Those are for real? Jeez, and to think we laughed at Peaches and Fifi Trixibelle...

Heh, I just googled 'Fifi Trixibelle' to make sure I got the spelling right, and the top result was someone asking why we never hear of Geldof's eldest daughter. The answer was, "You'd hide with a name like Fifi Trixibelle."

Hah! Paula Yates's daughter with Michael Hutchence was christened Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily. Since January this year she's been legally Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof.

Vee-oh-lonce. I love that. Everything sounds better in French.

This is child abuse-- honestly. When I was in high school, we had a teacher whose last name was Rapp.
He named his twins Reynolds and Saran (each are brand names for cling wrap here!).

I think a lot of these cases are due to someone once telling the parents they had a really great sense of humour.

People being unconsciously unkind to their own children in the name of humor. The names Dweezil and Moon Unit Zappa come to mind.

I agree that it is abuse. However, it would be mighty difficult to legislate.

My dad had worked for a little company that printed phone books for a while. He would bring home pages with particularly unusual names. Names like "Agrapina Pflughoeft" and "Zbigniew Chiemelewski" could be considered merely unfortunate. One day, he brought home a page with the entry of "Precious Love." One of my sisters, who worked as a speech therapist in one of the tough inner city schools, was visiting that day. She shrugged, "I've met him. His son Marvelous is one of my kids." She had a few stats on the unfortunately named -- for example, there were at least 5 girls named Female (pronounced Fay-molly)and 3 boys named Male (Ma-lay) in the Milwaukee Public School District because hispanic immigrants giving birth thought that the names were assigned when the nurse marked the gender boxes on the birth certificate. She also claimed that NYC EMTs cannot by law help name a baby; this legislation was created after the parents of Tweezers, Forceps and Suction jointly sued the city. This could all be urban legend and/or a faulty memory on my part.

for what it's worth
the other jean-marie

Well, Zbigniew Chmielewski isn't exactly an unfortunate name - I know a couple of Chmielewskis (and a Chmielewska) in Poland, and Zbigniew is a perfectly normal Christian name, although like everything else these things go in and out of fashion.
Dweezil Zappa, I understand, now goes by the name Ahmed, but his sister still calls herself Moon. Although Zowie Bowie prefers to be known as Duncan Jones.

Yeah, I know Zbigniew Chmielewski wasn't that unusual, but it was a mouthful. I didn't think you'd believe that it was in fact Zbigniew Vorlt.

I would, of course, have believed it. But Zbigniew Vorlt doesn't sound entirely Polish...

Edited at 2008-07-27 12:04 am (UTC)

This reminds me of the time my mum told me that when she was at school, two of her classmates were named Hazel Nutt and Holly Bush.

I agree that such names are tantamount to child abuse; it's like saying to yourself "Wouldn't it be great if my kid gets unmercifully teased and / or beaten up regularly in the schoolyard!".

Having said that, Rip Torn is rather cool... but that probably speaks more of the man than the name.

Hey, you. How's stuff?
When I was doing my O-levels our history teacher - who was given to very entertaining distractions from what he was supposed to be teaching us - told us he knew a family named Mycock who named their son Aaron. Almost certainly bullshit, but very entertaining all the same.
I always thought Rip Torn was a brilliant name, as well, although as he was christened Elmore Rual Torn you can't blame him for coming up with something a bit more snappy.
I'm not wholly convinced that it could be sold as child abuse, though.

Stuff's better now I'm back on the net, that's for sure :-)

I don't mean to say child abuse in the legal sense of things, more the moral sense of doing something (i.e. choosing a ludicrous name for a child) that can be reasonably predicted to make that child's life worse rather than better.

And the net is all the better for having you back on it, sir.
I may have slightly over-reacted to the phrase `child abuse.' But you're right; I've often heard someone's name and thought, `What were the parents thinking? They must have had a terrible time at school.'