Congrats, karatekate!

I'll offer a differing opinion on piece/slice. Cakes and pies are all pieces, regardless of shape. Slices are for bread. I suppose a pound cake or something else baked in a loaf pan might be slices, too. This is in Seattle, WA. Mostly I just say, "Would you like some cake?" or "Any pie for you?" anyway.

Congrats KirateKate & ErinJSnark!

And Kermit is a good name for a puppy, not a child. Unless it is green. And made of felt. And dates a pig.

BTW, hope that the TWoPers who were stalking my neighborhood on Saturday were on their best behaviour, young men.

Big phat congrats to both KarateKate and ErinJ-- good news all around!!

(And enjoy quitting, Erin-- I'm a quitter from way back, and I know I always totally have a good time with it!)

In other news, I'm back from LA, and yes, it was indeed awesome. Pool/Beach Lounging, and Snacking, and Cocktailing, oh my! Work is already beating my ass like Pee Wee Herman at the movies, but it's all good, cause I had a freaking BLAST in La La Land!

Speaking of which,



Thanks for linking that, mac! My friend with whom I was staying has a pool, and was actually keeping all her sublock in a basket nearby. Which, of course lead to, like, DAYS of bad Silence of the Lambs jokes, starting with the classic "P.T.F.L.I.T.B.!!!" screamed at the top of our lungs and then moving on to "It drinks the cocktail" "It calls shotgun" and "It makes me a burrito!"

Good times...

I have a friend named Kermit. He wears the name well and is a really outgoing person. He is very invoved in forest protection work. People do have a habit of nic-naming him Kermi.

Congratulations and best wishes, KirateKate & ErinJSnark!

I must jump into the name thing, as I was telling my mother about the discussion my "imaginary internet friends" were having this weekend about names. She claims to have heard of two children - hopefully someone's joke, but you just never know - named (phonetically) "Le-MON-gelo" and "Sh'-THEED." That's spelled L-E-M-O-N-J-E-L-L-O and S-H-I-T-H-E-A-D, respectively.

Of course, that reminded me of an old episode of Hill Street Blues, where a prostitute was being "booked," and had to give her name. "F'-MOLLY," she said. What's that? "F'-MOLLY. F'MOLLY! F-E-M-A-L-E, F'-MOLLY!" I hope someone made that up for TV.

So, Kermit? Is not that bad.

I have always loathed my name, just because it has so many acceptable forms. My given name is Susan, however my parents intended for me to be called "Susie." At the age of about 10 or 11, I decided "Susie" sounded too cutesie and no one would ever take me seriously with that name, so I started to go by "Sue." Once I entered the business world and had to start introducing myself over the phone, I found that "Sue" ended with the same vowel sound that my last name starts with, so I became "Susan." Now, people I work with call me "Susan" and my family and friends call me "Sue," but never the twain shall meet. If anyone at work calls me "Sue," the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Go figure.

Boy, that's a lot of quotation marks.

My mom tells a joke about the first, so I'm hoping it really is a joke, and not something based on a real name.

Though that reminds me of a Saturday Night Live skit I still find hilarious, years after I saw it. Nicholas Cage was hosting, and was playing a guy who kept shooting down baby names his pregnant wife was suggesting because they could too easily (but not, really) be made into annoying schoolyard nicknames. It went on way too long, but then was redeemed when the doorbell rang, the pizza delivery guy announced "I've got a pizza for Asswipe Johnson," and NC responded "no, it's Ahs-WEEP-ay." I don't know why, but that still cracks me up.

I say piece of cake or piece of pie, I think, though of course it's hard to figure stuff like that out when you're trying to remember what you normally do.

I brought up some of the silly place pronunciations, but I sort of feel bad about that, because I've got major pronunciation issues. As a kid I had that problem of knowing the meaning of words from reading, but having no idea how to say them. I still avoid words sometimes because my mind tells me two different possible pronunciations, and I can't decide which is right.

