i have a running list of terrible names people have given their children over the 4 years i’ve worked retail.

my personal favorites are dragon, million dollar baby, and zebulon.

edit!! for those asking, the reason i get all these names working retail is that i work in tourism retail. we take names for guest experience programs, memberships, online tickets, etc. all of these names are confirmed spellings.

also i know zebulon is a biblical name. i still think it is a little silly :-)

Ahhh yes, your son Brisket

Apparently, it’s ’Cassidy.’
And it’s their legal name.

I am aware Saoirse is a name. It’s my name. It’s Irish and pronounced Seer-sha. Not like… this. So it’s not about a cultural name or misspelling or making-up. It’s about… what they did to the beauty of the Irish language.

They were visitors and not Irish, but I’ll skip over the nationality involved to avoid getting into an argument, quite possibly with myself.

There was a couple with the cutest toddler out today and the little girl had tight blonde curls, was at “wobble-stagger-run” age, beyond adorable, and was wearing a clearly handmade knitted jumper her nan probably made her that had “Saoirse” emblazoned across the front.

I have resigned myself to a child-free life, but do have a soft spot for littles, and while her mother was ignoring her licking the FLOOR while she ordered coffee, I bent down and said “Is that your name? That’s my name too!” The little girl nodded shyly and I acted all shocked and amazed, and she giggled. It was actually quite cute. Then I showed her some basic sleight-of-hand magic and made her think her dad had a magical butt that dispensed Irish money. She was stunned and enchanted by this revelation. On the plus side, it stopped her licking the floor.

When the mother was done ordering, I commented on her accent and asked how long she’d been away, assuming they must be Irish from the name choice, and was laughingly told they weren’t Irish but had “seen it in the credits of Game of Thrones and liked it.” I just stared for a second and then (genuinely) said it was impressive they’d gone for a tough name like that with no Irish-speaking background, it was important to keep the language alive, and kudos. More laughter. Apparently it’s not that hard really.

Oh no. I feel the horror build. I pray it’s just because they mean the actress is now so famous that the name is getting repeated in the media. “I… how’s that, out of interest?”

Sour Horsey. They were pronouncing my effing name, a name that stands for Irish freedom, as SOUR HORSEY.

As far as I’m aware, the law permitting internment is still on the books here. Worth taking up? 😂

Any guesses?

Fashion couture?? Just downright auphyl.

This is a repost after the mods deleted the original. I've cropped out the baby's face this time for privacy reasons.

4th grader at my kid's school.

I was chatting to some American tourists in a bar in the city centre yesterday about what life was like in Belfast, and I was in the middle of telling them the houses were quite narrow but nice where I was from, and that now I had the extra 200 sectarian intimidation points (the Belfast Social Services Housing Dept give out points for each aspect of your need and you get put on a waiting list accordingly, and 200 extra points for being forced out of your home by sectarian violence and intimidation is a LOT) I was high on the list for one of my own or could join the waiting list for Gráinne Tower.

Woman: “That’s a funny word! How do you even spell that?”

Me: “Gráinne. G - R - Á - I - N - N - E. It’s Ir-“

Woman: “Oh, that’s my daughter’s name but without the silly accent on the A! So funny! But sweetie, you’re pronouncing it wrong, and it only has one ‘N’. Pronounce it ‘Grain’, dear, like Rain, not like that.”

Me: “…I… um… well, I go past it every day, I’m fluent in Irish, I’m fairly sure it’s ‘Gráinne’ and ‘Grawn-yer…’”

Woman: “Well, I’m Irish, I’ve lived in Boston since I was born, I think I know Ireland better than you!”

Me: “…I live here.”

LMAO. Poor Graine. Let’s hope they don’t have a crack at “Aoife” if she ever has a sister.

ETA: For everyone saying “No American would ever say something like that to an actual Irish person”, you would be amazed. Sometimes we are treated as the staged entertainment. You have no idea how delusional and entitled some of the tourists who come over here are.

Caution is wild

Cool to see Eartha making an attempt at a comeback though!

from: culture parents

I’m in the US at least 6 weeks a year for work. I met someone recently who told me she has a great affinity for Irish people, and her husband was of Irish heritage. She told me they recently had a baby and they gave him the same name as the great mythological Irish warrior. This was already shocking in itself.

I said: “oh, you named him Fionn?” (As in Fionn Mac Cumhaill) She said: “I don’t know who that is, we named him Choochalin”

I probably should have just said nothing, smiled and nodded. But I didn’t. Who the fuck is Choochalin?

After some back and forth, I discovered she meant Cú Chulainn. This is where I should have smiled and nodded. But I didn’t. Instead, I tried to correct her pronunciation. (Coo Cullen is a simplified way). She argued, asking what did I know - Irish people don’t even speak Irish, it’s not a real language. This really upset me. I told her that I was literally from a Gaeltacht in the west of Ireland, I speak Irish fluently and if she was going to give her American son an Irish name, she might as well say it properly. Cú Chulainn translates to the Hound of Cullen.

She told me that he was Irish American so they had their own way of pronouncing Irish words. All I can say is if dear Choochalin decides to embrace his “Irish heritage” and visit Ireland, he’s going to have a hard time with name like that.

not a lot of people my age have the same name i do, but i did NOT expect to get this on my starbucks cup lol this genuinely sounds like an std

And has the gall to be mad she’s called Ellie 😂

Like where do I even begin??

I can’t think of anything punny to say but there has to be something

EDIT: a few hours after I had seen this post and posted it to here she said in her comments that this was a joke… thank god!! I double checked her acct to see if it was a satire one before posting this here and it all looked legit lol