Strange names

The Austrian town of Fucking (in German it’s pronounced Foocking) for pretty obvious reasons on 1 January 2021 changed its name to Fugging. It’s inhabitants, I suppose they were previously known as the Fuckers, are now Fuggers instead.

And that’s by far not the only unusual location name (as you no doubt will have guessed), there are plenty more of towns and streets with questionable designations around the world, such as Accident, a town in the US state of Maryland, whose inhabitants are known as Accidentals. Or Aloha, a place in Oregon, not Hawaii.

There is Poo, a coastal town in Asturias in Spain, or Ugley in Essex in the United Kingdom, Bastardo in Umbria in Italy and certainly one of my favourites: Dull in Scotland which quite logically is twinned with Boring in Oregon.

And if you don’t know what to name your town or street, we’ll, name it just that, as did the town of Namlos (without name) in Austria, or the French town is Saint-Marcel Les Valence where you can find a Rue Sans Nom (street without name).

But it’s not only locations which can have rather strange or – to say the least – unusual names. That applies to people too! You must wonder what went through the parents’ head who called their baby boy Anthem! Or why did Beyoncé and Jay Z (real name Shawn Carter) name their son Sir? Or what were Elon Musk and his now ex-girlfriend Grimes thinking, when they named their first child together X Æ A-12? How do you even pronounce this? And what’s a suitable nickname? As far as the latter is concerned, apparently Grimes calls her bub ‘Little X’. Or Take Silvester Stallone: His first to sons have rather unusual names: Sage Monnblood and Seargeoh (the latter is pronounced ‘Sergio’, so why not just write it like that?). And American musician Frank Zappa’s four children are named Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha and Diva Muffin.

OK, so you can choose where you live, and if you live in a place with a weird name, you can probably even have some fun with it – or at least use it as an ice breaker or conversation starter. But think of the poor children who are lumbered with not only unusual but outright weird names. And is it me or are more frequently the kids of celebrities (maybe I should put celebrities in brackets) who get such strange names? Or is it simply that, because they re apparently known to a wider audience, their exploits are more widely reported but that Jane and John Doe give their offspring names that equally stand out?

Just think for a minute or what these poor kids will have to go through in school, where they will be teased by their fellow pupils: my parents gave me and my sister very bland names, but they made sure that hey couldn’t be made fun of (which doesn’t mean that I wasn’t teased for other reasons 😉)