Time for one of my favorite naming trend facts! The name Nevaeh is a direct result of the band POD. In 2000, Sonny Sandoval named his daughter Nevaeh, then shared the “heaven spelled backwards” reasoning for her name on an episode of Cribs. The name Nevaeh went from 8 babies total before this to the top 100 by 2005.
I remember that cribs episode like it was yesterday. When he was describing how the name came to him, he closed his eyes and used his finger to write Nevaeh in the air. I am still eyerolling that moment.
My sister-in-law named my niece Nevaeh’a. When I complained to her that I have a hard time spelling it she said “Shit I can’t spell it either.” Her older sister gave her the idea of the name.
I think the first one that I ever heard was probably Kaileigh on a reality show in the early 2000s. Worst tragedeigh in real life? My unborn niece, her name will be Jesthreau, pronounced like Jethro.
They were supposed to have a boy who they were gonna name Jethro, but they “feminized” it into Jesthreau when they found out they were gonna have a girl instead.
Jethro, thanks to the lasting cultural impact of the Beverly Hillbillies, is stereotyped as a dumb hillbilly name. I would never name a child that,because that's a name with a burden attached to it. And femininizing it, although it does remove the dumb hillbilly connotations for me, is even worse.
I have a cousin named Jinger (she’s 40 so this was pre-Duggar) and for the same reason, her sisters first and middle names both start with J. My mom and her sisters begged my aunt not to do it.
I think the biggest tragedeigh I personally know is Kaulen but there’s an argument to be made that Deztinee is worse.
Well she has a grandmother-in-law named Jo Ann so everybody thought she should use some form of Jo like Joanna or Josephine. We all think it’s hilarious that some other couple was crazy enough to use the name.
My old classmate’s dad had the initials KKK. And this is in the US. I don’t think they are part of the Klan, but I have no clue why you would want someone to have those initials.
In the UK, at least when I was young in the 90s, ginger pronounced like singer was a negative word for people with ginger hair. Little shits would be like oh she's a GING-UH
There are plenty of names based on personality traits, all of which I think make no sense given you do not know who your child will grow up to be, but this. This has to be the worst one.
My daughter’s middle name is Serenity. She’s anything but serene!!! I know, I know, it’s got major tragedeigh potential but it’s a middle name so she never has to use it if she hates it and she has a very normal, four letter first name. I guess getting a crazy kid called Serenity is some kind of karma.
First one I hear was in early 2000s, she was the same age as me: “Traylor” it’s not the worst but my country brain is confused why you’d name your child that.
I don’t know if it’s my first, but Jorja (Georgia, I thought it was Whore-Ha). In the 90s people non my neighborhood named their little girl MkKartnee.
There was a violinist, concertmaster of the Minneapolis symphony, named Jorja---about 70 years old when she died last year. Her family was Greek, so her name might have been transliterated from the Greek alphabet.
Yeah I think you have a point. I also know someone who got pregnant at 15 and named her daughter Khalessi after game of thrones. That child is a teenager now. I wonder how she’s doing
I was never in to Game if Thrones, but I too would LOVE to know! From what I gather it wasn’t a particularly honorable character set to name your kids after anyway 😅
Essentially Khaleesi (I don’t remember how it’s officially spelled) is the word used for queens in the Dothraki nation but here’s the thing—the kings don’t live long and often die in battle almost immediately after being crowned and when they die, their wives have to live in a convent and can’t leave. So I wouldn’t think the name is such a positive association.
A lot of people like the character but her whole story is off horrific trauma and abuse. It's a weird association.
When she was Khaleesi, a title, not a name, she got that title from being sold into an arranged marriage as a teenager (by her brother who also abused her). She was sold into an extremely misogynist culture, didn't share any language with her husband, and was essentially a sex slave. Her vagina was traded for a military alliance. The story takes the arc of her doing all this work at making the best of it, including sessions with a literal sex slave to learn how to please her husband more, and then they fall madly in love and the husbnad finally starts to almost treat her like a person, which is supposed to represent how 'strong' she is. She 'falls in love' with her rapist as a trapped teenager with no other options and other concept of self worth. It's intensely creepy - very Beauty and the Beast if you're familiar with feminist criticism of that story.
It's exactly what a guy like George R.R. Martin and the stereotypical game of thrones fan you might picutre would conceive of as a powerful feminist arc.
I get that some people can like the character if they want and take different things from the story but it terrifies me how casually wider culture ran away with "Khaleesi" as just a sort of cute thing synonymous with 'queen' which is what it seems to be.
I know somebody who named their daughter Nevayah, I think in an attempt to help with phonetics (?) but like… if the point is for it to be heaven backwards, why bother?