Piece of cake/pie before you cut it
Slice of cake/pie after it's been cut

When ordering in a restaurant, etc assume its been cut and ask for a slice.

Female NYC

P.S. KarateKate tell your husband that if he could imagine the kid who was the worst bully in his 3rd grade class making fun of it, its not a good name for a kid. Eight year-olds can be ruthless.

Oh, that is so my burden as well. My friend - another avid reader - and I were talking about how we can do so well on standardized tests (GRE and whatnot) for language skills, but could sound really stupid when talking. We have large reading/writing vocabularies, but we generally don't say most of the $5 words (whether because opportunity doesn't present itself that that is really the best word and not just pretentious or just that (and this sounds so conceited) other people don't know the word).

This leads to conversations with my too-smart brother where I say that I will find something out surreptitiously from my mother (secret anniversary plans afoot!), but I pronounce it "sur-UP-tu-ously". KateBro snots "um, you mean 'sur-up-TISH-iously'? Because that's the correct pronunciation for the word I think you wanted."

D'oh! I know what the word means, I know how to spell it, I just talk too fast. And then I feel like an idiot who has a Dr. Seuss vocabulary.

ETA - That is a good litmus test. Mr.Kate thinks that the kid should be proud of his name and be able to rise above it, but half jokingly. Kermit is out, seriously out. The major stalemate is that Mr.Kate's name also begins with a "K", and he wants to continue this for all of our children. This is an idea I could give into if it weren't for the facts that:
(1) His parents did this with all of his siblings - 4 Ks there already (and all of the names I would really concede to, but are not options)
(2) There aren't that many K names, compared to other letters, unless you go for Greek or Slavic names and spellings (Kristopher, Kristos, etc)
(3) that's just too "kute"
(4) His suggestions are names (developed in high school, before we ever met) like Kansas, Kelvin, Kermit (for boys) and Kiera, Kirsten, Kayla for girls. Nothing against these names, but my "list" was of names like Caleb, Noah, Isaiah for boys and Rebekah, Hannah, Abigail for girls (and Ruth, but I can concede easily this might be too... whatever. Old, I guess)

Congrats to karatekate and ErinJ. Erin, you aren't getting about the benefits of drug repping. My cousin got to go to Hawaii for 10 days on the company's dime, and took her family. They tend to have conventions in really lush places. Must be nice.

And this totally hit home:

We just started talking about names this past weekend; we did manage to decide that we'll keep her original Chinese name as a middle name but as for first names, it's going to be a long road. My husband insists that it be a name with an obvious and easy nickname because he doesn't have a name like that and he always wanted a nickname. Of course I'm just the opposite. And he thinks we should wait til we see so we can see what she looks like, except that I think we have paperwork we have to fill out before we even get over there that requires her new legal name. Oy. So he's being singularly unhelpful by suggesting things like Brunhilde and Penelope (seriously -- if he'd been a girl his name was going to be Penelope. Again with the Oy). How do people ever decide?

eta: Kate, that is just way too kute for words. And K names tend to be on the "cutesy" end in any case. My name choices are along the lines of yours (except Abigail -- which I love -- is now like the 5th most popular name for girls, so that's out). Ruth is going to be her other middle name, after my maternal grandmother, actually -- I like that name. I'm pushing for Amelia, Gillian, Madeleine ... I'm hearing Samantha, Keira, Tara... bleah.

Names beginning with "G" aren't a lot better. When I was pregnant with my daughter, my hubby, being Jewish, wanted to honor his dead great-grandmother by naming a daughter after her. Only problem was, her name was Gittel, which was definitely out, and we couldn't come up with a "G" name we could tolerate (a name beginning with the same letter would have been fine by his family).

So we gave up and named her Rachel -- only to discover that his great-grandmother's name had been Gittel Rachel (pronounced with the Yiddish "RUCH-el" with the gargled "CH"), so his grandma was thrilled to death and convinced we did it deliberately. We never disabused her of the notion.

