For more Bizarro, check out Dan Piraro's website and blog.
This Bizarro comic inspired me to look for bad (but real) names on the Web - and boy was I floored with the result that Google returned for the search terms "bad names" (6 million results!) and "worst names" (499,000 results). It seems that some parents are either cruel or mad when they name their kids.
Here are a few that are particularly strange:
• Urhines Kendall Icy Eight Special K. Yes, that's right: a baby named after the illicit drug ketamine. Oh, and that's pronounced "Your Highness," by the way.
Urhiness Kendall was born on Saturday, February 15, 2003, weighing 8 pounds 8 ounces. The baby shared birthdays with another guy with a weird name: Galileo Glilei, who went on to become a famous mathematician and astronomer. (Source - previously on Neatorama here)
• GoldenPalaceDotCom Silverman. In 2005, the Internet casino GoldenPalace.com paid $15,000 to name a baby after itself and got more than it paid for in media attention. Sure most people condemned this sort of outrageous publicity stunt - some even calling it a form of child abuse - but the good news was that GoldenPalaceDotCom Silverman was born healthy at 7 pounds, 10 ounces on May 19, 2005.
Actually, baby Silverman wasn't the only human in the world named after the casino: In the same year, a 33-year-old mother of five named Terri Ilagan auctioned off the right to her name on eBay, which the casino won for a mere $15,199. The re-branded Mrs. GoldenPalace.com said: "To my kids and to my husband, I will always be Terri. My husband is real supportive. He thinks it's funny. As long as they get to call me Mom, they don't care. They are already starting to tease me and call me Goldie." (Source)
These two will join a GoldenPalace's branding of a Glaswegian woman's cleavage and their purchase of a decade-old "Virgin Mary" grilled cheese in the annals of the company's publicity stunts (Source)
• Joker Arroyo. Don't laugh: Mr. Arroyo is a Senator in the Philippines (What? Don't believe me? Check it out here).
His name "Joker" is derived from his father's fondness for playing cards. His brother is named "Jack." No words if there are any other siblings named Queen or King.
Update 5/29/08: Joker has a daughter whose name is also Joker Arroyo! Thanks Gabor Debreczeni!
Unusual names are pretty common in the Philippines: Bing, Bong, Ping, Ting, Led Zeppelin, Mick Jagger, Nirvana, Jejomar (yes, a combination of Jesus, Joseph and Mary) and Hitler Manila, whose sons are named Himmler and Hess. And no, Hitler Manila is a peaceful guy who doesn't share his namesake's Nazi ideology. (Source)
• Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (Pronounced "albin"). In 1991, Elisabeth Hallin and Lasse Diding wanted to protest the naming law of Sweden, which states that the court can diapprove of names that "for some obvious reason are not suitable as a first name." They were fined 5,000 kronor (about $680 at the time).
The parents claimed that the 43-character name as "a pregnant, expressionistic development that we see as an artistic creation." The court didn't buy it and upheld the fine. Then the parents tried to resubmit the name as "A" (yes, one letter - also pronounced "albin"). The court didn't buy that either, saying that one letter names are prohibited.
The baby finally went with "Albin Hallin" though in his passport his name was given as "Icke namngivet gossebarn" meaning "unnamed little boy." (Source)
• KentuckyFriedCruelty.com. Well, technically, this is not his parents' fault but what Christopher Garnett did was pretty strange so we'll include him on this list.
In 2005, Christopher, a youth outreach worker for the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) agreed to change his name legally to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com to protest animal abuse by the food chain KFC. (Yes, and he's got a driver's license to prove it).
He did promise his mom that he'd change his name back when PETA's campaign against KFC was over in 2006. Throughout all this time, his parents continued to call him Chris (how unsupportive!)
(Source)
• Nicholas Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barbon (1640 - 1698). Nicholas' shall we say "unique" name apparently ran in the family: his father was Praise-God Barbon. No, I'm not kidding - Nicholas was a real guy. He was an English economist, physician and financial speculator. He took part in the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666 and even founded the city's first fire insurance company. By all accounts, he went by Nicholas throughout his life. (Source)
• God Shammgod. God plays professional basketball, currently for the Portland Chinooks of the International Basketball League. He played in the NBA for one season (with the Washington Wizards in 1997).
He even invented a streetball move, called The Shammgod, useful for creating space between you and your defender. And yes, God is on MySpace. (Photo: Hoops Addict)
• Batman Bin Suparman. This young Javanese man is blessed with being named after not just one, but two superheroes: Batman and Superman. And he's got an identity card to prove it ...
• Dick Assman. Yes, you read that right. Dick is a gas station owner in Saskatchewan, Canada, whose name made him a minor celebrity when David Letterman found him in 1995. Dick pronounced his German lastname as "uzman," but we all know better... (Source)
Photo: Frame enlargement of the short film, "Saskatchewan Part 2 (That's My Wonderful Town) by Brian Stockton (from Wikipedia)
• @. And finally, let's go full circle to "@," pronounced "ai ta" or "love him" by an unidentified Chinese couple:
The unidentified couple and the attempted naming were cited Thursday by a Chinese government official as an example of bizarre names creeping into the Chinese language.