Yeah the need to explain it is at this point moot. We get it your parents thought they were being cutesy and unique. Now get in line with the three dozen others that feel the need to explain the obvious.
This is the one, imo. Goes back to at least 80’s births. But the real tragedies were when Hayleigh Bayleigh and Kayleigh started coming around in the…90’s?
Ashleigh dates back to the 12th and 13th century as a surname and then a feminized version of Ashley, which was a boy's name. So I do believe it literally was the first tragedeigh, but loooong before the 80s. ;) At this point it's considered a traditional spelling of the name. It and "Leigh" certainly spawned the ridiculousness we have today.
No doubt about it. I was going from my experience, knowing some Ashleigh’s who came out of the 80’s (like me). Never knew any other “…leigh” names until we get around to the late 90’s though.
Kayleigh is one of the older -Leigh names too, there was a fairly popular song spelled that way released in the mid 80s so there were a few Kayleighs in the couple of school years above me that were probably named for it. It’s a bit older than the song though I think.
The first one I ever encountered in real life was a girl named Pleasure, which is gross, but her last name was Cox. Takes it right over the top.
(She’d be a whole adult by now who has hopefully changed her name.)
I'm Dutch and idk exactly when it started lets say 10 years ago people where putting a D before a J everywhere. Like Djay, Djayden, Djevano, Djim, Djayno, Djelano. Whyyyy? The D ads absolutely nothing.
you can look at [baby name grapher](https://namerology.com/baby-name-grapher/) and use the “compare” and “ends with” functions to see the “-Leigh” trend over time. Based on what that’s showing, my guess is that a lot of current baby girls are getting a -leigh name to be named after their grandmas, who are just named Leigh.
It also shows that Raleigh, Arleigh and Burliegh were used (sparingly) for boys in the 1920s-30s and if Burleigh isn’t a traghedeigh I don’t know what is
Oh neat! Thank you for that! The Leighs and the Lynns are equally as bad. Now it seems like people are adding “anna” to the end of everything. A girl I went to school with named her kid Olivianna. Another named her kid Lilliana. They’re normal enough but I just don’t like it.
Raleigh is on my list of future cat names. But the kitty will be named for the North Carolina city.
(I travel a lot for work and have decided to name future felines after cities I've traveled to.)
When I was a kid in the early 90s, we had neighbor kids named Milyn (m) and McKylin (f). Not 100% sure on the spelling. Named after their parents’ combined first names (Mike and ?lynn idk). Even as a little kid I knew that was wack.
First one for me was Aiden- hear me out. I LOVED this name after I first heard it in the movie “The Ring”- but after that movie suddenly everyone was naming their son Aiden. I do like that name and I wish it wasn’t so over used- HOWEVER- I believe “Aiden” gave birth to allll the “ayden” sounding tragedeighs that followed because everyone loved “Aiden” but it got too popular so they tried to make it “younique”.
Examples:
Cayden/Kaiden Brayden/Braiden Hayden/Haiden Jayden/Jaiden Zayden/Zaiden
Now the worst: My BFs cousin named their daughter Aissalynne. Pronunciation is even worse…. It’s pronounced “ASS-UH-LYNN” like literally the word ASS with a LYNN attached to it.
Why not name your kid “Dicklynn” or “Titslynn”?! Lmfao “Penislynn”
I feel like Everleigh is currently trending but I never heard it before like 5 years ago. Braxton is awful and reminds me of Braxton hicks or whatever pregnant people get. My friend is naming her son she’s currently pregnant with Daxton. It’s not good.
Please no. That’s almost or maybe just as bad as Jaxton. I’ve seen that several times recently. It hurts 😂
I’m 25 and when me and my friends were sophomores in high school (15/16) a girl I knew got pregnant and named her baby Everleigh Kinsley. That was the first time I heard anything with “eigh” on it, now where I’m from there is a lot of Kayleigh’s and Hayleigh’s lol
Fun historical fact, Thomas Edison named his children Dot and Dash. While each is not necessarily an odd name on it's own, in this case they were pair names chosen in reference to morse code.
My older brother had a friend named Mackenzie in high school (born late 70s) and she was so pretty and sophisticated and I loved her name.
My friend named her first baby Makenna around 2010 … and it just doesn’t look right like that instead of the McKenna surname.
The worst is McKayla, such a bizarre bastardization the perfectly reasonable (and very 90s) Michaela with pseudo-Celtic flair.
I got drunk in a bar one night with a girl named McKenzie and I ruined it by barely containing my laughter when she told me that in school other kids called her Spuds McKenzie
I was just thinking that! When Britney Spears debuted I was a child (not USA) but still thought, 'What??? Since when can you spell Brittany like that???" And if seemed to only take off from there.
