I grew up in a small country town south of Portland, Oregon. Think, for 18 years before I came here for college, everyone had to get use to Kalevi Kurronen. It would take teachers a good two weeks for them get it somewhat right. We’d get a sub for a day, he’d take roll and get stuck on my name for 5 minutes. Only one teacher (from Minnesota) knew it was Finnish (kudos). The whole city of Canby has been trained to say my name, took them a while but they got it. Know only to find out why my father named my brothers and sister: David, Eric, Todd and Crystal!! I’m in the middle, what the hell! No its cool, chicks in the States dig the name!

I “suffer” the horrible fate bearing the name ‘Ville’. It’s just so common name and personally I don’t find it interesting at all. Most annoying part is having multiple Villes in the same class room and teacher referring people by their first names. But it could be a lot worse too.

But names don’t really mean a thing here. The same names are used over and over again. Pretty much the only thing you people will assume from the name is your nationality. If you have a weird nme, people will think you are a foreigner.

If anyone is interested in statistical information about Finnish names, the official name service is available here: https://192.49.222.187/Nimipalvelu/default.asp?L=3

On an interesting note, I know the one and only Finnish guy named “Akaki”

My wife and I took a loooooong time to come up with the names for our kid (soon to be plural)

We stuck with Cade (boy) and Addison (girl). We wanted somthing simple yet differnt but I didnt want a kid called Sky or somthing equally stupid. Anyway it seems they are both not so easy for Finns to pronounce mostly because of the phenetic alphabet.

Also my wife chose to change her last name when we got married simply because of the issues you have Kalevi, she was fed up of spelling her name. NO ITS K-A-U-P….

At least being called John you can be obscure googling just my name doesnt really bring up much of me, but lots of Finns I know can be tracked down very easily

This American Finn I knew named his son V?¤in?¤m?¶inen.

Poor kid.

If I had or when I have kids, I’d prefer giving them quite common names. In a way some Finnish tend to think names of Swedish origin are somehow upscale, but nowadays when even CEOs of the largest companies have regular names like Matti, Jorma, Mika and Kalle, it would be ridiculous to argue you’d actually need a foreign sounding name.

Anyway, not too common name is nice either. My name is so common I have a lot of namesakes in Finland, and for example one of them has worked in the same building (but in different company) and our post was mixed up several times. Another Tero Lehto is a day student at the same institute where I study in the evenings. I can only wait they mix up our documents…

There has been a trend in the US of making up stupid names and the people who do this are predominantly white. This annoys me to all end along with all the unisex names, names of places and names that are supposed to be last names. My son actually had a kid named “Blade” in his class. These names are seriously irritating.

Also, 2 names you mentioned, Imani and Aaliyah are old Islamic names.

There has been a trend in the US of making up stupid names and the people who do this are predominantly white. This annoys me to all end along with all the unisex names, names of places and names that are supposed to be last names. My son actually had a kid named “Blade” in his class. These names are seriously irritating.

Also, 2 names you mentioned, Imani and Aaliyah are old Islamic names.

And there are way too many Coltons and Connors out there. Why pick a trendy name? So there will be million more of the same in your kid’s school? Another one I hate is Jaden, boys and girls are named this.

Maybe I am not in the majority, but pick a name that makes it evident the sex of the kid and does not sound contrived.

In greek catholic tradition they used to name child after the saint, whose day was closest to the child’s birthday. So my grand aunts were Serafina, Paraskeva, Paula and Anastasia.

And there are way too many Coltons and Connors out there. Why pick a trendy name?

I’m not a fan of this new wave of American first names that sound like last names. Colton, Connor, Madison, Tanner, Logan…

One thing I don’t understand in America is then those families that *don’t* invent any names. I mean USA is the only place you have jr. or IIIrds… And I knew a King Earl Bishop III (who was white)

You’ll find some pretty interesting data on Finnish names here:

https://192.49.222.187/Nimipalvelu/default.asp?L=1

You can trace everything there. My personal favourites are hunting for people probably named after foreign soap opera characters (seems like The Bold & the Beautiful produced a few Ridges, loads of Brookes and a Thorn…) and for males with female names or vice versa (let’s see… the last woman named Jaakko is between 75 and 95 years old, if she’s still alive).

Foreign names are annoying, as people don’t pronounce them as such. I knew a 100% Finnish “Bob”, everyone called him “Popi”.

There are variations of common names. Like, Selmi for Selma. There are also names such as Kiia or Akileena, featuring unusual combinations of common elements. Also, common nouns that are also names are found, such as Mies “man”, Pilvi “cloud”, Aamu “morning”, and so on. Interestingly, the name “Ilta” is immutable in consonant gradation, while the common noun is not; ilta – illan, Ilta – Iltan.

