Thoughts on non-standard spellings of names

ffejsGirl

We spelled our kids names as traditionally as possible, Emily & Aiden (every site I looked at had it -en not -an). It irks me that you-neek spellings are getting so popular though that people assume ours are the same. We are always asked for Aiden if it's Aden, two A's or with a Y, WTH?

Unique spelling does NOT equal a unique name.

Also, Starry, as a peds nurse having seen all the crazy names out there people tie on their kids I have to agree with freakonomics and say that low socioeconomic status DOES equal a trend of you-neek spelling.  Nevaeh is bad enough but when you spell it Nevayah you look even dumber...

shaunah816

I sit on both sides of the fence on this one. I have an oddly spelled name: Shauna'h, pronounced just like Shawna, Shauna, etc. Because I'm quite possibly the only person in the world with this spelling I don't expect people to spell it right on the first try, but it does annoy me when I get other weird spellings and pronunciations (Shannon, Charlotte, Shawawna, etc.). So, on one hand it drives me batty and I don't want to inflict that on my child.

On the other, my name is spelled like that because of my Native American heritage. My parents liked the name Shauna, so my dad went to our reservation and asked a tribal elder how to spell it in Mohawk, and that's what she came up with. Now that I'm older I love that I have a visible link back to the heritage I've grown to treasure, and I'd love to use a Mohawk name for my LO, perhaps as a middle name (which doesn't need to be spelled out very often). 

But non-cultural "misspellings" do drive me a bit crazy, from a purely personal standpoint  

AngelSong76

We're having this discussion now and have decided we would rather do a standard spelling of a unique name rather than a unique spelling of a standard name.  It just makes more sense to us.

Our problem is finding a unique name that we can really love that won't saddle our child with something horrible as he/she grows up.  Our only common heritage is Irish, so we've been looking there for unique names, but all the ones we like just look like nontraditional spellings of common names.  (i.e. Jaicen)  So it's back to the baby book for us, lol! 

tatercater

I grew up with an uncommon spelling of a common name, and honestly, I hated it when I was little.  It's fine now, but I distinctly remember in 1st grade, I tried to switch over to the common spelling, which drove my teacher crazy

I love traditional names and I love traditional spellings.