At some point or another, we’ll all encounter a child with a name that makes us do a double take. Whether it’s the spelling, the way it sounds or just the all-out uniqueness of it, there’s no denying that as parents race to give their kids names that will help them “stand out,” the names they dream up can be pretty out there. Coming up with creative spellings or choosing something no one else is sure to have is practically a national pastime nowadays.
But if one of our favorite communal hobbies is creative baby-naming, another favorite is creative baby name-shaming, where reacting to names like “Rage” and “Orgasm” feels delightfully gossipy. That’s what’s happening over on a Reddit thread in r/AskReddit, where someone hoped to curate all the delightfully bad baby names they could. Fellow Redditors were only too happy to oblige with the worst baby names they’ve heard recently.
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Curious? Here are the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) of the lot. Go ahead, check and see if your top pick is on the list. We won’t judge. Much.
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Lists like these remind us that there is such a thing as “too unique.” These sorts of names make it hard to believe that the parents’ main interest is in helping their child stand out so much as it is that the parents themselves hope to stand out as clever, nonconforming or quirky.
It’s fine to view yourself in such a light. The only problem with turning around and affixing those qualities to your child via the name “Elizabreth” is that you don’t know that your child will appreciate the “quirkiness” that brings. These are names, after all, not slam poetry. Your kids have to live with them for a lifetime, and while there’s no need to choose something boring just to make Internet strangers happy, you may want to consider choosing something less open to ridicule to make your child happy.
After all, you can always give them a completely bonkers nickname.
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