Funniest Cultural Names?
ok, so in setswana, and most bantu languages, names translate literally. take my name for instance. “warona” literaly translates to “ours” or its actually 3 words: “o” meaning “she/he/it”, “a” meaning “of” and “rona” meaning “us” so my name means “she who is of us” but the “o a” sound basically becomes “wa” some people in botswana write my name as “Oarona”.
other examples, names like “lorato” (my sister’s name) mean “love”. Motlalepula means “bringer of the rain” etc.
now when i say literally translated, i mean it. like i will hear people talking and they’ll say my name and sometimes i’ll turn, only to realise they were just saying “our..something” you get me? like the name “hope” in english, or “rose” or “grace”.
but of course now a lot of people want to give their children “english” names. and no, i don’t mean ones like “mary” or “alice” or “paul”. they want the names to have the meanings that the setswana ones would have but in english. so what ends up happening is people with names like “innocent” or “lucky” or “beauty”. those are some very common ones, and actually in english they don’t sound TOO bad. but some of the names come out all weird. like the name “staffnurse” is quite popular, basically the child was named in honor of the “staff nurse” who delivered him/her. and then some parents have just gone for names they felt “sound” nice, so you have people named “takesure” or “verynice” or “lovedom” my mom’s first boyfriend was called “lovington” we tease her about it all the time.
they get weirder, names like “elastic” or “broom” or “desk” or “chair”
and then, there is a tradition in botswana where if a woman has had a few miscarriages/still borns or her babies have died when very young, they say she should name the next one to be born an ugly name and thus it will survive. whether the superstition is true or not, SOME of the babies are bound to survive and grow up with said ugly name. i know a guy called “mathatha?” which mean “trouble” or “problems”. my sister went to school with 2 sisters named “gabanthatha” and “gabampatle” meaning “they don’t love me” and “they don’t want me” respectively. the name “matlakala” is quite popular. it literally translates to “garbage” or “rubbish”
ok, does this happen anywhere else?
June 11th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Some names are just a bad idea when you leave your native country.
Ayako is not a good name to have in the Philippines because Ayoko means: I don’t want to - in Tagalog. It’s so similar that people don’t notice the difference.
But I’m glad my parents didn’t name me: Taeko.
This means: my shit, in Tagalog..lol
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June 11th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
LOL AYAKO
“But I’m glad my parents didn’t name me: Taeko.
This means: my shit, in Tagalog..lol”
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June 11th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
My brother married a Korean girl, and they wanted to name their first daughter Sophie. They told all the family in advance, they knew it was going to be a girl, and they had loved that name from the beginning. Well, Sophie was born, and they brought her to the Sophie’s Korean great-grandparents’ house to introduce her. Yeon tells her grandmother (as she’s handing her the baby), “This is Sophie!”
Grandmother looks up at her, completely bewildered and slightly sad and asks, “Why would you name her that?!”
Turns out, in Korean, there’s no ‘F’ sound, so the only way any native-Koreans can say her name is “So-pee”, which means “One who pees.”
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June 12th, 2008 at 1:58 am
A Korean-Canadian TCK friend of mine recently had a baby, and wanted to give his son the English name of Gabriel. He was in Switzerland finishing up his bachelor’s degree while his wife was in Korea to give birth.
So for the last month or two he’d been telling us his intention to call the baby Gabriel. But after birth, his wife’s parents called him up to say “Look, I know he has a Korean name… but we can’t really pronounce Gabriel. Is there something else you could call him?”
I’m not sure what they decided, haha. I think they might’ve stuck with Gabriel though.
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November 18th, 2008 at 8:56 am
I’ve heard of people named Sandia, which is watermelon in Spanish haha
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November 23rd, 2008 at 9:06 pm
This might not be a cultural name but the name Dimple is quite popular in India and I never understood why.
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November 23rd, 2008 at 9:48 pm
My best friend (until she was married off at age 9) was name M’ben-m’ben. It means “cockroach” and she was named that because her parents said she moved like a cockroach. You have to understand…they don’t name their kids right away (infant mortality was very high there), but wait until they show some kind of characteristic(s).
My friends could not pronounce my real name (Margie), so came up with the best substitute, which was Mati. No problem..until the Indonesian gov’t took over the island. All of a sudden my name of “Mati” means dead!
Sorry - but I am still very much alive!
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