A recent tour of some pricey Scottsdale homes revealed to me that women who change their otherwise-normal names to slightly pretentious names in order to appear sophisticated do in fact hobnob at higher dollar values, or at least get into real estate. The ostentatious Helenes, Khayleys, and Joodies of the world are now in for some competition, as we are changing Alana’s name to Ælæknæ. The K is silent, and there will be an umlaut over the ligature ae, thus rendering it phonetically exactly like it is now. I am still combing the internet for the correct html code to represent this foray into bombast.
I really think this will help her get into a prestigious prePrepCharterMagnet daycare. But Ælæknæ (the k is silent) may still need two middle names, so I might be making a return trip to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.
As a person who has a name that most people don’t know how to pronounce, I say, don’t burden your child with all those extra letters or funny pronunciations. They’ll go through life hating you. I always knew when the teachers got to my name the first day of class. There’d be a pause and then a gulping and than a looking around the room. Then the teacher would call my name and 9 times out of 10 she’d say it incorrectly. Then I’d have to say it which, of course, embarrassed the teacher who was suppose to know everything which did not get things off to a good start.
You’ve done well not giving the girls “in” names. I can’t tell you how many and with so many variations we’ve come across of Kaylie doing NAEP these last few years. Same goes for Brittainy and a few other “ins”.
Interesting comment above, given what you chose for my name!
Too funny…I chortled all the way to the grocery. Can’t some of the names be hyphenated? or is that too passe?
“Vanity, vanity, thy name is Woman!” appears to have now been expanded to include fathers.
Don’t sweat the ligature and diphthongs. But the umlaut presents an interesting challenge; umlaut’s are basically Germanic or Swedish, but the ligature is rather Grecian, and the silent “k” is very Grecian.
Food for thought:- Given that my name has two possible spellings in common usage, one would expect approximately a 50-50 chance of people getting it right(or wrong). But not so, it’s more like 75% wrong. Interestingly, I’ve heard exactly the same comment from others (“Stew”) who have seen their names mis-spelled as “Stu” more often than not. As it is, I can think of several possible, and reasonable, spellings of “Alana.”
DAD