As for Kermit, there's a well-known and well-thought-of musician here in New Orleans named Kermit Ruffins. I'm not sure that's the name his mama gave him, however. And as for me, I'd say not only the litmus test of 8-year-old bullies is worth considering, but also the pain and torture inflicted by 12-year-old bullies in middle school. (Although in this day and age, considering all the weird names around, Kermit is probably actually pretty tame!)

I have a friend who teaches in Miami who swears up and down that she works with a woman whose first name is FEM-a-lee. That's "Female" under a different pronunciation. I've always been a bit skeptical, however -- and until and unless she introduces me to Female, I choose to remain so!

Kiefer! Go with Kiefer! Mmmm...Kiefer.

Not that I don't adore all of you, because I do, but I miss wtf. When is she coming back? I want to hear about her sipping margaritas by the pool while we all slaved away at our crappy jobs, so we can all tell her how much we hate her.

*removes the crack pipe from Rachel's hand and puts it safely out of reach*

Check about a page back in this thread, my lovely.

I am indeed back, brown as a berry (never understood that one, actually-- what berries are brown??) and so overfed, overcocktailed, overshopped (No. Such. THING!) and overlounged that I'm practically in a coma. Which is making work singularly difficult today.

I'm totally leaving early.

[ETA: I agree, btw-- Mmmmm... Kiefer. Saw him on 8th Ave a couple of weeks ago when he was here for the FOX up-fronts, and he looked nummy.]

Stupid crack induced haze that made my eyes glaze over and miss your earlier post! Actually, the logical reason is that whenever my crappy computer crashes, which happens ALL the time as those of you in the TAR chats know, I come back to TWoP and have to find the place I previously left off. Obviously my crack induced haze didn't bring me back to the correct spot. Now let me scroll back and read your post so I can come back and tell you I hate you.

ETA: I hate you!

Awwww-- I still love you!

Or maybe that's just the 43,000 gin & tonics and 2,300 foofy umbrella-laden girl drinks I downed by the pool/at the beach/in the faboo restaurants and clubs last week talking...

*hic!*

Also? Crack is whack, yo. Just ask Whitney.

Heh. Well, at least you know I missed you.

Why??! Why is it that every time someone has a screaming infant, they stand right outside my office door? Why?? Why, God, why?!??!

I don't know about kids' names, but this reminds me of a news report I saw on hackers. The guy called up a company claiming to be "Mr. Le-MON-gelo from the Phoenix office," and after a little chitchat, was promptly given the person's login name and password to the company network.

marooned I still remember the 'Asswipe' skit too, and crack up when I think about it.

I say piece of cake and piece of pie. Slice of pie sounds ok, but slice of cake sounds weird to me. I'm a Phila. area guy.

Congrats erinjsnark and karatekate! How about Koko or Kiki for baby names?

Because they can't stay in the airplane seat next to me forever...

But don't go Keanu! Don't go Keanu!



ROFLMAO!!! Awesome, WTF. Just awesome.

Two children I had to deal with today, Gac and Glanda. How are those for names? I swear everyday I get some whacky name and I just don't want to have to say them out loud for fear it's just some typo or I'm hallucinating. Gac, sounds like a cat hacking up a furball and Glanda? Which gland was the mom enchanted with, pituitary, thymus, ovary (now I wish I knew what the girl's middle name was?)

I went to a party last Friday and met a girl named Tennille. I actually thought of this thread and stopped from asking her if she was named after Captain's singing partner. It didn't stop me from mocking her behind her back, but nothing really stops me from doing that.

The big question is, of course, does Tennille have a twin named Chenille?

KarateKate and JenEx, I don't know if this will help, but this is how some friends of mine came up with names when they were expecting. They were having terrible disagreements. They sat down with the most recent Social Security names data and immediately crossed off the top thirty. They then each took their own copy and studied it privately, without discussing it with their partners. They each wrote down twenty names that they liked in order of preference. They then compared lists and found that they had several names in common for boys and a few for girls. They took the names with the highest average ranking between the two of them and decided on them as tentative names. It took a few weeks of trying the names out, and they ended up switching on a girl's middle name, but the process worked for them.
They ended up with a daughter named Leah Meredith. They were going with Leah Faith but someone pointed out to them that it sounded and awful lot like Leap of Faith. The boy's name they had picked out was Aidan Luke.

