Having lived with my name for a number of years…..a lot of years to be more specific, I have always been on the alert for unusual or different names of people.
My name (according to a website called “How many of me?”) is the only one in the country with my spelling. There are about six Perry Perry’s scattered around but only one so far of Peary Perry. There is a lady over in Florida who claims to be named the same but when you try to locate her it comes up as a link to a real estate website. I suppose it is a link to get your attention to some swampland in Florida, who knows?
Anyway, after having lived with my name this long I can tell you than I have heard just about all the comments that can be made….Peary Perry- quite contrary, P2 (p-squared) Double P —P man—and on and on. The best one I think I ever got was a lady who called and started to say something and then told me ‘ I bet you have heard them all, so I won’t even try.’
When I was in the army, I used to call home collect….the operators would ask my name and then I would hear them tell one another…’listen to this guys name’ Hahaha.
Trying to order something on the phone with some clerk in India is always a challenge. I would rather have a root canal.
To make matters worse, I married a lady named Sabra. So she has had her fill as well. Sabre Jet…Sabre toothed tiger …etc. Her mother was named James and her father was named Shirley. Ours is a family name disaster.
When our children were born, we decided upon logical names like Tom, Christopher, Matthew and Jeffery. I screwed up the last one by accident. When our last was born, I wanted to name him Alfred, after my grandfather. On the way to the hospital I met a bunch of friends and we had a few adult beverages to celebrate. All of these guys told me that Alfred was a bad name, since he would be called Big Al or Alfonso or Al as in Capone. So I rushed to the hospital and told the office to change the name before they sent it off to the records place. The lady used that white out stuff we used in those days and asked me how I wanted to spell it. My mind was a little confused (possibly by the adult beverages) and I spelled it Jeffery rather than Jeffrey. Oh, well it works for us.
I notice that rappers make up strange names for themselves ..Fifty Cents or Little Wayne or whatever. He late singer Prince did something weird with his name didn’t he. I think everyone just referred to him as the ‘artist, formally known as Prince’. Elon Musk, one of the richest people in the world named his new kid… X AE A-12…pronounced like XASHA12…rolls right off the tongue doesn’t it? Imagine if he ever has to call home collect? Probably not. Someone will make the call for him. When you are that rich you can call yourself whatever you want to and no one will say a thing. In my next life I think I would like a cool name like No-No 714….or Skyman 12….or just plain old ‘Skippy’. Imagine if you will, how the world would have changed if Hitler’s nickname had been Skippy or Spanky. Might have been a totally different world for us all.
I once had a friend here in Houston, who changed his name from whatever it was to just “Chandler’. One name only…no first name of last name…just ‘Chandler’. We flew into Mexico with a bunch of guys on a hunting trip one year…The two of us were in the front of the line going through Mexican customs and immigration. The officials had a very difficult time with my friend with only one name on his immigration documents, then they came to me.
By the time they got through with us, several of the folks hunting told us that the next time we traveled with them, we needed to be in the back of the line.
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