A Pet Peeve

I can't stand the way parents make up names for their kids today or -- even worse -- decide their kid needs to be unique with a nontraditional spelling of a common name.

It seems this comes up every few days at work. Last night, it was Nacole Jones, a girl on Newark's basketball team. Apparently, she pronounces it Nicole. But imagine the number of times she's had her name misspelled or had to correct someone's pronunciation.

It was understandable when my students in Wuhan had humorous non-names or misspelled a name, but I just don't understand how native speakers can do this. (A few memorable examples from Wuhan: Orange, Aster, Wakin, Celery, Flybird, Aki, CoCo, Lazaro, Del Piere, Sharing, Eleven, Juicy, Even, Edder, Sea Piano, Jungle, Nicing, Zero, Syringa, Serious, and Linze. Some other teachers in Wuhan had even more humorous "names," some of which are not appropriate for my blog.)

Any other silly names/spellings that you'd like to share?