Oh, karatekate, don't let your husband go with the all K family! Roger Clemens did that with his four sons, and he's quite an Ahs-WEEP-ay himself, so that's not a club you want to be a member of. (In scoring baseball, a strikeout is commonly noted with a K, and he gets a lot of strikeouts, so his kids have been relegated to the status of mobile testaments to Rog's fatheaded self.)

I'm partial to old-fashioned British-y names myself, like Jasper and Sebastian and Charlotte and Eliza. I'm also kind of sappy for trends in names among siblings, like months (April, May, June, Julie, Augustus - okay, too far there), flowers (Rose, Lily, Daisy, Dahlia, Oncidium -- again, too far!), even virtues (Faith, Hope, Charity -- and I'll stop before Uxoriousness) although I like those last ones best as middle names.

I wouldn't go with all the K names either. My mom's friend June has eleven siblings, all of their names starting with J. You could always use it for a middle name though. In my immediate family, everyone's middle initial is A. My parents decided not to name me Jessica or Samantha because they didn't want my initials to spell JAP or SAP. So they went with MAP. =)

And I think that Roger even named two of his kids Koby and Kody. Those aren't too similar to pronounce at all.
I like the old-fashioned names, too: Abigail, Grace, Hannah, Olivia, Emma, Nathaniel, Ethan, Nicholas, Alexander, Micah (Okay, I'm the only one that likes that last one.)
And I do know somebody with the middle name of August. It's very nice, much nicer than Augustus.
For those who are having trouble coming to agreement on a name, here's how to get the name you want, if you happen to be the female part of the equation. I will shamefacedly admit to having used this base ploy. It worked, too:
Debate and discuss names for 8 months. Then, as you get increasingly unwieldy and uncomfortable, play off your husband's sympathy. Throw in a dollop of upcoming labor. If it doesn't work, wait till just after labor, sigh bravely, and say, with a merest hint of the recent travail in your voice, "Gee, I still really like thus and such a name." This method saved my daughter from the horrors of all the 'leen names: Darleen, Sharleen, Lurleen. (Really, it was just my maternal instinct kicking in.)

ETA: 12 names that start with J? I don't think I can even think of that many. Let's see. Jane, Janice, Jessica, Jocelyn, June, Joanne. John, Jacob, Jeremiah, Joseph, James, Josiah. Well, I stand corrected

My Uncle (Jim) and Aunt (Judy) have two children (John and Jennifer). They sign all of their Christmas, birthday, graduation, etc. cards "4J". Of course, now that they have a dog (Maggie) they sign the cards "4J and Maggie".

Jim Bob and Mary Duggar, who were recently in the news after Mary gave birth to their 15th child, named their latest baby Jackson, fitting into the all-J names mold. Quoting from a news article,



My sister used to live in Arkansas, where Jim Bob ran for office of some sort. The campaign card with their 12, 13, or 14 kids on it (however may it was at the time), all dressed identically? Was more than a little creepy.

I'm home one day between the U.S. Open and a business trip to France (sounds glamorous and may be after I wake up) and can't understand how I've spent my entire one night at home reading this thread. But I couldn't help myself.

I'm Robin and Vizzini (argh).

When my sister was in med school she lived in BERwyn Illinois and we lived in BerWYN Pennsylvania. And people who say the "s" in Illinois make me really really annoyed because I was born in Mattoon, Bart Ender, which is muhTOON not MAA-TOON. And there is always Lima (LYE-muh) Ohio.

I'm also very annoyed by the local traffic guy who talks about gazz leaks and gazz spills. It's GASSSSSSSS you ass!

I didn't know misled (first seen in the book Kidnapped when I was eight) was mis-LED and not MYzzled until I went away to college.

