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HelpRe: The 5 Worst Rated Names
in reply to a message by LunaTheMaltipoo
Basemath? Okay, so it's a name, an obscure one to say the least. But when I saw it it looked like "base math" like some branch of mathematics nobody studies.
Most of the names on this list are there because BTn in general attracts ... well, name snobs who as a group hate "surnames as first names" and "kre8iv spellyngs" and "popular" names. They wouldn't necessarily dislike the names if they weren't spelled unusually or weren't popular.
A couple of the names, like Lagina and Dick, are disliked for rather obvious anatomical reasons, though so far as I know, Lagina was never that much used as a name. Dick was but it's been out of fashion for a good few generations, doubtless since mores about using off-color language and admitting that you know an off-color meaning of a word became more relaxed.
Tawana is on there probably because of its stereotypical racial associatio, but the name itself is now quite dated.
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you're a mile away and you have his shoes!
Steve Martin
Most of the names on this list are there because BTn in general attracts ... well, name snobs who as a group hate "surnames as first names" and "kre8iv spellyngs" and "popular" names. They wouldn't necessarily dislike the names if they weren't spelled unusually or weren't popular.
A couple of the names, like Lagina and Dick, are disliked for rather obvious anatomical reasons, though so far as I know, Lagina was never that much used as a name. Dick was but it's been out of fashion for a good few generations, doubtless since mores about using off-color language and admitting that you know an off-color meaning of a word became more relaxed.
Tawana is on there probably because of its stereotypical racial associatio, but the name itself is now quite dated.
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you're a mile away and you have his shoes!
Steve Martin
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Just to point out again that for someone my age or older the slang meaning of Dick just would not be the first thing that would spring to mind when one hears or sees the name, precisely because one did know so many men called Dick. It would be the name that would come to mind first. It's only when Richard went out of style and Rich and Rick became the more common pet forms of it that younger people started immediately thinking of the slang meaning when they heard the word and so began to see it as inappropriate as a name. (And the slang meaning only goes back to around 1895 and I really think a lot of AMericans, especially middle class women, wouldn't have known it at all until the 1950s.)
John has not one but two "bad" slang meanings in the USA -- toilet and prostitute's customer -- but it has never become uncommon enough for people not to know several men or boys called John (or Jon), so one's mind doesn't immediately go to the unforunate meanings when one hears the word and people don't think of it as an inappropriate name.
John has not one but two "bad" slang meanings in the USA -- toilet and prostitute's customer -- but it has never become uncommon enough for people not to know several men or boys called John (or Jon), so one's mind doesn't immediately go to the unforunate meanings when one hears the word and people don't think of it as an inappropriate name.
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