What's the oddest name you've found?

[ThrelfallYorky]

"Wompra" has also been spelled "Womperer"

[Lionrhod]

One thing that always bemused me was the use of "Bastard" as a surname... Surely that's not something that one would want to advertise?

And of course Fitz hyphenated onto a name means "bastard son." I agree - why would you want to make that public?

[Lionrhod]

My 9x Great Grandmother was called Eulalia Furze. I kind of like the name!

Edit: I forgot about Sexey Pool!

I just found a Eulalia Furze too! My 7x Great Grandmother (b. Somerset, circa 1695) Interesting name.  Eulalia possibly Spanish No idea about the origins of 'Furze' It was her maiden name, married a John Burston.

oh, and just to add -

I have an Ancestor named Flaad, a 7x Great Grandfather named Eliphalet (have no idea how to pronounce, so I just call him Eli), a 5 x Great Grandmother Comfort (named after her gr gr Grandfather), and relatives Thankful, Mercy, and Ichabod

Also, a 4x Great Grandmother named Argent, and a 3x Great Aunt Plazy Bedingfield Ellis

My son has a Great Grandfather Ransom.

Furze is a thorny evergreen plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulex also called gorse or ulex.

Eliphalet is an interesting one. I'd  try El-leaf-a-let or Eli-fallet.

Ransom's a great one. Gotta wonder about the history behind that. Some sort of family drama or shotgun wedding perhaps?

I lived for a few years in the town of Krumville NY, founded by a family named Krum. Talk about a Krummy name!

I also have a friend who knew a woman who named her daughter Chlamydia because she thought it sounded pretty. And obviously didn't know what it meant!

[Lionrhod]

A solicitors partnership in Leamington Spa-   Wright Hassel.

Forgive me for several posts on top of each other, but this thread is hysterical!. That law office is all the more worse/fabulous than the mythical "Dewy, Cheatham and Howe" law office from the radio show Car Talk.

My grandmother's name was Erdine, and seems to be the second of two Erdine cousins in the family. One of her uncles was a silversmith and used to send engraved silverware with their names and his patented fox/grapes pattern to them on their birthdays. For their hope chests, I guess. (Actually a gorgeous pattern.) Erdine seems to be a form of "Undine" or siren/mermaid. Of course grandma went and compounded the horrific naming pattern by naming my mother Elga. (A version of Olga which sounds like a sort of hacking noise you use to clear your throat. I think my grandparents haven't been forgiven yet.)

On grandpa's side, he was named Zekor--Zeke for short (after his Spiritualist medium mother's spirit guide) For years we couldn't find his records. It turned out that the nurse at the hospital where he was born thought Zekor was a horrible name, and actually named him herself! His legal first and middle names on his birth certificate are Rudolf Zekor (like that's so much better!)

And while some of the names on this thread are messed up beyond belief, what kind of balls does it take to say, "sorry as a nurse, I find this name unacceptable, so I'm going to change it." ??

Just out of curiosity, how many of you hate your given names, or hated your names as a child and later made peace with them? My given name is very pretty, but in school none of my teachers could spell or pronounce it right, so it caused me challenges as a kid.

[barryd]

Admonition Drew
bap 9 Oct 1768
Stoke Damerel, Devon, England

parents
William Drew and (here we go again)
Joyce Gay

[ThrelfallYorky]

Isn't "Ransom" more likely to be linked with where wild garlic grew? (Not a place for vampires!)

[GrahamSimons]

Isn't "Ransom" more likely to be linked with where wild garlic grew? (Not a place for vampires!)

I'd go for a Biblical allusion, e.g. Mark 10:45 "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

[Lionrhod]

That would be great buying a map like that and having the provenance too.

Im not sure about my maiden surname Cairns, I know it's Scottish: and translates to either a pile of stones used as a boundary marker or memorial, although I have found some interesting reading on the Clava Cairns .

Not sure I'd want a picture of a pile of stones 

The faeries of the British Isles, also known as the Sidhe were said to come from cairns. The word Sidhe translates as "People of the Hollow Hills." AKA cairns.

Some cairns were small piles of markers, sometimes marking a trail or landmark. Others were burial chambers. There are varied theories on whether the Sidhe were merely the earliest inhabitants of the Isles, Picts or actual visitors from an interdimensional plane. So perhaps the surname Cairn points to Faery ancestry. Or just living near one. Or perhaps being a tracker, or scout.

[Lionrhod]

There is that theory on how the Amerindian fathers named their children after the first thing they saw on being told of the birth.
Wait, no maybe that's the start of a joke.... 

In most Native American/First Peoples families (at least before the Europeans came along) a child was indeed named for their birth events, however it was normally (in a majority of tribes) the mother who named them. In fact, a huge number of tribes were matriarchal or matrilineal. A man's closest relative was his sister, not his wife.

Just to add confusion to those searching their genealogies, often during their adulthood rites (around puberty and usually following a vision quest) Native children may have changed their name.

Even worse (for genealogists) it wasn't (and still isn't for those who keep to the old ways) uncommon to have people take on yet more names as they gained victories, had other revelations and so forth. For instance, Crazy Horse of the Oglala Souix garnered that name because, "his horse was crazy". But he was born as (reports vary on the translation "Into the Wilderness" or "Among the Trees." And he also had the nicknames of Curly and Light Hair.

Even more challenging, those children who were taken from their parents and raised in Indian schools were often given "normal European" names such as Michael or Stephen or Amelia to erase their Native roots.

All of it makes the game for those of us with Native ancestry even more hard to research.