And my biggest pet peeve is sportscasters who don't even bother to try to pronounce names of non U.S. players no matter how simple. It's your job bozo, ask someone and practice. Another thing that bugs are announcers who say a player's name and then say it's "how he's pronouncing it now." No dope, he always pronounced it that way, it's just that now that he's in the bigs (NHL, MLB, whatever) he thinks you might actually make an effort to say it right and he feels free to ask that of you.

Since I have no children and never will, someone can name a girl after my dad's Irish grandmothers because neither of my brothers nor my sister named any of their daughters Ellen (both of the immigrant grandmas Ellen, which I think is way cool). If I'd been mom material I would have had such a rich mine of great names for my kids. Rachel, Naomi, Ruth, Hannah, Dinah, Christiana, Jonathan, Amos and Daniel (and a couple too common James, John, and I don't like Margaret) were all in our first generation born here in PA back in the 1680s. Loura (low-ruh as in ow), Rosa ("s" not "z") and Ellen in the midwestern pioneer women.

See you in a week.

Holy...! BoDiva get out of my brain. I made the exact same error at about the same age, same book. Maybe we should just keep on using it; it's a word that obviously wants to exist.

I was never one for thinking up names for imaginary kids myself, but I always thought a cool pseudonym if I ever wanted to be a novelist was an adaptation of my middle name and my dad's middle name. It came out not too girly, not too studly. Kind of like "What is your stripper name?" but more plausible sounding.

Au revoir, have a good trip.

Hey, I'm pretty convinced that long, long ago back in the days when I thought I wanted to have kids, it was really because I wanted the fun of naming them. (now I try out potential cat names on Mr. Anglican) When I played house with my sister as a child, she wanted to rock the dolls to sleep, and I wanted to name them.

Felicitations to erinjsnark and karatekate. I too am feeling giddy since I sent off the very last official piece of my dissertation to my advisor today. (I have to fix some things that she's suggested, but I won't have to produce new text wholesale anymore) To celebrate, we went to see the new Harry Potter movie, which is generally quite excellent, IMHO. Slight spoiler alert: One thing that bothered me was that Harry and Hermione hide in a pumpkin patch, with gigantic huge pumpkins - and this is supposed to be at the end of the Hogwarts school year in June! As a wannabe gardener, this bugged me. Maybe they were magic pumpkins.

Well I thought I would throw in the names of all the babies born since January in my building: Tiernan (f), Graydon, Brady, Brooks, and Jake and Anna (twins). I guess if I had to use one of those I would take Jake. Also I always thought Aidan was nice. Especially since its comprised of all the letters in my last name, yea me!

Also will throw in that I still hate my name after all these years: Andrea. I thought I would begin to like it some day, but no. I think I may have mentioned that I escaped "Henrietta and Edwina" by my mother's last minute decision so I guess I shouldn't complain!

Ricci, I was almost Clarissa. Can you imagine?

Unfortunately, Hildi, the pregnancy-and-labor thing doesn't so much work when you're adopting. I can't even get out of changing the cat litter, damnit. And I've tried.

Wow, tons of good news in the Meet Market lately. Congrats to karatekate, erinjsnark and The Anglican.

My cousins in one family all have first names that start with K. Kenneth, Kevin, Kelly, Keith & Kris. All boys, and all of their middle initials started with J as well. So this was one case where monogrammed gifts could be shared...

Gotta address the pronunciation thing as far as East Texas goes. There is a town called Mexia. Not Mex-e-a. Meh-HEY-a. Of course there is also Nacogdoches (Knack-u-DOE-Chess) and Waxahachie (Walks-a-HATCH-e). You can also tell the natives by how they say Six Flags. Accent on the SIX.

Hey, The Anglican, I had a foolproof way for generating pet names. A cow-orker of mine and I used to sit around thinking up silly names beginning with a letter chosen at random. For example: "R" begat Roswitha, Roquefort, and Rochefoucald. The more pretentious, ridiculous, and multi-syllabic the better.

