Worst name you have ever come across.

[Lemondrizzle4A]

Someone who loved Judge Dread was going to call child Dread. Thankfully was persuaded otherwise.

OMG my friends daughter is called “Annay”. I’d only seen it written in a text before I said it out loud to friend as Anaïs. Friend said that wasn’t her name and why did I think it was. When I told her about the dieresis she gave me a frosty “hmph”!

It's an Irish surname. Tiernan would be a more popular choice in Ireland.

So how is Anais pronounced? (I can't work out how to do the two-dot thing on my phone).

I have always thought it was said "An-neye-is" but I have no clue if that's correct 😁
I don't think I have heard it said outloud. I have only read it.

Ana-eece

I remember that hideous floral perfume Anais Anais that was the height of sophistication in the 80s/90s. It was always An-nay An-nay in our house!

Balthazar
and used the nn Baz

couldnt believe it

It's ah-nah-eece. It's 3 separate sounds. I also met a woman who called her child Siobhan. Fine great name but she said it See-oh-ban. Hadn't realised she was using an Irish name, couldn't be bothered to check how to say it. That poor child!

I might know this person. Can there be two?

Balthazar isn't that unusual.
I am sure there's more than two out there 😁

The dots indicate the sounds are said separately, so like Zoë and Chloë are Zo-ee and Chlo-ee not rhyming with toe.
So Anaïs is Ana-eece, the a and the i are separate and not one 'ai' sound and the s is pronounced.

This may be controversial, but I think that if your whole family life, culture and heritage is based around using and mixing exclusively (or virtually) the English language and speakers of it, it's possibly unwise to give your child a name including characters or accents that are not part of the English language.

Names like Chloe and Zoe are well known enough as it is - you don't need to use the diaresis to primarily guide other people who probably don't know what that mark means anyway.

It’s really not that unusual and certainly not ‘unbelievable’

Same :)

I like the name Bakthazar, not keen on Baz as a diminutive though.

Shouldn’t it be Destinies 🤣🤣

Surely a group of girls all named Destiny are the Destini or the Destinoux 🤣

We had someone come into where I used to work with the surname Peach, he had a very Southern USA accent, wonder if that's one of his kids? Are you in Cambs?

Sunny is a lovely name! 😊

Archibald Archibald
Evelyn Devlin
Hazel Nutt

There was little boy at DC’s nursery called Trump. His parents were African so even more bamboozling.

I actually love some of the names on this thread! Trinity and Valentine are gorgeous. Much more interesting than a lot of the suggestions regularly trotted out on Mumsnet.

I knew a girl with the middle names Railway Station - apparently where she was conceived.
And a boy called Hawthorne for similar reasons - conceived under a bush - ouch!

I hope she changed it when she was older!

It's a very Scottish thing to give a family surname, eg Mum's maiden name, as a son's first name.
And Davidson is certainly a Scottish name. I know.

What on earth possesses people to do that? IF it so happens that you conceived your child in a place that sounds nice as a name - say Vienna or Sorrento - it might be an option to consider; but why ever would you automatically think that you had to name them after the place of their conception, even if it means you end up with a child officially named Hull Lidl Car Park?

Oh god, yes! Slightly ashamed to admit I know this but one of the dads from Teen Mum UK has a baby called Kartel, I’d forgotten! Poor kid comes from a family of dealers so it’s not that surprising but imagine going through life with that as a name!