[GirlsDeadMonster]

Did you know there was an Apostrophe Protection Society? Me neither but they won a noble prize in 2001 for efforts to Protect, Promote, and Defend the differences between plural and possessive. Oddly enough there are a lot of people out there who don't know the proper use of an apostrophe and use of it in children's names is a recent invention. Use of punctuation, spaces, and capitalizations in names offer a whole new realm of customization to make a child's name stand out but that's not all it does. It also completely and wholly messes with computer systems and names databases. An apostrophe in names is suppose to signify a dropped letter much like the contractions do not to don't. But if you don't know it's proper use you end up with names that don't make any sense. Destiny has become Des'Tiny, Jashaun has become Ja'Shawn, and my favorite....Shadasha has become Sha-sha ...yes she says the - as dash. Confused? Me too and so are many data programs your kids will need like school data bases, medical data bases, social security data bases, insurance data bases. These names reek havoc on them. Do parents realize that the custom name you give your child may cause more harm than good?

[theblackboxlies]

Maybe they watched too much Star Trek and wanted their kids to be Klingons.

[slimymeteor]

I agree. I'm not at all a fan of made-up names. That's why I named my daughter Alexandra.

[zombiehunter]

Simple 4-5 letter names are the best!

[Ananse]

Sometimes it's cultural.

In Chamorro language, for example, an apostrophe is referred to as a "glota", which indicates a glutteral stop in the pronunciation of a word. Since the usage of glotas are so frequent, a lot of names carry them as well.

So, my daughter's name is Ha'Ani (a word describing the sun in the early morning, though it can be roughly translated as 'Good Morning'), but it is pronounced as Haa-Ani.

Though I admit it is extremely confusing to everyone here stateside.

[Valleyaggie]

All I know is that I would like to join the Apostrophe Protection Society. I actually carry a Sharpie in my purse and I've been known to correct the grammar on menus, signs, notices, etc. Someday I want to make a real superhero costume and go around in an official capacity as the English Avenger or something like that.

[Ashley J Williams]

Me and my two kids Jax'Ur and Qaz'ar find such things rather trifling

[Ashley J Williams]

Valley, shouldn't that be menu's, sign's and notice's? Hope you have that sharpie at hand. Haha. Menus are the worst for that though, aren't they?

[BitBrit]

On a similar vein, a few years ago over here it was popular to name children after designer labels ie Burberry, visace. Well, the girl who did my friends nails told her of a little girl named after DKNY (Donna Karen New York) and it was pronounced 'dickney'. I have no idea how they spelled it. But why not just call her Donna Karen?!? Poor kid.

[lone star walker]

On a similar vein, a few years ago over here it was popular to name children after designer labels ie Burberry, visace. Well, the girl who did my friends nails told her of a little girl named after DKNY (Donna Karen New York) and it was pronounced 'dickney'. I have no idea how they spelled it. But why not just call her Donna Karen?!? Poor kid.

Oh that poor child! Let's hope she was able to get a name change.

I work at a very large high school and have to deal with strange name spellings including apostrophes, hyphens etc. They do cause a problem with school data bases; especially when the data bases are not even integrated with each other!

[theglassintheguvseye]

All I know is that I would like to join the Apostrophe Protection Society. I actually carry a Sharpie in my purse and I've been known to correct the grammar on menus, signs, notices, etc. Someday I want to make a real superhero costume and go around in an official capacity as the English Avenger or something like that.

^^This is hilarious and I want to go with you when you achieve this life long dream.^^

I don't go that far but I do tend to pick stuff off of people's backs in grocery store lines. Hair, lint, threads, etc. I figure if that's as OCD as I get then I'm doing okay. I will point out grammatical errors to business owners though. Normally they don't listen or care or they pretend it's intentional which it may be at times.

Apostrophes or any punctuation in names is a bit much for me. Irish or Scottish surnames are an exception. Also in other cultures as Ananse pointed out. First names, not so much. If a teacher can't figure out how to pronounce a first name, it disturbs me somewhat. You would probably be shocked at how many ways people can butcher "Michelle". I can deal w/ a one "L" version but there should NOT be an "A" in my name or an "S" or a "Y". Yes, I said: a "Y". God, I'm getting crotchety in my old age.

[BitBrit]

My son has a 'Tailah' in his class. We got a list of names today and it was only as he was reciting it to me that it clicked its pronunciation is 'Taylor'.

[Texaxile]

I've seen a few classics. Possibly the oddest name I've heard of was one an American woman had which was "Le-a" apparently pronounced "Ledasha". Sometimes the realms of people's stupidity astound even me. Although this is already a "snopes.com" article (classified as undetermined), personally I'd pronounce it as "lehyphena".

I did go to school with a girl with a surname of "Death", it was, however, pronounced & spelled "De'ath". She changed it when she got to 18, iirc.

BTW Shouldn't the title be "Apostrophe's"? lol

[TangoJ]

Along those lines, the worst one I've seen is a friend's daughter named Makla. Pronounced Makayla. Ma-K-la. *shudder*

[theglassintheguvseye]

 airwrecka.jpg   75.9kb   0 This reminded me of this thread when I saw it on FB yesterday:

 

[D_Piece]

Maybe she is an air bender?

[theglassintheguvseye]

Maybe.

[mADAM Scorpious]

I think unique names are nice. Also I'm sure that if a school board computer system can handle my kid's hyphenated last name it can handle a few dashes, apostrophes(which aren't used solely to indicate possession but also to identify a contraction), and exclamation marks in the first name field, and if they can't then they need to get with the times.

I think it's culturally narrow minded to expect everyone to use the same boring names, and it sucks when you're a kid and there's 5 other kids in your class with the same name as you. Also it's sad that many immigrants have to change their names or forego naming their kids something relevant to their home culture in order to fit in, people should just be a little more accepting and it honestly only takes 30 seconds to learn how to properly pronounce a name.