Phi'Bee

[SleepyWasp]

Someone who I know vaguely, and who I have as a friend on FB has just announced the birth of their daughter. Lovely squishy little girl.

They have called her Phi'Bee, and I must admit my face kind of went when I saw her name.

It's made me genuinely intrigued though. Has anyone else given their child such an unconventional spelling of a name? If so, what were your motivations? What does your child think about it?

My name is one that was pretty popular amongst my generation, but that has a number of accepted variations in spelling. As a child/teen, I used to hate people using the wrong spelling, but also got annoyed with having to spell it out to make sure people used the right one.

I'm much less bothered as an adult, but I still can't imagine going through life as a Phi'Bee (or similar) - having to spell it out constantly, and then see people's faces go or hear them say 'oh, that's...interesting.'

I know several people who give themselves daft spellings on facebook just to stop their profile coming up in searches. Emmaaa is actually just Emma for example.

Has the OP started this thread for any reason other than to mock and admire what she regards as her own superiority? It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

kickassangel and aiofe am as prepared as the next woman to embrace diversity, but there's a difference between using 'yooneek' modern spellings and messing around with a name (such as Phoebe) that has been in existence in Mediterranean/European/North American settler cultures for well over 2000 years. The Phi'Bee spelling mistake may well be a truly lovely reflection of parental delight, but, in political terms, 'yooneek' spellings are not necessarily about diversity. Just consider the opposite view; it implies that people from non-local cultures can't be trusted to understand or appreciate local naming customs - and is, of course, complete rubbish.

I would no more mess with the name Phoebe than with a name from ANY OTHER different culture of similar antiquity. Multicultural surely means embracing and valuing different cultures, not getting rid of any long-established norms to create some mish-mash. I think that several relatively "unknown" but real names from a "new in the UK" culture would have more integrity than a messed-up version of an ancient UK-and-related-cultures name.

aiofeI am most certainly not mocking. It's just that by any imaginable standard, Phi'Bee looks bizarre to many people and may, alas, lead people in the outside world to make erroneous value judgements. That would not be fair on the young woman.

What's the for Peckham ? It's Wear by the way . I have a Norwegian spelling and am from Tyne and Wear.

I have a friend with an Israeli name which has an apostrophe in it, but then I've seen the same name spelt without the apostrophe too. And computers and forms can cope OK with apostrophes in surnames (O'Connor, O'Brien), they can probably cope with first names too.

But yes, Phi'Bee is silly. And my friend has given her children short names which are reasonably easy to spell, after years of having to spell out her own name.

If I was Phi'Bee's grandmother I'd be that stroppy grandmother and refuse to refer to her in writing as anything other than Phoebe.

Oh and whenever we get on to the topic of baby names in our family, my BIL brings up the story of La-a. It definitely was someone he knew who was a registrar it happened to, he says. And every time I think, no, it can't really be true. I always suspected it was an urban myth.

Le-a is a well known urban myth,

I HAVE taught in a school with a L-a (not Le-a or La-a.) If I had known years ago that no bastard on mumsnet would believe me then I would have taken a sodding picture.
The reason it doesn't show up on ONS name searches is that there have to be three children given that name for it to show up.

I hate alternative spellings (think Aimee etc..) but parents who intend to use punctuation in a child's name should be refused registration until they agree on a more conventional spelling.

There are so many names to pick from why the fuck would you go down the route of punctuation???

Aimée is the French spelling, so is perfectly respectable.

Am I the only one who would think it was pronounced piebee?

My name is Stefanie - I always liked how it was a different yet not completely out there name.

DD is Hollie again different but not zany. I had my reasons for the ie spelling 1. Her Surname begins with a y so didn't want two y's in a row. 2. Because she wasn't born in December/Jan (April) so wanted to distinguish the separation from a Christmas theme of Holly but I love the name.

As for her opinions - she's only 24 months so ask me in a few years time.

So far no weird comments though :)

I always think live and let live with names but Phibee is just too much - I actually thought you'd misspelled Philby.

Maryberry, are you sure it wasn't 'Ciara'? You know, the actual Irish spelling?

Did anyone read that news article about the link between first names and performance at school?

It's conclusion can be summarised as follows...

.
'Traditional' names
.
'Non-traditional' names
.
Names with random punc'tua-tion in them
.

Obviously this is more about correlation than actual causation, but that alone would be enough to put me off Phi'Bee, Cam'ron, Amiee-lea et al!!!

It's conclusion about random punctuation?

In Cam'ron the apostrophe means something. It shows that a letter (or more) has been missed out. It's a perfectly reasonable bit of punctuation, although I've no idea why anyone would want to miss a whole syllable out of Cameron.

In Phi'Bee, there is no letter missed out; the apostrophe is meaningless.

It cracks me up when people insist on using different spellings and argue that there are so many of the original version that their DC will stand out.

Err no, if you want to use a different spelling then feel free but it doesn't make you original because it sounds the bloody same regardless!

I know a Jazzmin, and a Jorja.

I knew a Porsche (NOT Portia!) and a Lettice.

FFS.

Lettice is a traditional old English name! Anglicised version of Letitia apparently: www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/0/Lettice

Of course if you use it now everyone will think you named your child after salad...

You should get in touch with snopes pipbin cos they've been looking for a genuine le-a for years.

Lettice is lovely, it's a Victorian name (well it was popular then) meaning happiness.

I've got no proof though Dinah, and what proof could I have?

I know a Wynter Rose