Baby names seem to get stranger every day, but what are the weirdest baby name tales of all time?

Crazy baby name stories come from Hollywood and beyond, stem from misguided parents, illogical bureaucracies, and influences beyond human understanding.  They involve money, ego, publicity, lawsuits, and the forces of destiny.

Here, the top ten weirdest baby name stories we know.

1. The Family Named George

George Foreman may be multi-dimensional in his professional life, but the championship boxer/food grilling visionary has a one-track mind when it comes to baby names. Foreman named all five of his sons George after himself – they’re George Jr. and Georges III, IV, V and VI — and also named one of his six daughters Georgetta.  How does the family tell all those Georges apart?  Georges III through VI are called Monk, Big Wheel, Red, and Little Joey.

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Do you want to share that with the class, Sarah?

Sarahmezz’s thread in the forums, which asks What are your grandparents’ names?, sounded like an intriguing one to put to the Nameberry community.

Indeed, the question has been asked before, but never as our official Question of the Week.

So please let us know your grandparents’ names, your great-grandparents’ names, and which you’d pass on to the next generation.

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If there’s one British baby names trend that Berries all over the world have embraced full-heartedly, it’s the old upper class practice of giving children two (or even more, ala Uma Thurman) middle names.

Rooted in royalty as a way to honor a raft of vaulted relatives, the multiple-middle-name practice was pegged by one visitor to our pages as being “very posh and a bit snobby.”

But it’s also a way for name lovers to indulge their enthusiasm by using more of their favorites on fewer children.  Americans who give their babies two middle names are often simply packing more name power into one extended appellation.  They may also (as my husband and I were, when we named our daughter Rory Elizabeth Margaret) be adding extra middle names to honor both sides of the family at the same time.

Judging from the birth announcements in the London Telegraph, the three-barreled British baby name is distinct in a couple of important ways:

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A while back we did a blog called Not Your Mother’s Baby Names, about names that fail to bridge the gender gap. That post focused on newly-minted names that the older generations may not get, but those aren’t the only kinds of names that don’t translate across the generations.  

Mom may have liked perky cheerleader names — Kerry, Missy — while you prefer serious Biblical names — Abraham and Lydia.  Time-honored choices such as August and Imogen that sound classic and handsome to you may feel hopelessly dowdy to her.

The fact is, each generation tends to reinvent baby names anew, gravitating to new choices and new tastes in names. It’s how we make our name choices our own — but by definition, that may mean that Mom (and Dad and Grandma and Aunt Sue) fails to like or understand them.

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Duana Taha reports that she and her new husband are compatible in every way, until they start talking about baby names.

I recently got married, and we’re very happy. Like a lot of just-married couples, we’re thinking about children in the near future, which is great.

Except we forgot one crucial thing. A baby name pre-nup.

Do most couples work out their baby names before they agree to be tied together forever? Was I unaware? Because there are some issues here we definitely should have discussed…!

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