Traditional Finnish names are also interesting. Ukko-Mies (“married man”, but originally from Ukko, thundergod, and Mies) is, in principle, allowed.

But, the Finnish law on names is much more strict than in the USA. For example, you cannot give a last name as a first name. This obviously produces ambiguities, such as Niini. Then, you cannot give a non-Finnish name with an obscure spelling, if the kid’s mothertongue is going to be Finnish, and so on. The name must be a name; it cannot be a common noun, trademark or such.

It’s of course so that the rules are applied flexibly, but the point is, that names are not toys.

If Bob and I have a boy, we have decided to name him Steele. That will pretty much guarentee that he will never get beat up and that he’ll become a pro wrestler or a death metal guitarist. Either way, I think having a unique name is awesome as long as people won’t accidentally call you “shithead”.

sepisp – your comments are most informative, in terms of Finnish regulations. But what was the case with Niini? What’s the big deal?

I still see naming children as something that’s a private matter, for parents, and not for the state. But I also remember this talk-show host in the eighties in America making fun about this couple somewhere who had named their twin sons: Pete and Repeat.

It’s not up to us to judge, or call for the State to intervene. Let the family deal with it; perhaps it was a vehicle for mirth and bonding, – or perhaps it wound up perpetuating a generation gap, or worse. We can always take comfort in the notion that names can also be jettisoned, by court order, if we wish, both in Europe and the US. And if that’s not possible, nicknames will do.

My pet name-peeve is when people with extremely common and average last names like Laine, Korhonen, and Mattila strive for “originality” by giving their kids exotic foreign names. I know of a little girl who was baptised Christine Eve Elisabeth Laine. Her parents were completely Finnish, she had no foreign or even Swedish-speaking relatives or ancestry that anybody knew of.

I like good old Finnish names. My mother’s second name is Tellervo, after the ancient Finnish goddess of the forest, and I think it’s beautiful. I would love to give that name to my possible future daughter.

Speaking of weirdly spelled American names, I once met an American girl whose name was pronounced “Hillary” but spelled “Hilleri”. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that “hilleri” mean “ferret” in Finnish.

“It???s not up to us to judge, or call for the State to intervene. Let the family deal with it; perhaps it was a vehicle for mirth and bonding, – or perhaps it wound up perpetuating a generation gap, or worse”

There are so many people out there who aren’t ready for parenting. I think it is states job to protect kids from their parents and name is so important thing that you cannot let people to give names like XXXOOOCCXZZ (someore really tried that!).

State already protects kids from molestation, abuse etc (or at least tries). Giving idiotic name to baby will 100% sure lead to problems in kindergargen.

I think it is states job to protect kids from their parents and name is so important thing that you cannot let people to give names like XXXOOOCCXZZ (someore really tried that!).

Yeah, but those completely bizarra names are extremely rare. Some kids get like 20 first names, but by everyone just shortens it to one name. If we start banning certain names, who is going to decide what is an acceptable name? Some wacko politicians might think that Muslim names (for instance) or ridiculous and should be banned.

I think quite a few white southern Americans have pretty oddball names. Do you know anywhere else where men have such affected sounding monikers as Huey (Long), Lyndon (Johnson), Gore (Vidal), Truman (Capote), Elvis (the Pelvis), and Strom (Thurmond)?

And, although I don’t think he’s a southerner, what about Newt? That’s my pick as the worst male first name of the 20th century.

Social Democracy Now: Gore Vidal was born in New York and raised in Washington DC. Yes, his grandfather was Senator Gore from Oklahoma and this is why he is called Gore. But a last name of, say, a grandfather showing up in the first name of a baby is not uncommon in the United States and surely not only a sign of Southern ancestry.

Lyndon Johnson was called Lyndon because his father had a friend whose last name was Linden. LBJ’s mother said calling the son after this friend would be ok as long as the spelling would be changed to “Lyndon”.

Newt Gingrich, one of the best known Southern politicians (he served ten two-year terms for a Georgia district in the House of Representatives) of the latest years was indeed born Newton McPherson in the Northern state of Pennsylvania:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich

We named our son, Finn, as a Celtic name meaning “fair”. We were wondering how many children from Finland might be named Finn.
Live from Miami,
Irish and Scotish parents of Finn

IS A WERIDO!

I know some on who worked in a hospital and there was a baby with that name there. I wonder if its the same kid or if there are alot of other shithead’s out there.

I’m one of the 15 Haiders in Finland. I was born here, have grown up with that name and have only met one other Haider in Finland. Pretty weird, luckaly it works with the Finnish phonetics. I moved to the UK at one point and suprisingly people there had more trouble with it, they were sure whether to prounounce the A and E as A or E, so sometimes my name would be pronounced “Heider” sometimes “Haidar”. I lived in North London which is full of Turks and other Middle Easteners, so the name was for more common there.

