Helping ny dd write her xmas cads has made me realise that over half her class have mispelt names

[conniedescending]

gawd - how and I supposed to help her with her reading and writing when we have: Jak, Zak, Abbey, Mollie, Kloe, Alivia, Ayden, Rebekha, Elli, Reece, Charley..............

dreadful state of affairs [fsad}

Chloe really is a pretty name, kinda makes me wish i'd gone for bub no 4 Although typically it would have been a boy

My daughters bf is called Reece and i spelt it that way for years before i actually looked at a card he gave her and found out it was spelt Rhys. I guess i just figured him being a mixed race boy from Sarf London, his parents wouldnt have spelt it the welsh way

I've also seen a Charleigh which is think is a pretty variation, although i'm fully prepared to be flamed to death

I find the argument of 'why can't people spell their kid's names the way they want?' really bizarre. Because it's incorrect that's why and because they make themselves and, later on in life, their kid look really thick.

It's like saying I am going to spell'table and chair' as 'tabbell and chare' because I prefer it that way. IT'S WRONG!

It's not wrong, you may not like it but it's not wrong. A table and chair are still going to be table and chair whether they're a side table, a dining table or a picknic table. A girl called Chloe is not going to be the same as all girls called Chloe. Personal names come from somewhere I bet some people in Victorian times thought it rather chavvy to give girls flower names.
As for looking really think in later life at least they'll only look it

I used to be a spelling pedant.

Now I have a dyslexic daughter and I have changed my views - it's just not really that important!

People can surely spell their own names however they choose.

not a spelling one but just returned from the pre school christmas party and realised we have a Lemon in the class!

best one I ever heard was my ex hairdressers son called............................................Love'elle

I guess these differently spelled/spelt names will eventually become 'proper' names in their own right...but in the meantime, some of the newer spellings remind me of vegetarian foods - not quite the real (i.e. meat) thing but nevertheless sharing many features of the real thing (i.e. veggie sausages are still long and cylindrical)

Erm bump will be Zak if it's a boy - we don't like zachary.

Deliberately misspelling a name seems a fairly odd thing to do to me. If you don't like the way a name looks, or think everyone will mispronounce it then there is a simple solution. Choose a different name. If you want to be different, choose an unusual name. I have an unusual name, and I get lots of positive comments about it. I have a friend with a weirdly spelt, but fairly common name, and she gets frequent e-mail bounces and her name spelt wrong (well in truth right) on an everyday basis. Plus she never has any positive reaction (although I've only heard a couple of people ask her to her face ask why the spelling is so weird). So there is no gain to the child in having a stupid oddly spelt name, only negatives. Seems a strange thing to wish on your child.

Good point about emails although Kathryn/ Katherine / Catherine / Cathy etc are all email bounce problem names and those ones are all common enough!

But with Katherine, we're all used to the variants by now, and would be alert to possible other spellings.

With the name Chloe it wouldn't occur to me that there was a possible alternate spelling, so I wouldn't even think to check (which with Katherine I would).

When people reinvent an old name their kids are going to have problems. And it looks bloody stupid!

Is Rebekha not from the bible?

No Rebekah is, Rebeckha is just stupid, should be pronounced Rebec-Ha with that spelling. We have a Luise at work, is that foreign?