One day, while at the nurse's station, a colleague of mine was wheeling her pt to her postpartum room on a stretcher. As she passed, mom was holding her baby, daddy walking alongside of the stretcher. I cooed over the baby and asked what the baby's name was going to be. Mom said, "Her name is Yoda." Maintaining barely my professionalism, I calmly asked her, "Does this name have a meaning?"--thinking that this perhaps also had a meaning in another language like Swahili (they were a black couple). Nope. Mom says,"No. I just like the sound of it." As she continued on her way, I thought "Poor, poor little girl."
I thought I had heard it all then, but a few years later, I was laboring a couple from Mexico. The father started told me he was going to name his son "Hitler." I swallowed hard and asked him if he knew who Hitler was. He started to tell me what a great and smart man Adolf Hitler was and how proud he was to name a son after Hitler! I have a firm belief that, as a nurse, it is never my job to tell parents what they can and cannot name their children....but.....after much prayer throughout the day, I decided to talk to the parents. I asked dad if they were going to move back to Mexico after the delivery. He said they intended now to make the USA their home. I thought perhaps he might be moving back to a pro-Nazi neighborhood in Mexico. Nope. I finally had to tell him that perhaps he needed to make Hitler the child's middle name if he was insistent on it---or just use the initial H. I explained to him how despised the man Hitler was in the USA and what a hard life his son would have if his name was Hitler. He said he understood and agreed. I never found out what he did wind up naming his son. I still think about this child even today. Sigh.
Finally, there was the mom who named her cute little girl a name that sounded like "Di Giovanni." I asked mom how she was going to spell it. She didn't know. She submitted a birth story to me (I was teaching childbirth classes at the time and had a bi-montly newsletter) and spelled it something like "Dgeefhogmdoy." It definitely didn't look like it sounded. And it was going to be heck for the little girl to learn to spell for school!
Char..
Apr 16, '02 by CharisseOne day, while at the nurse's station, a colleague of mine was wheeling her pt to her postpartum room on a stretcher. As she passed, mom was holding her baby, daddy walking alongside of the stretcher. I cooed over the baby and asked what the baby's name was going to be. Mom said, "Her name is Yoda." Maintaining barely my professionalism, I calmly asked her, "Does this name have a meaning?"--thinking that this perhaps also had a meaning in another language like Swahili (they were a black couple). Nope. Mom says,"No. I just like the sound of it." As she continued on her way, I thought "Poor, poor little girl."
Needless to say I said no. 
Apr 17, '02 by ClariceSWe had a patient with the first name Female. Thinking she had come in AKA, I asked what her name was and she pronounced it "femahlay".
Apr 17, '02 by SmilingBluEyesAlong that line Clarise, a gal I knew was named Fran, her middle initial was A and last was T.....and she was WELL over 250lb. I felt for her, too! :-(chrissy8512 likes this.
Apr 18, '02 by P_RNI had a Plastika Noriega (pronounced PlastikaNoreeeka)