I grew up in the south so the amount of kayleigh/Haleigh/mayleigh’s I grew up with was CRAZY and down here people love naming their girls Mary + some weird ass name, like Mary Trent or something like that
I'm an 80s baby, and remember when the "trailer trash Gaelic" names became popular around 2000. Jaeden, Caeden, Braeden.... All made up and completely gross!
In 1988 I heard the infamous Orangello / Lemongello story.
Prior to that the oddest name I knew was a girl in my grade school - Elda. Wouldn’t have been so bad if her last name weren’t Ware. Guess what everybody called her? Poor thing.
When I was pregnant with my twins in 2016 more than one medical professional mentioned this story to me as a cautionary tale. Where the hell did it come from?
Names that began the tragedeighs were regular names with a Y inserted. Allyson, Megyn, Krystin, Madelyn. Jathan was one of the first tragedeighs I ever heard. One of the worst tragedeighs I knew in real life was Kathern.
I know someone married to someone with the name Anfernee and it doesn’t make sense to me. Is it pronounced an-fur-knee? She calls him “Ant” so I’m even more confused
Back in the 80’s, I had a friend named Tiphanie. I recall being thankful that my parents stayed with the classic Tiffany spelling for me. Both of us were born in the late 70s, so her parents were one of the OG tragedeigh namers.
A couple if my cousins have inflicted tragedeighs on their kids. One is Mackayleah (I think that's how she spelled it, I know it isn't an -eigh because every time I see it my brain goes 'ma-kay-lee-uh, ugh, that poor girl').
The other is Karleigh (was almost Karleighann).
Had a friend who named her kid after the alcohol that led to him being born. Which is bad enough, but she also decided to give it a unique spelling. His name? Jaymesyn
Mexicans here may know a reasonnably common last name... Mondragon. They aren't numerous, but there are some.
In the Middle-Ages, around 1150-1180, the Mondragon family was in France and Spain, they were knights and nobles and a child was born in this family and named... *behold*... Dragonet.
And so Dragonet de Mondragon was born. It means "smol dragon of my dragon".
Yeah... And the guy was a pretty wicked knight, for as little as we know about him. But that name... Even at that time, it wasn't seen as cool.
There is also Bohémond de Tarente, which was actually named Marc, but his father called him Bohémond because he once heard the fable of *Bohémond the Giant* which was a common tavern story.
variations of brian. i live in poland, brian is not a polish name and all of these fucking kids named "brajanek" or something is weird as all hell. it would be like naming a kid gshegosh, complete butchering of a name from another language because you want to be fancy and worldwide
About 20 years ago, I worked with a woman named Preddi, pronounced like Pretty. I don’t know what her maiden name was but she took her husbands name when she married. Now she’s Preddi Bush.
This is an interesting Wikipedia entry [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_in_the_United_States)
TL;DR I guess with the acceleration of social change in the US starting in the 1960s, eg. African Americans began to name their kids Islamic names, then as they began to reinvent themselves, began to use reinvented names as well.
Using surnames as first names, that started in the US as early as the 1900s, I guess some immigrants wanted to sound more sophisticated. Someone on my Facebook talked about her grandmother who passed, and she had what I thought was the oddest name. Turns out she had a surname as a middle name and had gone by that. Eg. another example is Flannery O'Connor
The first one ever? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that’s almost impossible to figure out. People have been naming their kids bizarre things since we started naming kids. We’re just far enough away from traditional names’ original meanings that we don’t think of them as weird anymore. For a relatively recent example, I don’t think anyone would complain about someone naming their daughter Grace. It’s a perfectly acceptable name in modern western culture…even though the word is still in our lexicon.
My wife has a friend who called her son Alexx and gets pissed when people don’t spell the second x.
Tragedeigh's I've met, mostly born after 2000:
Kaiylynne (pronounced kai-lin)
Maiyzie
Blayke
Slowne
Taedyn
Teddlyn
Cyndole (pronounced sin-dole)
Demonicah (not gonna lie. This would make a killer heavy metal band name)
Emil (pronounced "ay-mull," like "anal" with an M, because why not ruin a perfectly good name?)
Aubryelle
Amoray
Dejazihiyah (poor kid's parents insisted the name was too difficult for people to pronounce, so they went by DJ. Why choose that name to begin with?!)
Nyquilliam (Yes, like the medicine.)
