[Andy from the U.K. writes:]
The daughter of a friend of mine grew up in Brighton, a city with a fairly large number of Alternative Lifestyle parents, and this does result in some howlers: the worst two of which were
Geronimo and
Rin-Tin-Tin. Geronimo (who would be about 15 now) presumably calls himself “Gerry”, but poor Rin-Tin-Tin wasn’t even male (like the dog). She was a girl.
My son Nicholas had the slightly odd experience of there being two classmates called Tiger (one male, one female) , but no other Nicholas.
My wife’s cousin insisted on calling her daughter “Moana” (pronounced “Mo-Anna”). From the greek, literally “person of the sea”, however you just know it will be pronounced “Moan-er” at school. To make things worse this is actually quite a common name in the South Pacific, where it is a man’s name.
Oh, and I used to have a step-daughter called Nemone (ne-monny, “memorable”, not nee-moan). At least her father mas persuaded not to spell it with an “M” on the beginning… (of course there is now a disk jockey called Nemone, so it’s not as unusual as it used to be, but it was amusing that for a period at school her two best friends were called “Melanie” and “Naomi”.
[Thanks for the note, Andy...I think!]
