Sunday, October 14, 2007

Anything But Ordinary

Every fall, we do library card drives with local middle and high schools. Making library cards makes me feel incredibly old, as I'm forced to realize that people who were born the year I graduated from high school are now in middle school or high school themselves. Besides the constant feeling that I'm ancient, though, the thing that most sticks with me about making library cards is that so many of the kids have names that really make me wonder what their parents were thinking. In addition to the "creative" spellings that have almost become common (Crystal/Krystle/Kristal or (Jenifer/Jenniffer/Genniffer), names seem to fall into a few broad categories. To quote Dave Barry - I'm not making these up.

Cars and Other Brand Names
Lexus, Corvette, Ford, Celica, Porsche, Jetta, Chardonnay, Bacardi, Chanel

Places
Vegas, America/Amerika, Ireland,

"Unique" Names That Aren't
There are at least 3 people with each of these names who have library cards in our system
Unique, Princess, Queen, Charisma, Special, King, Divine

Bad Role Models
Judas, Adolf, Charlie Manson, Salome

Stripper Names
Bambi, Sugar, Kitty Kat, Bunny, Princess, Sassy, Peaches

Why Do Their Parents Hate Them?
Sugar and Candy Kane, Dick Stroker, Max Dick, Chlamydia, Harry Cox, Harry Beaver,

6 comments:

Dragon Reads said...

I met a perfectly nice little girl who was named Jezebel the other day.
Why?

Pauline said...

Chlamydia??? I mean, really, you have nine months to think about this.

How sorry.

Snarky Librarian said...

Young Chlamydia's mother is pregnant again. She has two other children with perfectly normal names, but I'm half-expecting the next one to be called Syphilis.

EBarney said...

We had a Jezebel and a Delilah in my Sunday School classes when I was a kid - I can see using names like that if you don't do the whole religious context, but if you do send your kids to church that's kind of mean.

My sister works as a receptionist and she got calls from George Cunt, Ivanna Sherabugger (pronounced like "Share a Booger"), Placenta and Jihad.

Beth Saxton said...

I'd think you were making it up if I hadn't just been through the exact same thing. My favorite is the randomly placed apostrophes. I am adding a link to your blog on mine.
www.teensmatter.net

Snarky Librarian said...

Vacula, I also have a Jihad that comes in frequently. Can't believe I forgot him.

Beth, I wish I were making it up! The randomly placed apostrophes annoy me so much that I didn't even mention them. There's one kid who has no fewer than 3 apostrophes in her 14-letter name. Thanks for the add over at teensmatter!