My pet peeve is the Finnish name “Yrjö”. It comes from the Greek name “Geôrgios”, which means farmer, but nowadays the word “yrjö” means vomit. ‘Unique spellings’ like some “Everleigh” also drive me crazy.
When I was a kid we had a family friend (old man) named Gaylord. People would try to say it Gaylrd and he would correct them: “No, it’s Gay Lord.” It was the 90s and it made me uncomfortable as that was a popular school yard slur.
I love it when people own their name like that. Who cares what others think, it’s part of who you are and you should not be ashamed of that.
I was born with a very old-fashioned name myself and tried to hide it for the longest time. Even my parents only called me by the abbreviated form. Took me a long time to accept that name and take pride in it, but I’m glad that that I did. It’s part of me and I don’t care what others think.
Kevin is literally the stand-in name for uneducated/lower classes children here in Germany. There’s literally been an article in Der Spiegel “Kevin is not a name, but a diagnosis”.
I have a not-so-common name (not spelled strangely or anything though) and people always mishear it on the phone so I have to say it kind of slow and feel like an idiot every time. Also, people botch my last name because it’s one letter off from a more common last name.
By some strange alchemy, all of my friends seem to know a person named Greg that they dislike. It’s become a bit of a meme that if someone mentions the name, others will just grumble in “Fuckin’ Greg”
I worked with a man from Vietnam that was named Gary because when he came to America there was a lake Gary nearby and his boss just called him that. Stuck with it for the rest of his life. He was crazy but made me laugh a lot.
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