A few weeks back, the Sunday Times ran an article about people with unusual names, like Florenced, Bright and Lingual. You can just see the bad jokes coming. You really wonder what the parents were thinking when they named their kids. Did they not see the lifetime of ridicule, or how people would do a double take whenever those poor kids had to go through self-introductions?
I mean, Florenced? What is that, a verb? Oh I got Florenced by a Florence, hence I'm Florenced. It would actually be pretty funny if it wasn't somebody's name. Pretty funny according to me, because I created it. Feel free to disagree.
As for Bright, your kid had better be smart, and all things sunny. I'm going to quote from the article here on what Bright's teachers used to tell him. "Oh look at you, you didn't get an A, you're not so bright after all." And even his friends were unrelenting. "Don't worry, if it's dark, Bright's here."
As for the one called Lingual, its just sad. I mean like I saw that "Bye... Lingual!" joke coming from a mile away. But even for those with more conventional names, that joke still applies. I had a friend called Chi, and people would go "Bye Chi... Bye!" If you don't realise why that's funny, go read it out.
And in the army, when people had to put their names on name tags, I saw a few very comical ones too. Like S A Tan. If your surname is Tan, please do not pick a name for your kid that starts with S and A.
But nothing struck me more on the impact of a name than yesterday when I attended NTU's convocation ceremony as paid help. In other words, to stand around doing nothing while earning 7 bucks an hour. Thank you NTU, next time got such lobang please call me. But that aside, during the convocation ceremony, I seriously LOL-ed at some of the names. The indian professor not only mangled them, he turned them into something else.
I remember clearly waiting with bated breath for the long and difficult names, just to see what the professor would do with them. He never disappointed me. There was this block of two indonesian names, Kusumawidjaya and Tanudjaja. He went like Kusuwi-jajaja and Tanudy-jajaja.
And whenever he read a long Chinese name, he would skip certain parts. So an Elizabeth Phua Ping Ping would become like Elizabeth Phua Ping. But somehow, no matter how long the indian names were, he always got them right in full. Which was pretty strange to me because I found some of them even harder to pronounce than Tanudy-jajaja.
But one name just took the cake. There was this particular name that I heard and seriously just died. The name was Goh Shi Ting. Pretty normal, don't you think? Guess what? The professor read it as Goh Shit-ting. Yes, seriously, on your convocation, "go shit-ting" on the stage. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I mean, it was so funny but I felt so bad for the girl.
All I can say is, when you pick a name, ask your indian, malay, hokkien, and whatever friends to read it out to you and make sure they don't break out laughing.