I personally have problems remembering Finnish names, Even though I grew up around them. For some reason I just dismiss finnish names. It’s ignorance at its finest. For some reason I sometimes have trouble connecting names to faces, I have to meet finns a couple of times before I remember their names… This only happens with finnish people. Maybe it’s just how monotonous and common they all seem to be.

I know of a set of twin girls who are named Shithead and Shiteater (pronounced sha-teed and sha-teeter). They are black. According to the nurse who was present when the mother was discussing these names, she thought it was funny and was laughing while she filled out the birth certificates in the hospital. Where are Child Protective Services? This is child abuse, plain and simple. I also know of a little girl named Princess Udakidd! Ridiculous!

I’m an American looking for a name for my son that will honor the Finnish heritage on my mother’s side of the family. Oddly, though Americans are apt to name their kids some pretty stupid or insipid names, there is still somewhat of a stigma against very foreign-sounding names. Especially for boys–I think people are more accepting of exotic names for girls. I’d like a name that sounds masculaine and has an obvious pronounciation. Someone help me!

(My pet name-peeve is when people with extremely common and average last names like Laine, Korhonen, and Mattila strive for “originality” by giving their kids exotic foreign names. I know of a little girl who was baptised Christine Eve Elisabeth Laine. Her parents were completely Finnish, she had no foreign or even Swedish-speaking relatives or ancestry that anybody knew of.

I like good old Finnish names. My mother’s second name is Tellervo, after the ancient Finnish goddess of the forest, and I think it’s beautiful. I would love to give that name to my possible future daughter.

Speaking of weirdly spelled American names, I once met an American girl whose name was pronounced “Hillary” but spelled “Hilleri”. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that “hilleri” mean “ferret” in Finnish.)

Um well i live in canada and i am of finnish decent. my last name Laine which ive been told is common in finland, is not a common surname here, but is a common first name , but its not pronounced the Finnish way but english “lane” My father got fed up with people misspronouncing Laine that our family pronouces it “Lane” now instead of Laine. it was not a problem in the past as he grew up in a finn colony……but there are very very weird names…..i knew a kid whose name was Winter…..perhaps appropriate in describing climate , but not a name….also my first name is soooo common it makes me sick, i wish i has a more original name.

BULLSHIT IS UR NAME DAMN UR LAME

Shithead is an urban legend. It’s not true. A friend of a friend’s cousin’s former room-mate’s old boss said that his 2nd cousin’s ex-wife from his first marriage worked in a hospital and she heard from a nurse on a different floor who’s friend worked in another state and she told her about a baby being born and named Shithead…

Casual Observer, Though we’d like to think this stuff is made-up, it’s NOT. Sadly, children, sometimes illiterate children, name sometimes illegitimate babes. Many have made an effort to educate these parents (yeah, I’m sorry, they’re all negro) that these names handicap the individual saddled with them. In the US we have all sorts of legislation to prevent discrimination (on the basis of race) but these names effectivly negate any effort. I have had students who’s LEGAL name have been: Shithead (pronounced Shahtheed); Nosmo King (Jones); Dequalon; Darvon; Qualude; Charmin; A-Jax; Camry; Lexus; Montego; DeVille; Fleetwood; Riviera; Cadillac;
dom Perignon; Hennessy; Courvaier; Shanaynay; Monchico; Mister; Monte Carlo; Carpathian; Marquis; Trojan; Summer’s Eve; Suave; don Ho; Shaneequa; Shenetta; Desietta; Kotex; Platex; Victoria’s Secret; Bluetooth; Jaguar; Devontae; Sharquavion; the list is endless. I do know twins called Male and Female (pronounced Malie and Femalie. I appreciate good old fashioned Christian names but parents should have the right to name thier kid shithead if that’s what they want…my kid changed his name (my name) as soon as he was old enough to make other kids comply with his wishes.

i think calling your kid wyatt is child abuse. a wyatt would have no future other than remaining locked up in his parents cellar, until he is 18 and adopts the social status of sewer mutant

I have to weigh in. Male and female were students at my school. (The parent thought the hospital had named them for her; really she was reading the card on their bassinettes that identified them as a boy and girl…yes, the staff had a good laugh about that one.) My good friend’s husband is a dentist and Shithead (pronounced Sha-theed) is a patient in his practice. And lastly, Nosmokin (pronounced Nas-mo-kin) was a baby born in my congregation. When I first heard the name, I thought it was a Muslim/Islamic/Arabic name or perhaps a combination of two such names. Imagine my surprise when the father explained that he’d been looking at the No Smoking sign in the hospital and decided to drop the “g” and give the baby a name. So unfortunately, these names are not urban legends. I wish they were…don’t you think Shithead has gotten tired of the snickers and the explanations surrounding his name?

shithead is not an urban legend…my dad, not my dad’s uncles cousins brother etc etc., my dad, was behind a guy named shithead on line at a bank. the conversation went like this
“whats your name”
“shithead”
“how do u spell that”
“S-H-I-T-H-E-A-D”
my dad, to himself, paraphrased: WTF???

