some crazy naming conventions (or lack of them). Lots of attempts to spell traditional European names by people who are in some cases literally illiterate and compounding of celebrity names (think Tomhanks or Queenelizabeth). I think anything goes.

Its odd because its a Catholic country and you would think quite traditional but some really out there names…

I’ve voted YABU because I’ve never seen people spell their children’s names Febee or Pheo and I have been working with children for a long time!

My God, @Toon27 !

I just assumed people who used weird name spellings were trying to be a bit different.. you know, like all the people who get tattoos because they want to be different.. (rolls eyes)

I think sometimes the parents can’t spell so it ends up phonetically correct but not a correct spelling. My Granny used to tell me a story of when my Dad was born he went to register the birth on his own but couldn’t spell Johnathan so my grandad put a different name down than they discussed but he spelt that wrong as he was dyslexic but nobody knew about dyslexia 90years ago!

Ameeliyah?

Pheo is starting to grow on me.

The sweet girl who plays Helaena in Game Of Dragons is name Phia in real life.

I only have one child, she has a very normal name that is spelt in the traditional way. Ironically my names, first and second are alternative spellings. I've spent my life having to spell them, explain origin, blah blah blah. Didn't make me feel unique at all, did get quite tiresome. So it may surprise you I don't totally disagree with the sentiment of some of these posts. It's the tone that grates, and I'd feel the same regardless of how my name was spelt.

I had a bit of a blunder with this. Not on purpose. I really didn’t want a complicated name due to having a unique name myself.

We couldn’t decide on DC1’s name - no name at 34+ weeks pregnant. I liked the name Leona, everyone hated it including DP.
We kept coming back to a 3 letter name. I refused as I didn’t want a 3 letter name…

Anyways, after a lot of disagreements, I added a letter in. Because of this, some people call her name and a lot of people misplace the added letter.
I do like the ‘look’ of her name but made an ar*e of it. So yes, I’m a bit of an idiot.
Would have preferred a different name to the 3 letter spelling though. Still don’t get why everyone hated Leona 🤣

Yes my sil was like that her name was Carolyn people called her Caroline her entire life very annoying.

Names with fewer than 3 uses each year aren’t published for privacy reasons so genuinely unique or very rare names and spellings won’t be shown on the ONS lists.

An ex colleague used to work in the corrections department for the Scottish version of the ONS and it is possible to change a name if there has been a mistake (wrong spelling etc). Also said she had a couple of cases where people had registered their child using a non English language name and then found it had a slangy meaning locally and decided to change it to spare their child.

Were they Filipino by any chance?

I know quite a few Filipinos and there are some very interesting names!!

Sometimes what people perceive as weird spellings are actually other languages, i remember a post on threads where some woman was slagging off a child called Efan because she thought it was suppsed to be Ethan, and not actually just a Welsh name.

Leona is a lovely name.

Is your child Ayva?

You can't necessarily rely on registrars tbh.

One of my children is called Harriet.

The registrar originally wrote it as "Harriett"!

I know that is a possible variant, in theory, but it's really not the primary spelling. She was insistent it was - probably goes around shaking her head over the silly parents who wanted to spell it with only one T!

I know of a Lilly. That’s right, not like the flower. Three Ls in total. Just why. It doesn’t make any difference to the pronunciation. Poor kid will be correcting it forever.

Is it trendy to do this ?

It tells you "fewer than 3".
So you can work it out.
So she couldn't have taught three in one school.

I came across a Mykynli the other day. Kinda obvious what the name was, but the poor girl's going to have a lifetime spelling it out over and over.

I used to know the mother of an Eithne (spelled correctly) but insisted it should be pronounced Eethnee.

my mum named me Katy. I have to tell everyone it's with a y otherwise they spell it Katie. Bloody annoying. Especially as I have a, surname no one can spell