Well - attention to detail and hiliarty ensues. In a note to sponsors - some good advice,
If there is an accidental pairing of a male napster with a female midn or vice versa just assign a new midn and email me. Apparently there were some very creative names that made the determination of the napsters gender quite difficult to figure out.Creative - indeed.
You don't have to be creative for that, there are very traditional names like Anne (of course, you can HEAR whether it is a male or a female one in this case, the male version really sounds like a battle grunt), Ali, Jan,.. already causing such problems, but what is the problem with letting the young navy folks fill out a question like: Are you a boy or a girl? O Girl O Boy O (complicated) before assignment?
ReplyDeleteOh please, hilarity, come on, it's funny, but not more than a pun, making one slightly smile. I guess they don't send you once every fortnight the latest blue Anglo-Dutch War joke? The one about the inspector, the admiral and the female sailor was good, and the one about the admiral, the cook and the island too.
ReplyDeleteBack when I was pounding the phones as a recruiter, I cringed pretty often before mangling some of the made up names in my phone lists. And since the lists weren't the most complete repositories of information, I often had no clue of the gender of the person I was calling.
ReplyDeleteWHY CAN'T YOU GIVE YOUR KIDS A NORMAL NAME?<span> </span>
Lighten up Francis .. err .. Teddy.
ReplyDeleteNew version of a Tea Fight?
ReplyDeleteWhat's normal?
ReplyDeleteWell, traditional spellings help. A good rule of thumb- any name in the Bible is a good start. Something you made up in the delivery room, isn't.
ReplyDeleteMy ex wife is Black and her mom would get FURIOUS at the made up names. Making them work that much harder to overcome stereotypes. Her sister, a civil rights lawyer, named her car Laquita Vashaun in parody.
ReplyDeleteHey, non-traditional names are a big part of our family and arguably part of the southern lexicon. But I say that they are always rooted in either a family name or another meaning and often the middle name. Laugh all you want but I offer these names from my immediate family, on birth certificates:
ReplyDeleteTiger, King, Scout, America, Starr, Aslan, Lily, Butter, Sweetsie, Race [don't go ballistic - it's Race Bannon - Johnny Quest], Forrest, Rip, Bunk
Actual male name in Tallahassee:
ReplyDeleteLemonjello
you laugh but this happened to me too, except in NROTC. I had a "incoming midshipman" to write to named "Sam." Sam turned out to be a GIRL, so my letter to "him" about everything he should watch out for in his freshman year (with a slight lack of professionalism) ended up in her hands. Fortunately, she was cool about it. In fact, we ended up dating for a while.
ReplyDeleteToday, she is a jet jockey.
i heard from an inner city counselor that he heard of a girl named (pronounciation) Feh-mah-lee. This young girl's mother could not figure out a name for her when she was born, so when she saw the birth certificate, she thought the doctor named her on his own: "FEMALE."
ReplyDeleteI had a young Marine from the Ozarks who was named R B Jones. His recruiter filled out the forms as R(only) B(only) Jones and he was thereafter Ronly Bonly Jones to one and all.
ReplyDeleteSalty, Back in the day before the service academies went co-ed you would occasionally come across news reports of one of them trying to recruit a math whiz/track star named "Bobbie" or "Sam" only to discover that the potential recruit was female.
ReplyDeleteLT B, Reminds me of an old Johnny Cash song...
ReplyDeleteMY ex-Mother in Law did the census many times in past decades in the low country area of SC, and I recall hearing her tell of a family she visted actualy having a son (Male) and a daughter Female), both named by the Drs...musta been the 70s when I heard this.
ReplyDelete<span>Come on everybody!
ReplyDeleteI say now let's play a game
I betcha I can make a rhyme out of anybody's name
The first letter of the name, I treat it like it wasn't there
But a B or an F or an M will appear
And then I say bo add a B then I say the name and Bonana fanna and a fo
And then I say the name again with an F very plain
and a fee fy and a mo
And then I say the name again with an M this time
and there isn't any name that I can't rhyme</span>
Salamander!
Salamander, Salamander bo Balamander Boalamander fanna fo falamander
Fee fy fo Malamander Salamander!
Middy!
Middy, Middy, Bo biddy fanna Fo Fiddy me my mo Moiddy Middy!
The name game.
Here in Wisconsin, in the Stevens Point/Wausau area, there is a huge Polish/Eastern European decended population. I occasionaly make a traffic stop, and when I take the drivers license, I have no idea how to pronounce the name. How do you pronounce a name without any vowels?
ReplyDeleteI don't know, ask the Welsh.
ReplyDeleteOne of our engineers I sailed with is Vietnamese and we would play that song when ever he came into the lab. He had a good sense of humor about it. The first time it had to be explained. He spells it differently, but it is still the same.
ReplyDeleteLet's do Buck!
ReplyDeleteUh oh. :)
Of course, in the UK they apparently don't have that problem. A report out earlier this week indicated that in the UK the most common name for newborns is Mohammed.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's pretty racist. Use the bible as a guide, so only christian names. Or just your traditions, not someone elses?
ReplyDeleteWow! I am sorry, I forgot it's your world, we just get to live in it.
Redeye80,
ReplyDeleteHow is what he said racist? Or are you just kidding? Not sure, as most Biblical names are definitely not just "white", if that was what you are referring to. Again, I have to think you are joking, but not sure.
This is true. (Or perhaps there's even more than one.) A relative of mine was a family court judge. The mom came to court seeking either a divorce or child support, I can't remember which. She was asked to spell her daughter's name...F-e-m-a-l-e. Interesting. How did you chose that? The hopital did.
ReplyDeleteAnother gem was a daughter named Shiite. (Except mom left out two key vowels.)
of course then there's the other extreme. I have an unmistakably female first name, (Sal can vouch) conventional spelling, and an equally female middle name, also conventional spelling. Despite this, I have been assigned to male open berthing on occasion.
ReplyDeletePolish names are way easier than the Welsh. Remember y is a vowel except at the start of a word/name....so said my ancestors! :-P
ReplyDeletewith the accent on the secnd syllable: don't mangle the pronunciation. My BIL, a public defender in MA, defended someone with that name.
ReplyDeleteMemories.....
ReplyDeleteDon't feel bad. When we got a brief summary of charges after my daughter's birth, it included circumcision. Trust me, we didn't do that to her.
ReplyDeleteLIghtened up remembering the punchlines of the Anglo-Dutch War jokes, sir.
ReplyDelete