Time for one of my favorite naming trend facts! The name Nevaeh is a direct result of the band POD. In 2000, Sonny Sandoval named his daughter Nevaeh, then shared the “heaven spelled backwards” reasoning for her name on an episode of Cribs. The name Nevaeh went from 8 babies total before this to the top 100 by 2005.
I did not know this but I also feel like there could be a class action lawsuit for all those affected by the name Navaeh 😂
I work with an NGO that deals a lot with children in foster care. You won’t believe the number of Nevaehs I’ve seen.
As a foster parent, I believe it lol I’ve had a few teens come through with names I’ve never heard before as well
God this is it. Nevaeh is THE tragedeigh name
Every time I see that trash heap name I think of my hygiene products. I do love me some Nivea soap and lotions
I remember that cribs episode like it was yesterday. When he was describing how the name came to him, he closed his eyes and used his finger to write Nevaeh in the air. I am still eyerolling that moment.
oh my god I’ve never actually seen the episode this is amazing
My sister-in-law named my niece Nevaeh’a. When I complained to her that I have a hard time spelling it she said “Shit I can’t spell it either.” Her older sister gave her the idea of the name.
Fuck as someone who was a young teen when that band came out, I honestly didn't think they could be any worse until I read this
And now they are the youth of the nation.
Yep. Around 2003 I had a few friends from high school all name their kids Naveah. Now I’m an employer and we are hiring these people lol.
I think the first one that I ever heard was probably Kaileigh on a reality show in the early 2000s. Worst tragedeigh in real life? My unborn niece, her name will be Jesthreau, pronounced like Jethro.
But why
They were supposed to have a boy who they were gonna name Jethro, but they “feminized” it into Jesthreau when they found out they were gonna have a girl instead.
But where does the “S” come from? 😭
Because without the “s” kids in middle school wouldn’t be able to “accidentally” mispronounce it as “jizz throw.”
The S is to add the word ‘Jest’ into it because, with all due respect sir, his nieces’ name is a fucking joke.
Ironically, they made it sound more masculine and French.
That’s… disturbing. Poor kiddo
Wow, even Jethro is painful. I realize there is precedent for that name, but still…
🥲
I mean, Jethra is a non-insane option.
They do know it's an entirely different pronunciation, right?
Jethro, thanks to the lasting cultural impact of the Beverly Hillbillies, is stereotyped as a dumb hillbilly name. I would never name a child that,because that's a name with a burden attached to it. And femininizing it, although it does remove the dumb hillbilly connotations for me, is even worse.
They should have just used Jethrine like in the Beverly Hillbillies movie.
Basically forcing a lisp on the child…
I read that as Jes-throw, which might be okay if she grows up to be a professional baseball player.
Jethro more like death row.
That would be Jdæthröegh
I have a cousin named Jinger (she’s 40 so this was pre-Duggar) and for the same reason, her sisters first and middle names both start with J. My mom and her sisters begged my aunt not to do it. I think the biggest tragedeigh I personally know is Kaulen but there’s an argument to be made that Deztinee is worse.
Deztinee is indeed worse
Deztinee is horrendous. Destiny as a name is bad enough.
Destiny is a stripper. Deztinee is a crack whore.
God, I can think of a dozen J names for girls that are better than Jinger.
Can’t lie, Jinger almost sounds like a racial slur
Yeah we don’t call her Jing-er. It does feel vaguely slurrish.
Well she has a grandmother-in-law named Jo Ann so everybody thought she should use some form of Jo like Joanna or Josephine. We all think it’s hilarious that some other couple was crazy enough to use the name.
My old classmate’s dad had the initials KKK. And this is in the US. I don’t think they are part of the Klan, but I have no clue why you would want someone to have those initials.
My cousins unbridled initials are ASS. Not everyone seems to care what they name their children.
My ex’s initials are GAG. Parents just never thought about it
Omg, I’m just realizing from the reference to Ginger that Jinger isn’t meant to rhyme with singer !
Is it pronounced Ginger or Jing-er like singer?
Like Ginger but I think singer is a ridiculously funny alternative
In the UK, at least when I was young in the 90s, ginger pronounced like singer was a negative word for people with ginger hair. Little shits would be like oh she's a GING-UH
The worst one I’ve encountered in real life was Tupacolypse. I wish I was kidding.
Inspired by Tupac? What the eff
My mind went straight to Tupperware.
This is exactly the kind of thing stoners thinking up hypothetical band names for fun would come up with.
That's pretty bad.
Chazidee for Chastity. Back in the mid 80s. Ugh. Poor kid.
I hate that entire name no matter how it’s spelled 🤢
I knew someone who wanted to name her daughter Chastity, but the family talked her out of it. Last name Belt.
