Having worked for Parents magazine in the nineties and dealt with the hundreds of photographs of babies with food on their faces that were sent in each month for the Happy Snaps page, I've been aware of various annoying trends in baby naming in the past: just ask me about "Wraith" or "T'neal", or the 17 different permutations of Brittany. Then there's the one my sister recently told me about: "La-a", pronounced "Ladasha". Obviously.
Apparently in vogue around 20-something years ago, a trend is appearing among young males (particularly footballers) to have a Y in their name, whether one is required or not. Here are the three examples that irritate me most, in reverse order:
3. Rugby League's 2009 Dally M medal winner Jarryd Hayne. He's got one in his surname, which can't be helped, but why complicate the whole matter by putting a Y in his first name as well? It's not as though it changes the pronunciation: everyone still calls him "Ja-rud", not "Ja-rid".
2. Another offender is the illiterately named Tarkyn Lockyer, who plays for Collingwood in the AFL. Once again, a Y in each name is gratuitous, and what is wrong with "Tarquin"? I mean, if you're going to make a literary reference, at least spell it the way Shakespeare/Shakspere/Shaykespyre did.
1. The most gratuitous Y award goes to Danyle Pearce, who plays AFL for Port Adelaide Power. Despite all appearances, his name is pronounced "Dan-yull", as in Daniel, not "Dan-isle". People complain that English spelling is illogical, then change the spelling of their children's names for no apparent reason, and not even to increase the chance of it being pronounced correctly.
And don't even get me started on Jaxson Barham or Eljay Connors...
4 comments:
Never mind 2Ys. Maybe those parents are just illigiterate?
Ys yt alryght yf Y keep my "y" yn my name?
Yvette
Yvette, I have nothing against the letter Y -- after all, I own one too -- but only when people use it to replace other perfectly good letters like "i" and "e". Your Y is perfectly acceptable!
Mind you, I had a friend in school whose sister's name was Yvonne, but her mother insisted it should be pronounced "Yuh-vonne". I promise I won't ever call you "Yuh-vette".
Thank you. I do appreciate it. However, the weirdest things I have ever been called (being a twin you get used to being called names other than your own) would to be Deidre and Evelyn. I can get where Evelyn might come from, but Deidre?
John wants you to know about the baby name book we read many years ago that had Tapioca and Mascara in it.
I have taken so long to get back to this because I can't usually access blogspot blogs here in Ethiopia.
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