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Ahtman wrote:In the Freakonomics documentary there was a section on names and one of the facts they rattled off was that in California there were over 200 variations on the name 'Unique', including some as exciting as 'Uneek', 'Uneqe', 'Uneqqee', ect ect.

Did they find anyone called Irony?

purplefood wrote:

Ahtman wrote:In the Freakonomics documentary there was a section on names and one of the facts they rattled off was that in California there were over 200 variations on the name 'Unique', including some as exciting as 'Uneek', 'Uneqe', 'Uneqqee', ect ect.

Did they find anyone called Irony?

In my former life as a roisterdoister and general gadabouttown I have met no less that 4 women that each had the word Unique tattood in Chinese letters on their back/shoulder. They all lived in the same area and I'm guessing used the same (only) tatto parlour.

They were all classy girls too.

There's a kid at my daughters preschool called Rocko. Not sure if it's misspelt be not fething normal that's for sure.

Ahtman wrote:In the Freakonomics documentary there was a section on names and one of the facts they rattled off was that in California there were over 200 variations on the name 'Unique', including some as exciting as 'Uneek', 'Uneqe', 'Uneqqee', ect ect.

California's large population lends itself to the statistical probability of large numbers of stupid people, those people then have and name thier kids. I'd be more surprised if there were 200 variation of Unique in North Dakota.


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notprop wrote:
There's a kid at my daughters preschool called Rocko. Not sure if it's misspelt be not fething normal that's for sure.

Would you say he has a modern life?

Yeah he is a bit rodentish.

Ahtman wrote:In the Freakonomics documentary there was a section on names and one of the facts they rattled off was that in California there were over 200 variations on the name 'Unique', including some as exciting as 'Uneek', 'Uneqe', 'Uneqqee', ect ect.

And, (in the book at least, never saw the movie) they showed that there's a VERY strong correlation between having a misspelled name and having less education.

Grakmar wrote:And, (in the book at least, never saw the movie) they showed that there's a VERY strong correlation between having a misspelled name and having less education.

Not very surprising. I'd assume rich families would often lean towards very traditional names for the more "noble" connotation. On the flipside, people with misspelled names - where they actually are clearly misspelled and not intentional exoticism - would likely come from poorer families with parents who did not enjoy much education themselves. Thus, the bearers of such names suffer the double-stigma of coming from one of the lower classes as well as having their abilities unfairly judged due to various clichés. There was a study in Germany about teachers giving pupils with certain names worse grades, for example, since apparently there now exists a culture which associates a person's given name with positive or negative attributes ... even though that is, of course, utter BS since the kids had zero influence on what name they were given.

Lynata wrote:

Grakmar wrote:And, (in the book at least, never saw the movie) they showed that there's a VERY strong correlation between having a misspelled name and having less education.

Not very surprising. I'd assume rich families would often lean towards very traditional names for the more "noble" connotation. On the flipside, people with misspelled names - where they actually are clearly misspelled and not intentional exoticism - would likely come from poorer families with parents who did not enjoy much education themselves. Thus, the bearers of such names suffer the double-stigma of coming from one of the lower classes as well as having their abilities unfairly judged due to various clichés. There was a study in Germany about teachers giving pupils with certain names worse grades, for example, since apparently there now exists a culture which associates a person's given name with positive or negative attributes ... even though that is, of course, utter BS since the kids had zero influence on what name they were given.

Well, Germany has a lot of screwed up things about it, like every other country.

Such as their association of debt with guilt, which is why they arrogantly attack any country with any sizable amount of debt (nevermind that governments having debt is a good thing except in the most extreme of cases).

Lynata wrote:

Grakmar wrote:And, (in the book at least, never saw the movie) they showed that there's a VERY strong correlation between having a misspelled name and having less education.

Not very surprising. I'd assume rich families would often lean towards very traditional names for the more "noble" connotation.

It found that rich people tend to use names up until the point that those on the lower end of the economic scale start using those names as well, then they find others.

I have what is commonly thought of as a "misspelled" surname.

It's a common one, shared by a dead US president (and senator or two) with a minor change. Given a large number of Irish immigrants also settled here (and my wife has THAT spelling for her name).

My dad emigrated here from Europe. He had a rather hard to pronounce (by local standards) surname, given it had two not commonly combined consonants as its first two letters (" HL").

When he became a citizen, he chose to Anglicise his name to better "fit in" (immigrants from that period tended to want to assimilate into the local population) and chose a more "common" surname to fit in as well ( Nowadays, he'd be encouraged to keep it and rejoice in his people's culture.)

So he chose one (both as a symbol of a new life in a new land, and as a way to divorce himself of any bad ca-ca from that old land and its issues). It had two of the same letter in it, together. It didn't change the pronunciation (as a double vowel or consonant does in several Euro languages), so since one of them was redundant, it was left out.

Thus we got to my surname. I've lost count of the number of times that a government or private agency has misspelled it after it is clearly written in block capitals for them to transcribe - it's handy when your ID doesn't match any other documentation you have when this happens - not!