A few weeks later, I ended up adopting a cat whose name popped into my head as soon as I saw him: Studebaker.

You want weird pronunciations? Not that far from Nacogdoches, TX, just across the Louisiana border, is Natchitoches, LA. But is it pronounced even vaguely like it's spelled? Hah! Nope, it's pronounced -- as Dave Barry says, I swear I am not making this up -- NAK-a-dish.

And it's even one of the oldest communities in Louisiana -- and it is a charming little town. (My son went to college there for a while.) But NAK-a-dish for Natchitoches? Man, that one weeds out the tourists fast! :-)

And on the subject of cat names, I had a friend who came up with the strangest names. Her #1 cat was named Gurdjieff, for example. But what I really loved about her was that she knew cats' true names. We had adopted a cat and my kids had named her Cinnamon, but when Carole came to visit she took one look at the cat and turned to me and said, "You do realize her real name is Emily, don't you?" So I turned to the cat and said, "Is Emily your real name?" And the cat looked at me like I was a moron and, in catspeak, replied, "Of course!" She's been Emily ever since, and comes to her name like a dog would. It's quite mysterious, but undeniable.

My name is Joy, I worked for awhile with a woman named Hope. We were working the front desk at a hotel, and once had a guest insist on knowing our real names, since we had obviously made up Hope and Joy. I love the name Grace, but don't think I could name my (as yet unborn, unconvieved) daughter that, because Joy and Grace might be too much together.

Oh dear, Jenex, that was very thoughtless of me. No, that method will not work for adoption. Hmm. Currently trying to cobble together a ploy involving killer jetlag fatigue and dislike of Chinese food that will make a viable substitute.....

No, I like Micah. And I left off the name I really like, but I'm the only one that likes it - Tobias.

And you know which one of those would bug me the most? Jinger. It's like Mr.Kate agreeing to Caleb, so long as it's spelled "Kaleb" (which makes me think "Karob" and adds to the indignation that we would name the child after a chocolate chip substitute). Some of those names I really like. I could do all J names (I will NOT be having 15 children, however, unless next time I have 14-uplets (someone smarter than me can tell me the real name for that)).
Am I in your family now? And maybe just haven't heard of Kelly? Because that is my husband's family names. Well, except his middle initial is R, so we aren't cousin-in-laws with a mysterious disappeared sister-in-law for me.

I love all of the talk about town names. I'm from Lewisville (pronounced "LEW-is-vil", just like it's spelled), and I love how people argue with me that it is pronounced like Louisville, KY. It's not even like we're spelled the same! Right next to us is Pfafftown, which my mother called "FAF-fee-town", but is actually "Pahf-town" (not that hard, really).

But North Carolina really does have some of the, um, best? weird names out there for towns... Horneytown, NC (right down the road from Climax, NC); Lizard Lick, NC; Boogertown, Rabbit Corner, Cat Square... take a map and laugh away. Don't believe me? You should be able to MapQuest any one of them.

I liked the name Tobias, too--until I became a fan of "Arrested Development." If you haven't watched it, check it out sometime to see why I would never name a kid that.

I haven't seen Arrested Development, but I can't name a child that, anyway. I already named my stuffed bunny that. And my bass guitar. And my dog that I don't have yet.

You can't name you kid after your bass guitar. It's just not right.

I learned the correct pronunciation of "Beatitudes" as a junior in high school when my entire class laughed hysterically at me after I had to read a sentence containing the word aloud from our grammar book. Look, if you are raised by atheists, you have no reason to know it isn't Beat-itudes, as in the Beat Generation, or sugar beets.

First off, let me echo: congrats, karatekate, erinjsnark and The Anglican!

Piece/slice: this actually relates more to me when it comes to pizza. Back in Chicago, where I grew up, it usually comes cut in straight lines so that there's middle and edge pieces, and it's a piece of pizza. Here in NYC, where it's cut like a pie so all pieces go out from the center like spokes from a wheel, it's a slice of pie and people will order things like, "Yeah, gimme one plain slice". Still getting used to that.