I knew a “Bama” and a “Rebel” (sisters) when I was in high school

IF ANYONE IS GOING TO BELIEVE THE SHITHEAD OR ORANJELLO BS, PLEASE CHECK OUT THE SNOPES LINK:

http://www.snopes.com/racial/language/names.asp

OR AT LEAST GOOGLE THE NAMES + URBAN LEGEND. THEY’VE BEEN URBAN LEGENDS FOR 20 YEARS AND THEY HAVE NEVER SHOWN UP ON A CENSUS. THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENS:

Someone, somewhere, makes this up. That person — we’ll call them person A — is untrustworthy, but another person — person B — is a bit gullible and believes them anyway. So they repeat it. Person C isn’t as gullible, but doesn’t realize how gullible person A is, and besides, the story is JUST TOO GOOD.

Gradually, this gets more complicated so that by the time Person F hears it, it’s too many steps to remember, so he’ll shorten it to “This happened to person E.” After all, Person E told him about it. It is human nature to decrease our number of levels of separation from an event. Eventually, it gets to someone nice and trustworthy, and they aren’t intentionally lying to you. They just decreased the number of levels of separation. They say it happens to someone they knew, when in truth, they’d been told it happened to a friend of a friend, and even THAT friend of a friend had undergone the same process.

So, regardless of whether that person is trustworthy in most matters or not, be aware that repeating this kind of racist trash makes you — and her — look kind of bad.

I’ve never actually MET Simon Cowell, so I say he’s an urban legend too.

I don’t see any humur here.

T-ea. Pronounced t DASH ea.

HAHAHAHA! Those three kids live right here! Well…I sure hope there aren’t three other kids out there with those names…

We decided to give our kids five names each, so that they could eventually choose which they wanted to use. Also we wanted to avoid the stereotypical Catholic saint names of Ireland (thus here Protestant and Catholic tribes can be identified by their names).

Our son was called Finlay, which was ‘Fair haired warrior’ in Scots Gaelic (though his baby blond hair in now red), is a County Tipperary surname, where we lived, (so he had a thrill of seeing Finlay Paints, Finlay Cars, Hotels etc), also it was from my childhood, a TV period drama, ‘Doctor Finlay’s casebook’. Now at 23, his friends call him Fin.

Our daughter is called Illaun, which is Irish for island, sounds nice and looks cool. When she went to school at 5 years she told all she was called Fuchsia her second name, which is a beautiful red flowered small bush (it was beside my wife’s bed when she woke post birth). Thing was she didn’t tell us of the change so, when we met the teacher, we thought it was the wrong child she was talking about! Now she is happy at 21, I still call her Illaun and her cool friends call her Phuch.

The life effect a name can have is endless, (hence ‘A Boy Names Sue” Jonny Cash). My mother was going to call me by my saint’s day apparently ‘St. Erasmus’. Thank good she didn’t but perhaps by this stage I would be a Nobel Prize winner or perhaps in an institution!

So so many many people cannot stand their names and change them when they leave home. Off the nine children in my mother’s family, five of them changed their names perhaps this is why my mother was cautious.

I think you get some strange names in America due to the diversity, it’s not uncommon to see a mixing of two or three or more heritages come together in one child. Strange is in the eye of the namer though I supose.

There are traditional American names as well.. But thats so boring if we all had the same few names. Oh the laughs caused by things lost in translation..

We are searching through our dads side of our familt tree. As many others I am suspisious that Dahl was the only part of the last name of my Grandfather peter Alfred Dahl. We keep getting stalled when it comes to getting past his last names. As our too. I believe he came over on the Mayflower like many others and the dropped off part of the many Dahl names such as Dahlstrom or Dahlgreen. He was 100% born in Finland. Came to America I believe on the Mayflower. He was a bit of a loner. He did serve in wwI recieved at least the purple heart.I am trying to find a way to see what names were on the May flower. Many were stow aways to I am told. He did have a brother named Carl who played for the white sox. How do we solve this if its possible? He was also a shoe maker. That would of been in Alemeda Calif. Where they camr to live. Do you have any sugestions for me? He would of also been in Palo alto vetrens hosp and or Livermores . Can you help? Sincerely Leah Dahl.

German names are no picnic in the US. I’ve thought of changing my spelling to Yuli just so I can stop hearing the English J pronunciation.

The mayflower was one of the first ships to sail to the US in the 17th century. There is no way your grandfather, if he came to the United States through California (which was mostly unexplored by Europeans at that point) arrived via the Mayflower.

Well, that and the fact that your grandfather would not be born for another two plus centuries…