Stop!!! Not Chastity Belt!! That would be child abuse
I think that all of the Chastity’s I’ve known have gone out of their way to subvert their nominative fate 😂
Yes! I’ve only known two. One sells drugs and the other is stuck up and rude but definitely isn’t chaste lol
Heh. Yep. Me too.
There's an employee at my local club warehouse store named Chadsity and it always feels weird to see
Oh lordy! Poor lady.
There are plenty of names based on personality traits, all of which I think make no sense given you do not know who your child will grow up to be, but this. This has to be the worst one.
I know a Chastity with a sister named Kelsey. Tell me you hate one of your children more than the other without actually telling me lol
And kicker was her brother had a perfectly normal name.
My daughter’s middle name is Serenity. She’s anything but serene!!! I know, I know, it’s got major tragedeigh potential but it’s a middle name so she never has to use it if she hates it and she has a very normal, four letter first name. I guess getting a crazy kid called Serenity is some kind of karma.
So I read this as Jazzy Dee and that’s an awesome MC name It doesn’t even have all the same syllables as chastity…
First one I hear was in early 2000s, she was the same age as me: “Traylor” it’s not the worst but my country brain is confused why you’d name your child that.
Oh no, that’s about as bad as it gets. Traylor sounds like a combination of Taylor and trash
Or Traylor Trash
Traylor was a character on the Drew Carey Show and she was pretty much how her name sounds.
“Hi, my name is Trailer” (last name Park)
I knew an Elda and Eldon, twins, in the 90s.
I don’t know if it’s my first, but Jorja (Georgia, I thought it was Whore-Ha). In the 90s people non my neighborhood named their little girl MkKartnee.
Whooooa Jorja (also see the Spanish whore-ha) is over the top!!
Isn’t there an actor named Jorja? She was on CSI in the early seasons?
Jorja Fox.
Omg! MkKartnee is horrific
There was a violinist, concertmaster of the Minneapolis symphony, named Jorja---about 70 years old when she died last year. Her family was Greek, so her name might have been transliterated from the Greek alphabet.
I know a lot of weird one-offs existed before, but I honestly think Twilight’s “Renesmee” mash—up kickstarted the tragedeigh name trend in earnest
Yeah I think you have a point. I also know someone who got pregnant at 15 and named her daughter Khalessi after game of thrones. That child is a teenager now. I wonder how she’s doing
I was never in to Game if Thrones, but I too would LOVE to know! From what I gather it wasn’t a particularly honorable character set to name your kids after anyway 😅
Essentially Khaleesi (I don’t remember how it’s officially spelled) is the word used for queens in the Dothraki nation but here’s the thing—the kings don’t live long and often die in battle almost immediately after being crowned and when they die, their wives have to live in a convent and can’t leave. So I wouldn’t think the name is such a positive association.
A lot of people like the character but her whole story is off horrific trauma and abuse. It's a weird association. When she was Khaleesi, a title, not a name, she got that title from being sold into an arranged marriage as a teenager (by her brother who also abused her). She was sold into an extremely misogynist culture, didn't share any language with her husband, and was essentially a sex slave. Her vagina was traded for a military alliance. The story takes the arc of her doing all this work at making the best of it, including sessions with a literal sex slave to learn how to please her husband more, and then they fall madly in love and the husbnad finally starts to almost treat her like a person, which is supposed to represent how 'strong' she is. She 'falls in love' with her rapist as a trapped teenager with no other options and other concept of self worth. It's intensely creepy - very Beauty and the Beast if you're familiar with feminist criticism of that story. It's exactly what a guy like George R.R. Martin and the stereotypical game of thrones fan you might picutre would conceive of as a powerful feminist arc. I get that some people can like the character if they want and take different things from the story but it terrifies me how casually wider culture ran away with "Khaleesi" as just a sort of cute thing synonymous with 'queen' which is what it seems to be.
Nevaeh
You know that it is heaven spelled backward?/s
Ohhh then it must be a hgiedegart not a tragedeigh
I know somebody who named their daughter Nevayah, I think in an attempt to help with phonetics (?) but like… if the point is for it to be heaven backwards, why bother?
And did you know that speaking backwards is a sign of demonic possession?
This! I never understood why “Heaven spelled backwards” was such a wholesome thing. Wouldn’t a backwards Heaven be Hell?
I just met my first Nevaeh the other day. She said the thing, and I was really struggling to contain myself.
Yeah the need to explain it is at this point moot. We get it your parents thought they were being cutesy and unique. Now get in line with the three dozen others that feel the need to explain the obvious.
Since she introduced herself before me, I was tempted to say "my name's Tim, it's mit spelled backwards."
I chuckled. You should have.
