Kristian Namez - a rant

Today I'll be mostly getting very pissed off about people who won't spell their names properly.

I don't hold much truck with txt lnguge or poor punctuation but I can grudgingly overlook the odd garbled SMS or a few grammatical slips - some people are just in a hurry or don't care as much about these things as I do. It still burns my eyes like acid when I have to read it but I stay cool and remind myself that not everyone shares my beliefs and besides, if licence hadn't been given at some point in history to badly juxtaposed syllables then the world would never have known Dutch or Finnish.

In any case, if txtng and bad grammar push the boundaries of acceptability, people really step over the line when they deliberately, and in full knowledge, insist on adapting "cool spellings" of their names.

The thin end of the wedge was people spelling their name as Jon or Kris and stuff. This was palatable, just. Not so however are linguistic fuck-ups like Jaymz instead of James, Erykah instead of Erica, Aedyn instead of Aidan, Exsaviour instead of Xavier, Klare as opposed to Claire, Antnee instead of Anthony. Pharrel taking over from Farrell. And Jewelyanna elbowing Julianna out of the way. The list is endless. I've googled all these, they're genuine, there's some poor bastards out there who have chosen to sign these on forms for the rest of their days. For God's sake people, the alphabet is getting raped out there!

I have a few theories as regards the rise of this wilful phonetic mangling. Obviously, rap artists and the like have been doing it for ages with their stage names and alot of people with bugger all talent, or anything else to lend them a sense of individuality, seem to think that making a similar hames of their own first names is a quick-buck way of earning some and standing out from the crowd. I'm glad to confirm that it's a case of mission accomplished in this respect, as all concerned now stand out, beacon-like, as prize shitheads.

Another reason that springs to mind as I type is that the Lord of the Rings movies made people want to spell their names in Tolkien's Elvish. Either that or they've seen the original Superman movies and thought some of the folks up on Krypton had nice names, such as Jor-El who was Superman's ould fella. Or maybe the Welsh language is secretly taking over the world, I dunno, whatever's happening people just aren't content to be called John and Mary any more.

All this of course deals with people who have been given normal names at birth and make a conscious decision later on to warp and distort them, I haven't even touched on parents who give their offspring a wretched start in life by saddling them with some God-awful name from the get-go.

For instance, a friend recently told me about some howyeh he heard screaming after her twins that were gambolling about on O'Connell Street. "Hee-ur, come back hee-ur Dolce and Gabbana or I'll fuckin' skin yis," she bellowed. I have no reason to believe this was made up.

Disastrous parental interventions like these, at such an early stage in one's life that no protest can be made by the offended party, are borne out of Mum and Dad's desire to make the child unique and have him bestride the earth with an instantly recognisable name that sets him apart from the herd. That's the nice way of thinking about it. The alternative explanation is that people who do this are utterly classless pond life who want to show off both their, ahem, highly developed fashion sense and willingness to embrace new cultures - which basically means that they watch too much trashy TV and therefore call their kids Tiffany Mercedes, Tyler Brandon, Foggy Mountain Dew, Cillit Bang and so on.

Look, I don't have the answers here. But whatever the fuck is going on, can people not just spell their fucking names properly and stop acting the tit.

Sincerely,
Terrents.

PS: If you're interested in reading more, check this out. It'll make you cry: www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/index.html