Quezle Jones, Attorney At Law

Via Number 2 Pencil: this site pokes fun at some of the outrageously un-phonetic names people choose for their kids. Here in Utah there is a lot of this sort of wacky naming. Women's names beginning with "Lu", "Ja", and "Lyn" are pretty common (LuDean, Janae, Lynae) in my generation and older. As the generation of whole language instruction comes of childbearing age, though, we're starting to see more and more entirely non-phonetically-spelled names. We knew one family who named their daughter "Kayzle" (pronounced "KAYZ-lee"). It's bad enough that it sounds suspiciously like "paisley", but then they spelled it with one e so that no one with any kind of phonetic training would ever guess at its correct pronunciation.

But why stop with misdirecting people to the pronunciation of only one syllable? Why not use a totally ambiguous spelling of the whole damn thing? And saddle some poor girl with it for the rest of her life, so that when she graduates from law school and hangs out her shingle, it says "Quezle Jones, Attorney At Law"?

UPDATE: I noticed in my daughter's phone book that one of her classmates is named "Ayreale". Any guesses as to how it's pronounced? I have absolutely no clue. I can't even ask Tiny Princess about this girl(?) because I don't even know where to begin pronouncing her name.

UPDATE: I got an e-mail from a potential tutoring client, a woman named Shegay (not that there's anything wrong with that...)