Daily Dirt: Some choices for parents to avoid when naming their kids

Daily Dirt for Saturday, March 4, 2023

I have three daughters — Kaysi, Sarah and Melissa. At no point, was “Little Sweetmeats” ever a possibility. Welcome to today’s three thoughts that make up Vol. 542 of The Daily Dirt.

1. Regular readers of this space know yours truly is always fascinated by names, whether it’s a nickname for a sports teams or someone’s actual first or surname. We’re dealing with first names today. Bad first names. Really, really bad first names.

The following are the absolute worst handles I have found parents saddling a kid with in the past year or so. Trends, media influence and overall parental stupidity can all be blamed.

Here are the worst of the worst I have found:

Boys names

• Gold medal: Anous. I don’t think any additional comment is needed. Names.org indicate about five people per year are given this first name. And, yes, the “o” is silent.
• Silver medal: Hashtag. Why not just have #Hashtag put on the birth certificate?
• Bronze medal: Ding Dong. For some reason, this is a popular choice in Asia, according to stylesatlife.com.
• Honorable mention: Adolf. Obviously, a terrible choice and one that could never be justified.
• Bonus: Thor. If the kid is a badass he won’t have any problems. If not, good luck.

Girls names

• Gold medal: Little Sweetmeats. Come on, mom. Come on, dad. What could possibly justify this choice?
• Silver medal: Phelony. I think I would have gone with Demeanor. That way, she could be referred to as Miss Demeanor.
• Bronze medal: Facebook. Yep, somewhere in the world there is at least one poor little girl running around with the first name of Facebook. Wonder what her middle name is. Twitter? Face-plant Emoji?
• Honorable mention: Derfla. It’s Alfred spelled backward.
• Bonus: Abcde. According to msn.com, data shows at least 373 girls have been named “Abcde” in the last five years.

2. This week, we wish these celebrities a happy birthday:

• Former Monkees drummer Mickey Dolenz turns 78 on Wednesday.
• NBC newsman Lester “The Man” Holt will be 64, also on Wednesday.
• Chuck Norris turns 83 on March 10. Even at this advanced age, don’t mess with Chuck.
• Shaquille O’Neal will be 51 on Monday. The Diesel is still going strong.
• And a belated happy birthday to Daniel Craig, who turned 55 on March 2. He is my second-favorite James Bond, behind only the late, great Sean Connery.

3. This week’s best of “Found on Facebook”:

• “My life left me because of my obsession with horoscopes. It Taurus apart.”
• “Be the fun in dysfunctional.”
• “Mountains aren’t just funny. They are hill areas.”
• “A sleepwalking nun is a roamin’ Catholic.”
• “Last night I had a dream I was swimming in a vast ocean of orange soda. It was a Fanta sea.”

Steve Eighinger writes daily for Muddy River News. He has a daughter named Kaysi (pronounced Casey) and a son named Geoff (pronounced Jeff). Maybe Steve had a spelling problem years ago.