Met a woman yesterday in an office building, complimented the cute picture of her daughter on the wall. “What’s her name?” “Special.” “Her name is Special?” “Yes, she has two sisters — Unique and Lovely.”
My interest was, um, piqued, but didn’t quite know what to say next. She filled the silence. “Sometimes when someone asks Special her name, she tells them, ‘Oh, what a unique name!’ and she answers, ‘No, Unique is my sister.'” So her kids are trapped in an endless game of “Who’s On First?” with strangers.
Don’t get me wrong – I think unusual names are great. Shows balls, shows art. But this trio of monikers brings so much built-in difficulty for the kids.
Reminded of a story I heard about a woman who gave birth to twin girls and named them Orangelo and Lemonjelo (orange jello / lemon jello)… after the post-labor food she had just enjoyed. No idea whether the story is apocryphal, but I actually don’t entirely doubt it.
There’s a discussion of “strange names” in the current book “Freakonomics”, it was somewhat interesting.
We’ve got another one on the way at the end of August, but I think we’ll stick to our original choice – Laura Elizabeth :)
I hope “Special” marries a guy named Edwards and “Lovely” a guy named Dey.
Orangelo and Lemonjelo are quite apocryphal. Have heard those names associated with many stories.
Although there are no instances of Lemonjelo/Lemonjello/Lemongelo, the Social Security Death Index (searchable at http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/) has 3 entries for Orangelo. One of them was born in 1895, two years before Jell-O was available.
In other words, it appears to have been a real name, an uncommon name, and unrelated to Jell-O.
Heh – Then it must have been the advent of Jell-o that killed off the name!
I think orange jello and lemon jello are in a rap song? My best friends mom was a birthing nurse to a lady who named her twin daughters that. I did a search on google and this blog came up.
Lemonjelo and Orangelo are real – my mom is a special education teacher, and they were in the next classroom – I don’t know if they were both girls, but they were emotionally impaired. Sad, but it’s hard to wonder why.