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| - You know those Unfortunate Names - Embarrassing First Names, Embarrassing Middle Names, Gender Blender Names, Tomboyish Names, names nobody can pronounce or spell, or that expose the bearer to ridicule by being punny, if not at home then as soon as they venture abroad and other things that drive people to seek refuge in deed polls or Last-Name Basis, or develop a Berserk Button? Let alone names that indicate exactly what the parents hope the child will become ("No, you may not skip your piano lesson, little Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"), or give away their family background (class, parents' embarrassing choice of celebrity idols) in ways that expose them to all sorts of trouble when they venture into the wider world.
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| abstract
| - You know those Unfortunate Names - Embarrassing First Names, Embarrassing Middle Names, Gender Blender Names, Tomboyish Names, names nobody can pronounce or spell, or that expose the bearer to ridicule by being punny, if not at home then as soon as they venture abroad and other things that drive people to seek refuge in deed polls or Last-Name Basis, or develop a Berserk Button? Let alone names that indicate exactly what the parents hope the child will become ("No, you may not skip your piano lesson, little Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"), or give away their family background (class, parents' embarrassing choice of celebrity idols) in ways that expose them to all sorts of trouble when they venture into the wider world. Suffice to say, somebody - usually but not invariably the parents - had to name them that way. They may have meant well. They may have done it out of family pride, or cluelessness, or not thinking about the unwanted Bilingual Bonus they're saddling the kid with. They may have named the kid after their favourite fictional character, or politician, or something even goofier. They may think having a bully magnet name will help the tyke build character. They may just hate kids. They may be rock stars, or hippies, or both, with child-naming habits to match. Or they might just have been hit with the fickle finger of fate when something happened after the child's birth to make the choice much less sensible in retrospect. (Being named Adolf is one thing: being named Adolf in 1928 is another.) At any rate, the effect is usually to make third parties ask the question: "Who calls their child that?", or in the more light-hearted cases, "I hope he inherited his parents' sense of humor." In extreme cases, may function as a Freudian Excuse, or lead to Calling the Old Man Out, or both. May induce a sense of being Cursed with Awesome or Blessed with Suck - let alone a whole bunch of problems if you've been saddled with a name to run away from really fast and it's not by your own choice. In extreme cases, this trope may also lead others to decide that There Should Be a Law, which in a number of European countries there is, at least as far as the more obvious Unfortunate Names, names leading to Viewer Gender Confusion, or the use of surnames as first names. May also slightly stack the odds against the child's future success. This might also extend to cases where the kid, however grown-up they get, are never allowed to shake off a family nickname that would only be cute on a toddler, though probably not to embarrassing nicknames acquired in other settings, such as school. Children with names fitting this trope may also take refuge in nicknames or titles. Obviously, this is very much Your Mileage May Vary - one person's Awesome McCoolname is another's Fail O'Suckyname, and things can get touchy for those of us who have been blessed with names we took a while to get to terms with, or are still working on it. Examples of Who Names Their Kid "Dude"? include:
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