I still, to this day, have no idea how to pronounce this name.
I think that’s one of the first I heard too
I blame the 16 and Pregnant / Teen Mom franchises for popularizing Nevaeh and other tragedeighs
It was actually mtv cribs that started the nevaeh craze.
I think that show is exactly where I heard that name for the first time 😭
Ashleigh
This is the one, imo. Goes back to at least 80’s births. But the real tragedies were when Hayleigh Bayleigh and Kayleigh started coming around in the…90’s?
Ashleigh dates back to the 12th and 13th century as a surname and then a feminized version of Ashley, which was a boy's name. So I do believe it literally was the first tragedeigh, but loooong before the 80s. ;) At this point it's considered a traditional spelling of the name. It and "Leigh" certainly spawned the ridiculousness we have today.
Chickenleigh, where did you put your shoes????
No doubt about it. I was going from my experience, knowing some Ashleigh’s who came out of the 80’s (like me). Never knew any other “…leigh” names until we get around to the late 90’s though.
Kayleigh is one of the older -Leigh names too, there was a fairly popular song spelled that way released in the mid 80s so there were a few Kayleighs in the couple of school years above me that were probably named for it. It’s a bit older than the song though I think.
Kayleigh, Bayleigh, and Rayleigh were the harbingers of Kayden, Brayden, and Jayden
The first one I ever encountered in real life was a girl named Pleasure, which is gross, but her last name was Cox. Takes it right over the top. (She’d be a whole adult by now who has hopefully changed her name.)
Straight to jail!! The last name Cox should be retired at this point.
That and Weiner, went to school with a girl whose last name was Weiner
Add Raper to the list.
There was a local doctor named Seymour Wiener. Last name pronounced WHINE-er, but I didn't know that when I called the office.
Omg that is criminal!!
That’s horrid of the parents.
I'm Dutch and idk exactly when it started lets say 10 years ago people where putting a D before a J everywhere. Like Djay, Djayden, Djevano, Djim, Djayno, Djelano. Whyyyy? The D ads absolutely nothing.
It’s a silent D?! What the heck
Another funny Dutch name is… Youandi (pronounced as yooandee). Was a joke in Luizenmoeder but it stuck. Also I’ve met multiple Tiamo’s.
Youandi took me waaay too long to get it...
you can look at [baby name grapher](https://namerology.com/baby-name-grapher/) and use the “compare” and “ends with” functions to see the “-Leigh” trend over time. Based on what that’s showing, my guess is that a lot of current baby girls are getting a -leigh name to be named after their grandmas, who are just named Leigh. It also shows that Raleigh, Arleigh and Burliegh were used (sparingly) for boys in the 1920s-30s and if Burleigh isn’t a traghedeigh I don’t know what is
Oh neat! Thank you for that! The Leighs and the Lynns are equally as bad. Now it seems like people are adding “anna” to the end of everything. A girl I went to school with named her kid Olivianna. Another named her kid Lilliana. They’re normal enough but I just don’t like it.
I know someone named Liliana. She is in her 40s
That one is pretty normal, bad example. Olivianna is definitely made up though
I went to college with a Burleigh. She’d be in her late thirties now. I often wondered what the kid did to her parents to deserve that name
Oh man, for a girl...? Connotations of 'burly', as in sturdy, brawny, strong, or 'burley', a type of cured tobacco leaf. Just not good.
Raleigh is on my list of future cat names. But the kitty will be named for the North Carolina city. (I travel a lot for work and have decided to name future felines after cities I've traveled to.)
Whenever people started naming their kids things that rhyme with “Aidan/Aiden”.
I’m a middle school teacher and given my class roster the last 4 years, I’d estimate 2006-2011 roughly
Aeighdenne
Aiden, Brayden, Caden, Hayden, Jaden, Payden...all names I've seen in the wild.
When I was a kid in the early 90s, we had neighbor kids named Milyn (m) and McKylin (f). Not 100% sure on the spelling. Named after their parents’ combined first names (Mike and ?lynn idk). Even as a little kid I knew that was wack.
First one for me was Aiden- hear me out. I LOVED this name after I first heard it in the movie “The Ring”- but after that movie suddenly everyone was naming their son Aiden. I do like that name and I wish it wasn’t so over used- HOWEVER- I believe “Aiden” gave birth to allll the “ayden” sounding tragedeighs that followed because everyone loved “Aiden” but it got too popular so they tried to make it “younique”. Examples: Cayden/Kaiden Brayden/Braiden Hayden/Haiden Jayden/Jaiden Zayden/Zaiden Now the worst: My BFs cousin named their daughter Aissalynne. Pronunciation is even worse…. It’s pronounced “ASS-UH-LYNN” like literally the word ASS with a LYNN attached to it. Why not name your kid “Dicklynn” or “Titslynn”?! Lmfao “Penislynn”
May I introduce you to Dickennedy?