On some level I knew that, but you still sent me to do a Google search to find out what Patty Smyth is singing in Scandal's "Goodbye to You" other than "You know you never got by on beatitudes," only to discover that pretty much every lyric site has their own theory.

So I started my new job as an apartment leasing agent yesterday, I have the day off today, and I'm going to the Aimee Mann concert tonight. Ah, life is good...for now, at least!

Don't be so quick to dismiss the idea of all kids' names in a family starting with the same letter, sez me. Where I grew up -- in Catholic City in the County of Catholic in Upstate New Catholic York -- there were loooooots of big families, including one where the parents were John and Donna, and they named their 8 kids with 4 "J" names and 4 "D" names. So as youths, my boozehound friends and I used to get all shitty and try to play "Name the Smiths*" Good times...

What? Have you ever BEEN to upstate NY?

(I was the champ, of course [the trick is to think of memorizing them when you're sober]... I actually can still do it.)



Ricci-- that's my favorite boy name ever. LOVE it.

[*The name has been changed to protect the overly fertile.]

Tragic news tonight: 120 dead in a tidal wave in Cooa- Kuuala -- France. [/Kent Brockman]

He's always my favorite character for just that reason. Of course, I work at a newspaper so I don't need to be able to pronounce things. I always tell people that's why I went into print journalism. I can spell, but I can't pronounce. I still have to stop and think about epitome. I want to pronounce the written word as I see it spelled: ep-uh-toam. And I want to spell the spoken word epitomy.

Misled I never really thought about until I read "The Accidental Tourist." The family in that book pronounces it mizzled.

I'm not sure what I was almost named, but it was probably John or Sam since my parents were really, really expecting a boy. I was the first granddaughter on my mother's side of the family. Yeah, I was a little spoiled.

Tell that to my goofy cousin who desperately wanted (but was not allowed, thanks to his level-headed wife) to name his first son after his dog, who was named after a guitarist, if not a guitar. Or to my other cousin (on the other side of the family) who actually DID name his first son after his cat. I mean, it's possible it wasn't after the cat, but it was the same name as the cat, so the obvious conclusions were made.

At least his cat wasn't named Fluffy.

So, are you saying that I shouldn't name any children I have Smokey? Though, I always liked the name Darcy if I ever have a girl but now it would look like I named her after my TWOP name. Not that there is anything wrong with that :-)

Red Targetter why does "cow-orker" sound like a really interesting animal husbandry profession, to me? Yes, I know what you meant. I just like the sound of saying "cow-orker." *Giggle*

Along the same lines, my mother was an adult when she realized the name she'd always read on the pencil sharpener in her childhood classroom wasn't "CHICK-a-go" but Chicago; I was at least in high school when I realized the word wasn't SUB-tull but subtle; and my daughter recently had a brain fart and pronounced the city "TUCK-son," then got all upset when I laughed at her. I guess I'm not a kind mother.

You want to hear names mispronounced? Watch the ESPN sumo digests sometime. Papa Tiger lived in Asia for 23 years and became a sumo fan during that time, but had to turn the sound off on ESPN when watching the matches (till they started webcasting them; now he stays up till the wee hours to watch the finals live -- hey, TAR fans aren't the only obsessed ones out there!). Even his Minnesota accent renders the names less painfully than those idiot announcers.

Or maybe not...

I have a friend who really did name her eldest son the same name as her cat. (not after the cat, however. She contends that this is an important distinction.) Her argument is that Steven was her favorite name for a boy, and it was about the only one she and her husband could agree on. So the infant became Steven, and the cat became Kiki, and it's a deep, dark family secret that Kiki the Cat (now deceased) used to be named Steven. And I had a very, very hard time with it b/c I was so used to calling that damn cat Steven (a much better name than Kiki, might I add. The cat got screwed in that deal) that I frequently messed up and my friend would glare the Manson Lamps of Hate at me.
My cats are named Emily and Lucy, and they both essentially named themselves.