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NAME SHAMED
Don’t talk to reader Crossie about so-called stolen generations:
I’ll tell you what a stolen generation is. We named our first daughter Monica in the 70s and just before she becomes an adult some bastard American president makes her name a swear word. Where is his apology? Where is the compensation for the damage to her reputation? For a number of years there everyone snickered when they heard her name, including her parents-in-law.
I named my daughter the prettiest name I could find and then someone ruins it. My only compensation is that I am also Sylvia’s mother. OK, Dr Hook, cough up. She was born before your song.
As the son of Ken and Barbie, I empathise with Crossie’s name-rage.
I knew Tim was some sort of Antipodean genetic experiment.
Posted by Some0Seppo on 2007 11 28 at 10:17 AM • permalinkWhen my father (born 1919) was in school he had a classmate named George P. Hough. The P stood for Pershing, but apparently it was worth your life to call his attention to that fact.
Posted by Sonetka's Mom on 2007 11 28 at 10:35 AM • permalinkMy own parents used to joke that I was named after the Andrea Doria. And then I found out that in Italy “Andrea” is a man’s name. Also, my initials, plus that of my middle name, spell out “AAH.” I spent my entire childhood wanting to change my name.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 11 28 at 10:48 AM • permalinkI went to school with a Donald and Daisy Duck (twins). Their parents were hippies - both changed their names by Deed Poll at 18 and one is a QLD SERT-police officer (similar to SWAT in the USA) and the other is an army LTCOL in the ADF. At the high school reunion it was interesting to see the tranformation from disheveled, unwashed, semi-feral, bullied wierdos to clean cut, steely eyed, security force personnel. Many of the old school ‘clique’ were to scared to go near them for fear of car park retribution at the end of the evening. As you could imagine, the current relationship with their parents is somewhat strained.
Posted by CanberraNeoCon on 2007 11 28 at 10:50 AM • permalink#8 Andrea, it also perplexes me that new age dipsticks here in Australia name their daughters Nikita and Akira - both are boy’s names from russia and japan respectively.
Posted by CanberraNeoCon on 2007 11 28 at 10:53 AM • permalink#9 CanberraNeoCon
That story reminded me of Johnny Cash’s song about a boy named Sue.
And he said: “Son, this world is rough
And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you’d have to get tough or die
And it’s the name that helped to make you strong.”He said: “Now you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn’t blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I’m the son-of-a-bitch that named you “Sue.’”``At the high school reunion it was interesting to see the tranformation from disheveled, unwashed, semi-feral, bullied wierdos to clean cut, steely eyed, security force personnel.’‘
God, I would have loved to have seen that :)
That Nikita/Akira business: perhaps there are a lot of fans of the movie ``La Femme Nikita’’ out there. Or perhaps it’s plain old, ``Well, it ends in an A, so it must be a girl’s name, right?’’ A high school classmate of mine (a recent arrival from Cuba) was regularly driven crazy by teachers and admin types who couldn’t get it through their heads that her name was Consuelo, and would insist on changing the final O to an A.
She finally started calling herself Connie; I wonder if she still does.Posted by Sonetka's Mom on 2007 11 28 at 11:35 AM • permalinkMine is a somewhat strange and relatively rare name popular in my family…altho neither I nor my brother used it for our boys.
Unfortunately, as a diminutive, it was also the name of a popular baboon cartoon character when I was young. One of my wife’s friends insisted on calling me that name all of her life.
My name for her was ‘bitter divorced alcoholic bitch’.
Actually, Crossie should be pissed at Shel Silverstein, not Dr. Hook—Shel wrote the song, Dr. Hook sang it.
(Interestingly, Shel Silverstein also wrote “A Boy Named Sue,” see Ernie G’s comment above.)
Now back to the slab.
Posted by Bill Spencer on 2007 11 28 at 11:46 AM • permalinkYears ago, I stopped using my real name, Biggis Dickus. Maybe it’s time to go back to it.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2007 11 28 at 11:47 AM • permalink#13 yojimbo,
I knew a Richard Small…...and yes, everybody called him Dick.
Anybody here know Amanda Hugenkiss???
Posted by Old Tanker on 2007 11 28 at 11:49 AM • permalinkI’ll tell you what a stolen generation is.
It’s a bit much for Crossie to compare her suffering to that of people whose children were taken away because of the colour of their skin. Not to belittle those few years of snickering, of course.
Posted by Jefferson Skates on 2007 11 28 at 12:21 PM • permalinkI wanted to name my son “Watermelon”, but the wife wouldn’t have it.
What can I say, I’m not cruel, I’m just a cruller.
Posted by joe bagadonuts on 2007 11 28 at 12:41 PM • permalinkWhen our daughter was born, we had to reckon with the name of our choice matching that of a headline-making monster.
I suggested we go ahead, following the car-racing admonition to drive straight at a wreck happening in front of you. Odds are, it’ll be somewhere else when you reach that spot.
By the time my daughter’s an adult, I reasoned, the monster will be forgotten.
As it happened, the monster died two years later, and my daughter remains poetically named after her grandmother.
Posted by Rittenhouse on 2007 11 28 at 03:37 PM • permalinkI kid you not, I worked with a bloke named Phil Enis.
P. Enis.
He was the only person in the company who had a logon to the company network that did not consist of his first initial and surname. It was adjusted to ‘phil.enis’.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 11 28 at 04:47 PM • permalink#2, they don’t have to be 80, Dan. My aunt and uncle have a friend in Hamburg named Adolf, who was born in 1941. Adolf and his wife came to Australia a few years ago and my aunt and uncle brought them down to Canberra for a few days. I took them sightseeing to all the major attractions and, when we were in the War Memorial, Adolf became engrossed in the Vietnam exhibits and we lost him. You can imagine how difficult it is trying to go around the War Memorial calling out “Adolf? Adolf?”.
When I was young, Midshipmen were saddled with the title Mister. Because it was a trade where it was not unknown for siblings to follow in their elders footsteps, the junior family member was known as Master.
I think you can see where this is heading.
(You’ve never seen someone so relieved when his brother “got his hook” thus making that i available.)Who can forget Cherry Ripe? That is, Miss Cherry Ripe.
She of the hippie-dippie parents, no doubt.
Posted by walterplinge on 2007 11 28 at 07:49 PM • permalink#57, He said he didn’t like his name because of its association, but it was the one he had been given so he was stuck with it. Knowing a few Germans it doesn’t surprise me that he or his parents never considered changing it. I think it is a cultural thing about Germans, they are very rigid and ordered.
In March 2003 we named our first born, Barnaby.
18 months later…
I dread to think the damage done to his impressionable young mind when he heard Albanese or Swan on the radio talking about “stupid Barnaby”Posted by Ben Haslem on 2007 11 29 at 12:20 AM • permalinkI met a Japanese woman named Miho Usuki. Now, if you know how to pronounce romanji there nothing wrong with that, however….
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 11 29 at 09:37 AM • permalink
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“As the son of Ken and Barbie…”
Wow, Ken was more than I gave him credit for!