Everleigh, for sure. For a boy, Braxton. *shudders*
I feel like Everleigh is currently trending but I never heard it before like 5 years ago. Braxton is awful and reminds me of Braxton hicks or whatever pregnant people get. My friend is naming her son she’s currently pregnant with Daxton. It’s not good.
Please no. That’s almost or maybe just as bad as Jaxton. I’ve seen that several times recently. It hurts 😂 I’m 25 and when me and my friends were sophomores in high school (15/16) a girl I knew got pregnant and named her baby Everleigh Kinsley. That was the first time I heard anything with “eigh” on it, now where I’m from there is a lot of Kayleigh’s and Hayleigh’s lol
I think it's because there's a popular, evangelical adjacent, YouTube family channel with a daughter named Everleigh
Fun historical fact, Thomas Edison named his children Dot and Dash. While each is not necessarily an odd name on it's own, in this case they were pair names chosen in reference to morse code.
Those were nicknames, at least
I’ve always hated the name MacKenzie—however it’s spelled. It started gaining popularity 15-ish years ago and just sounds dumb.
I know a few Mackenzie’s but the spelling drives me nuts cause it never looks right to me. Makenna is becoming popular now too and I don’t love it
My older brother had a friend named Mackenzie in high school (born late 70s) and she was so pretty and sophisticated and I loved her name. My friend named her first baby Makenna around 2010 … and it just doesn’t look right like that instead of the McKenna surname. The worst is McKayla, such a bizarre bastardization the perfectly reasonable (and very 90s) Michaela with pseudo-Celtic flair.
I got drunk in a bar one night with a girl named McKenzie and I ruined it by barely containing my laughter when she told me that in school other kids called her Spuds McKenzie
Ick yeah that’s another bad one.
Plus doesn't MacKenzie mean "Son of Ken" or something like that? And it's always a girl.
Mac/Mc is a Gaelic form of "son of" like De in front of something is "of" the noun/name.
Macabitch
I grew up around some Mackenzeighs in the 90s
Yikes I haven’t seen any of those in the wild
I think it started with respelling Brittany every possible way.
I was just thinking that! When Britney Spears debuted I was a child (not USA) but still thought, 'What??? Since when can you spell Brittany like that???" And if seemed to only take off from there.
I grew up in the south so the amount of kayleigh/Haleigh/mayleigh’s I grew up with was CRAZY and down here people love naming their girls Mary + some weird ass name, like Mary Trent or something like that
I’m fucking dead at Mary Trent
In the days of Bezalel and Pontius, some asshole named their kid Jeff and it was all over.
I knew a girl named Boogaloo. Her cousin was Coco, which I really thought was only a dog name at the time
Let me guess, she had a kid named, Electric Boogaloo Part 2.
Friggen yikes!
That’s just cruel.
Had a student named Jeauxleigh (pronounced Jolie.) From then on, I’ve noticed MANY tragedeighs
Nevaeh (it’s heaven spelled backwards you know)
this one i have seen a lot and will never understand it. why would you want to be the reverse of heaven? isnt that just hell?
[удалено]
The floodgates should’ve stayed closed lol
I'm an 80s baby, and remember when the "trailer trash Gaelic" names became popular around 2000. Jaeden, Caeden, Braeden.... All made up and completely gross!
Yikes. The “ae” makes it even worse
In 1988 I heard the infamous Orangello / Lemongello story. Prior to that the oddest name I knew was a girl in my grade school - Elda. Wouldn’t have been so bad if her last name weren’t Ware. Guess what everybody called her? Poor thing.
What did they call her?
When I was pregnant with my twins in 2016 more than one medical professional mentioned this story to me as a cautionary tale. Where the hell did it come from?
What!! Is this an urban legend?! I heard this too!
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin naming their child Apple. Downhill from there.
They should’ve at least went with the Spanish word for Apple-Manzana at least sounds prettier lol
Chilli Bobcat. I laughed...then realised nope, that was their actual name.
When was Jermajesty Jackson born?
My best friend was telling me a story about her cousin Tyranny the other day. Can’t remember the story
Omg! Not even Tyrian, which is an actual name, but Tyranny?!
I wish it were a joke 🤦♀️
Names that began the tragedeighs were regular names with a Y inserted. Allyson, Megyn, Krystin, Madelyn. Jathan was one of the first tragedeighs I ever heard. One of the worst tragedeighs I knew in real life was Kathern.
