Annoying Nomenclature
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008Apparently, I have a weird name, as evident by the vast amount of individuals that either misspell or mispronounce it. Or both.
I find this especially annoying, because my name is also a common noun in the English language and surely people have heard the term “rest upon one’s laurels” several times in their lives. However, they may be suffering from this strange disorder that I’ve encountered in stupid where, when faced with a word they have never seen before, they will replace it with a word that they are more familiar with. They’ve probably been reading it as “rest upon one’s Laurens” all these years, which would explain why people consistently read my name out as “Lauren” without skipping a beat.
I blame whoever invented that retarded “Whole Language” reading method, where kids are taught to memorize entire words instead of sounding them out, leaving them completely helpless to deal with words that are unfamiliar. We may as well go back to using fucking pictograms, if we’re going to be using this “Whole Language” shit.
I still get mad at people that misspell my name, even though they get it phonetically correct most of the time (when they don’t, it makes me want to destroy them). I honestly cannot believe, as I reiterate, that they have never encountered the word “laurel” before. Maybe a common noun doubling as a proper noun throws them for a loop.
I get angrier when other people spell their own names retardedly, though, because it makes me misspell things and I hate when I misspell things.
Or, alternatively, I’m spelling their names correctly and they’re the ones that are spelling it wrong. Anyway, if I see another “Ashli”, “Jannifer” or “Benn”, I shall be very upset indeed and perhaps I will scowl or something.
Note to parents: People cannot hear how things are spelled. Your “unique” spelling of your child’s name with serve only to annoy them and those around them.
Which leads me to American Idol and the lovely “Temptresse”. Well, she isn’t lovely so much as she is 400 pounds and will eat me. But her name -Oh what a name!- makes me actually appreciate my weird name. My name, however weird it may be, doesn’t sound like a retarded stripper’s name. And adding that superfluous “e” to the end of “temptress” (which would have been a horrible enough name on its own), is just the icing on the retarded name cake. It tells me that 1. her mother is stupid and doesn’t understand what the word “temptress” really means (generally, in our society, a temptress is considered a bad thing) and 2. she didn’t think that the name “Temptress” would be unique enough, so she had to add an “e”.
Or she doesn’t know how “temptress” is really spelt. In which case, I may weep openly.