to ask what is wrong with ordinary baby names and spellings?

[FlappyTheBat]

Ok, why do people have to have outlandish names for their children?

Or choose a name that has a completely differentmadeup spelling, so that their child will spend their entire life going "oh no, it's spelt xxxxxx"?

Is there some sort of hierarchy of baby names?

What is wrong with ordinary and easy to spell names?

I'm sure that some people must go out of their way to find the most obscure name possible and post it on mumsnet, just to see what the reaction is!

I have a similar issue Sweetkitty, although I've never had anyone say anything uncomplimentary about my name (or not often enough for it to annoy anyway). I do automatically spell it out though - on the phone I tend to say "My name is nooka, shall I spell that out for you n-o-o-k-a, and my surname is y etc" as pretty much one sentence. The only time I really get peeved is with people who when asking my name then say "what/pardon" as if I have sneezed or something!

I remember my first post on here on the baby names forum and mentioned that my daughters middle name is Aimee. Bloody hell some bird jumped on me going on about were we french, did i know what that spelling meant!

I didnt post for weeks after that one, but luckily i grew a pretty thick skin

Btw i spelt it that way because i liked it

I also love the name James, but it is a very common family name for me on both my sides and DS's fathers sides. I also like Ben, but XP hated it.

We settled on Samuel although XP wanted it spelt Samael, which is apprently another name for the devil?? Nice!

I am one of those that like 'normal' names and hate 'modern' names or takes on them.

No, it's not a thread about a thread.

I have come across several, shall we say "unusual" ways of spelling ordinary names recently at my work.

When writing out baby name cards, we always have to ask how they want to spell the name as if we write it correctly, it is quite often pointed out to us that we have spelt the name "incorrectly"

I'm just getting a bit fed up of completely made up names and sometimes wish we could go down the route of an another country and give parents an approved list of names to choose from!

Ordinary and easy to spell in one country is werid and difficult in another one.

Dh and I both received ordinary, mainstream names for one of the countries we had heritage from. Unfortunately we both chose to live in various different countries, including the UK, where we spent our entire lives having our names mauled to death.

It's not as easy as you might imagine to find names that are easy to pronounce, let alone spell, in more than one language. English names are a particular bitch that way, as there are loads of sounds in English that just don't exist in many other languages.

And when you have had a 'more unusual' name, it's also hard to imagine being one of 10 Alexes or Chrises in the classroom. As dh said, I'd quite like my child to be able to be identified by their name.

I have never yet seen this particular spelling, but to give an example of what we come across "CiMon"

If you want your baby to be called Simon, then why do you need to spell it CiMon??

I cringe every time I see the name 'Dizney' in a ticker on another site

what is your view on girls names abi and cody

not going to comment as they are obviously your dd's names

but have seen those spellings several times before, it's when parents chose really obscure spelling and/or names for their babies that we think that they really haven't thought it through.

thanks for being kind alot of people get abi wrong and spell it abe or aby

I know several Abbeys and they all spell their name in a slightly different way.

I would never spell abi like that, have seen abi/abbie and even an abbey as her parents didn't have a clue!

I Love my dc's names and i dont think their ordinary but didnt want to be unusual either.

Hadnt really thought about it just liked the names.

Have seen Coreigh, Laeaon, Mayzy and Kody and thought 'Hmmmmm...okay.' It does strike me as a little odd, because generally speaking, you hear a name when you meet someone, so I'm not sure why parents decide to use unusual spellings for otherwise normal names. It's just going to complicate matters for the child later on. Unless their plan is to get the child to ALWAYS say 'Hi, I'm Louise, but it's spelled L-u-i-e-e-z-e. Aren't my parents wacky and fun?'

What are The "ordinary" names?

I don't like unusual wrong spellings of well known names but I do think people could be more imaginative than picking whatever is at the top of the 100 most popular list.
I've e-mailed the wrong John Smith before because I typed 23 instead of 24 @ blahblah. If it means having the same first name and surname combination as several hundred other people then maybe it causes as many problems as totally bizzarre names.

are you allowed outlandish names if you are...errr....well...outlandish?

my dcs have never had a problem with their resolutely foreign names (dull as ditchwater in my country of origin, family names and with the traditional spelling)

I get so sick of seeing people on here moaning about how awful names that are surnames are.

That is how names have historically come about. Lots of names are surnames also, it doesn't mean they are wrong.

I don't see why we all need to choose bring names for our children. I like interesting names, and like lockets enjoyed picking names for my DC.

If you trawl through TES opinion thread, you'll see thread about the names most associated with poor behaviour, weirdly-spelled names feature prominently, as do first names which are really surnames.

Foreign names if there is a connection are fine. DS has an arabic name cos DH is arabic. But even then I picked something easy to spell and say.

I cannot stand taking a name and mis-spelling it to be 'different'. I have given this example before but I met a woman who was half spanish and had called her dd Carmen - lovely, except, to 'be different', she had spelt it 'Karman'. Why? It was already unusual, meaningful and very pretty, why fuck it up? Especially when Karman read phonetically should be pronounced 'Car Man'

Who decides what is a 'real' name and what is the 'proper' way of spelling it ? No word had a proper spelling until the first official dictionary was drawn up.Is their a definitive list of proper names and their proper spellings ?
Although I am inclined to agree with the OPs sentiments ,I appreciate many people have different ideas and I think the OP is coming over as being a bit snobby and sneering about the lower orders lack of good taste.

I thought I picked an impossible name for ds: difficult to pronounce, difficult to spell, totally unheard of in this culture. And then I found out there's a little boy in the next street with the same name

I have no problem with unusual or foreign names (although for ds we picked a classic name that is hopefully not massively popular) because they are proper names.

Like the op, I am not keen on 'made up' spellings and 'made up' names (I once met a child called Storm ).

I am a teacher and this sound awful but it's hard not to pass judgement on children from a list of names before meeting said children. It's true that teachers do associate certain names with certain behaviours, and this includes names with odd spellings (Karman? wtf??).

My DD2 has a 'normal' name spelt the old English way because we preferred the way it looked.

I have a normal name and it's constantly misspelled so I kind of thought it wouldn't really matter how we spelled DD2's name!

I bet a lot of people think it's a made up spelling, though, when actually it's the original spelling, and a very pretty spelling IMO too