Thirty Years Later...

So, I'm sort of obsessed with people giving their children horrible names. There's just a mesmerizing quality to the discovery that someone somewhere thought it was a good idea to name their child Ivan Odor or Seal Miranda. (Both of those are real but I'm too lazy to find the links right now, sorry.)

I haven't really thought about this topic too much lately, although I do wonder what some of my pregnant friends will end up naming their children. (Specifically, I'm most interested in what Elin's baby will be named, but not because it will be bad...because I don't know much about Icelandic names and I'm fascinated by THAT also. In a much better, healthier way. Icelandic names are interesting because they're foreign to me, rather than because they remind me of a train wreck.)

But Jimmie brought this name issue to my attention recently, and now I can't decide whether to thank her or curse her. You see, she wrote this blog post about bad baby names the other night, and so I sort of had it in my head when I had to run errands this afternoon. There's a certain place we have to go to fairly frequently, and there's a woman there whose name I always wonder about. You see, her name is Ravyshyng, and I always would think to myself, hm, what country is THAT name from? Or what's the story behind THAT?

And then, today. I was standing there, face-to-face with her nametag, when the truth hit me like a giant flying dog poo. RAVEE-SHEENG, RAVEE-SHEENG, I was thinking to myself.

Ohmygodhernameisravishing. RAVISHING!

Thirty years ago, this woman's mother (parents?) named their little tiny precious defenseless baby Ravishing.

That is so not okay with me. WHY, GOD, WHY?