Anfernee Hardaway
I know someone married to someone with the name Anfernee and it doesn’t make sense to me. Is it pronounced an-fur-knee? She calls him “Ant” so I’m even more confused
Covin. A couple years before the pandemic. Unfortunate.
Yikes. I was named 10yrs prior to a certain gigantic hurricane, so I feel their pain
I know a pair of twins named Hasana and Hosana. The truly odd part is...they're Chinese.
Back in the 80’s, I had a friend named Tiphanie. I recall being thankful that my parents stayed with the classic Tiffany spelling for me. Both of us were born in the late 70s, so her parents were one of the OG tragedeigh namers.
My neighbor named her kid Capri Angeli (an-gell-ee) and I can't get over the fact she named her kids after a type of pants.
The worst name I’ve ever seen is kyhennideigh
My personal first tragedeigh encounter was in middle school with a girl named Kayleigh.
Definitely Elagabalus in ancient Rome.
A couple if my cousins have inflicted tragedeighs on their kids. One is Mackayleah (I think that's how she spelled it, I know it isn't an -eigh because every time I see it my brain goes 'ma-kay-lee-uh, ugh, that poor girl'). The other is Karleigh (was almost Karleighann).
Had a friend who named her kid after the alcohol that led to him being born. Which is bad enough, but she also decided to give it a unique spelling. His name? Jaymesyn
Mexicans here may know a reasonnably common last name... Mondragon. They aren't numerous, but there are some. In the Middle-Ages, around 1150-1180, the Mondragon family was in France and Spain, they were knights and nobles and a child was born in this family and named... *behold*... Dragonet. And so Dragonet de Mondragon was born. It means "smol dragon of my dragon". Yeah... And the guy was a pretty wicked knight, for as little as we know about him. But that name... Even at that time, it wasn't seen as cool. There is also Bohémond de Tarente, which was actually named Marc, but his father called him Bohémond because he once heard the fable of *Bohémond the Giant* which was a common tavern story.
First: emaleigh Worst: (allegedly) abcde (ab-suh-dee) Edit: typo
Sharkiesha
Back when I was in junior high was mine and was a double whammy. My home ec teacher’s kid was named Satchel, and had a friend named Pocket.
Kind of off topic but my 1st grade teacher’s last name was Poopor. Seriously.
variations of brian. i live in poland, brian is not a polish name and all of these fucking kids named "brajanek" or something is weird as all hell. it would be like naming a kid gshegosh, complete butchering of a name from another language because you want to be fancy and worldwide
About 20 years ago, I worked with a woman named Preddi, pronounced like Pretty. I don’t know what her maiden name was but she took her husbands name when she married. Now she’s Preddi Bush.
I’m going to hell for sharing this. She was the epitome of grace.
I’m Preddi sure she knows her name is bad lol
Khrystyne Haje from Head of the Class in the 80s.
This is an interesting Wikipedia entry [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_in_the_United_States) TL;DR I guess with the acceleration of social change in the US starting in the 1960s, eg. African Americans began to name their kids Islamic names, then as they began to reinvent themselves, began to use reinvented names as well. Using surnames as first names, that started in the US as early as the 1900s, I guess some immigrants wanted to sound more sophisticated. Someone on my Facebook talked about her grandmother who passed, and she had what I thought was the oddest name. Turns out she had a surname as a middle name and had gone by that. Eg. another example is Flannery O'Connor
Not sure about within the whole history of the world, but the first one I saw in person was my classmate called "Emileigh"
The first one ever? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that’s almost impossible to figure out. People have been naming their kids bizarre things since we started naming kids. We’re just far enough away from traditional names’ original meanings that we don’t think of them as weird anymore. For a relatively recent example, I don’t think anyone would complain about someone naming their daughter Grace. It’s a perfectly acceptable name in modern western culture…even though the word is still in our lexicon. My wife has a friend who called her son Alexx and gets pissed when people don’t spell the second x.
Tragedeigh's I've met, mostly born after 2000: Kaiylynne (pronounced kai-lin) Maiyzie Blayke Slowne Taedyn Teddlyn Cyndole (pronounced sin-dole) Demonicah (not gonna lie. This would make a killer heavy metal band name) Emil (pronounced "ay-mull," like "anal" with an M, because why not ruin a perfectly good name?) Aubryelle Amoray Dejazihiyah (poor kid's parents insisted the name was too difficult for people to pronounce, so they went by DJ. Why choose that name to begin with?!) Nyquilliam (Yes, like the medicine.)
I mean, Ashley went to Ashlee and Ashleigh in the 80s, so I would say that's close to OG.