"The father said 'the whole world uses it to write emails and translated into Chinese it means'love him'," Li Yuming, the vice director of the State Language Commission, said at a news conference.
No words on whether the name was rejected by the Chinese government (Source - Previously on Neatorama here).
More Unusual Names: Want more? Check out Wikipedia, which has a HUGE list of unusual names ...
http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/
Always has me howling with laughter.
My boyfriend knew someone in highschool with the name "tittyporn Gangasac." Probably not spelled exactly like that but he said if you looked at it that's totally what it said....subs and teachers were quite confused.
The-Lord-is-My-Sheperd Barebones.
Top stuff.
his brother was Praise God Barebones.
And in Venezuela there is a town where everybody name his children with strange names. In fact, the government made a law to stop this way of naming, cause the names are as strange as Genghis Kan, Nick Carter Backstreet boys, Makgiber, Yedoska (Y2K in Spanish) Adolfohitler (It´s only the name.) bla bla bla.
The judges chose it because, in addition to being an embarrassing pun, it also set up an inevitable reply from people imagining they were being wittily original. I called up Miss Knipl and asked her how many times she had heard someone meet her and reply, “I own two.”
“I got sick of hearing it, but what can you do?” Miss Knipl said. “My mother never thought about that when she was naming me. It was her mother’s name. I came home from school a couple times crying and my mother said, ‘Oh, why did I do that?’ but it had never occurred to her how people would hear the name.”
Miss Knipl shed the pun when she got married and began using her husband’s last name. But then, after they were divorced, she went right back to her old name. It might have simpler to keep her husband’s name, she told me, but by this time she had come to appreciate the advantages of Iona Knipl.
“In school it bothered me, but now I think it’s neat,” she said. “It’s different.”
The best one was "Applesauce Miller."
last name first, first name last...all bad.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Wonderful_Terrific_Monds
She was in 3rd grade and apparently this isn't all that rare outside the U.S.
LooL361
Atheist Evolution Rollason
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=Atheist+Evolution+Rollason&btnG=Search
Yorgei (combine that with the apparently "common" Shithead, and you got yourself one awesome name! Man, you'd be impervious to internets insults!)
Odd Wang (seriously! Norwegian name...)
Anass Rhammar (some taxi driver)
Chew Kok (also a taxi driver)
Bloomer Waddle Lemon
I was working at a sporting goods store in 1976; my job was to fill out deer hunting licenses and collect money for same. This required a driver's license, so for 8 hours a day people shoved their license at me along with $8 and I wrote out licenses without having time to even look up at the line of custies. But when the license read "Bloomer Waddle Lemon" came across my counter, I did take a sneakpeak at the guy. He was HUGE so I did not so much as crack a smile.
Philomena Finger
Rainbow Sunshine
Patty Cake
Pat Tittums
John Toogood
There are several problems with this real but seemingly normal name.
1) there were no William Petersons, either Sr. or Jr.
2) Pete is in quotations marks on the birth certificate.
3) Peterson is not the last name of either parent.
4) William is a girl.
I can personally vouch for the authenticity of this name. The mother had several children who had to be taken from her custody, as she was schizophrenic and kept having kids. Her other children had names like Inches and Emer Gency (it came to her as if in a vision when she was on her way into the emergency room).
we also have names like (a grils name i norway) Randi Sør Aas which pronounced in english becomes...
strangley the britts find my name quite funny, cant see why...
Or some Europe family names can be shocking in English spoken countries as well :)
People please yell the names you are considering for your child before you name them!
" Jack Daniels Witzkie" his mums a alcoholic so it makes it even funnier.
my 7th grade science teacher, Dick Munch
some guy that my family used to go to church with, Dick Ball
random guy i saw on the news, Hymen Shocker
If only he lived in one of these places, it;d be even more brilliant:
http://theworldofm.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/rudest-place/
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4813677&l=a6d53&id=763880564
Well, Batman name maybe oddly for Javanese but Suparman is enough well known name in Indonesia and dont relate with the hero, Superman.
You'd think Dodo is bad enough, but she pronounced it "Doodoo" and would actually correct people if they said it wrong!
Scab Dover
Luke Skywalker
Velvet Ribbon
Rockets Redglare
Caramel apple
Bobby Badboy
Andrew Bigmeat (one of my all time favorites)
There's a guy in Minneapolis named Stu Pid. His phone number was in the book until a radio station discovered him. Now he's unlisted.
but his first name was like "spe-keng".
Glue Sniffercrap
enjoy it a lot.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2452593/Talula-Does-The-Hula-From-Hawaii-not-a-girls-name-New-Zealand-court-rules.html
Likama Kunts
who owed a small business in the US