Not sure if this is a hoax but I’m posting it anyway because this is a humor blog and not a legitimate news source like Fox.

in Random Crap

me:  So according to the internet someone named their baby girl “Hashtag“.

Victor:  That’s terrible.  “Hashtag” is clearly a boy’s name.  That kid’s gonna get ridiculed at school.

me:  And this is why I love you.

321 thoughts on “Not sure if this is a hoax but I’m posting it anyway because this is a humor blog and not a legitimate news source like Fox.”

Read comments below or add one.

  3. I met a little girl named Chrysler once. Her Mom wore a gold letter necklace with her name on it and everything. Parents these days…

  4. I can’t decide if the typos make this more real or less real… I’m bending my own mind over here, but it has nothing to do with the alleged name.

    Because Victor is right on this one– totally a boy’s name.

  8. “weys”?

    I’m surprised the mother was able to spell hashtag with her 2nd grade education.

  9. You would think she would have announced the birth on twitter, rather than facebook. Highly disappointing.

  10. I used to babysit a little girl named “Shithead” pronouced “She-they-duh”

    NO FREAKING LIE.

  13. I feel like it says a lot about society that no one is worried that someone who can’t spell “Weighs” is now a parent.

    We need to start giving out dictionaries at hospitals. Like an educational gift basket.

  14. I’m totally with Victor. When I saw there was a baby named Hashtag, I automatically assumed boy. When I saw it was girl, I was just like “What a stupid GIRL’S name”

  17. I work for a healthcare organization. Part of my job is posting the baby photos to our website. Oh the names some parents come up with! Sorry, not sharing any of them as I try to keep my job & blog life separate, but I’ve seen some hilarious (or awful depending on your point of view) names. So #Jameson doesn’t surprise me at all.

  19. Hopefully she/he can hang out with Apple and MoonUnit.
    Because seriously, this is kind of ridiculousness I would expect from Hollywood, not a “normal” person!

  20. The new thing is to use “youre,” apparently? Either way, just looks like you were typing too fast and forgot the apostrophe or accidentally added an “e.” It’s so taxing to remember which to use.

  22. Yeah I saw that this morning and couldn’t believe it!! Also – crack me up – legitimate news source like Fox. HAHA!

    At least she spelled it right, unlike half of her announcement. I mean it would have been worse if it was Hashteg…

  26. I interviewed a girl named, “Sparkle”. It was for a teaching position, and I saw her ID showing it to be her given name.

    I couldn’t imagine introducing her to families, as the person that was going to help sculpt their children’s minds.

    That, and she was dumb as a post.

  27. My parents gave me my grandmother’s middle name (Elizabeth). I’ve always been thankful for that, because her first name was Willie. Now I realize that by today’s standards, it would hardly raise an eyebrow.

  29. I’m going with “hoax” for my own sanity, because my eye actually twitched at “weys” and I’m still wiping brain matter off my computer screen after the whole of that comment. Sidebar: Victor’s absolutely correct; “Hashtag” is definitely a masculine name. The kid is better off going by “Tweetybird.”

  32. I agree with Julie’s comment on this one, but this Shithead is (I hope) a spoof…But either way, it will get stuck in your head at a random, inappropriate moment a couple months from now.

  33. I heard this somewhere else, so that’s probably not a hoax… at least not as much as Fox News being a legitimate news source. I’m pretty sure you can even find THAT hoax on snopes.

  34. I had seen this pass by earlier today on Google+ and I had the same questions… Anyhow, it would not surprise me a bit that people give their children ‘weird’ names? Remember Frank Zappa? 😉

  38. This makes me stabby. And not just because I hate Twitter. But Victor is totally right and anyone who doesn’t realize Hashtag is a boy’s name is a bigger idiot than someone who would think Hashtag is even a name in the first place. Gah, that sentence.

  39. The comedian, Lewis Black, says that nurses in the baby ward should be given the final authority in baby naming for just this reason. Of course nurses should question all names and the spelling, this is how my brother Dwayne is legally spelled Dwyne. My father was so excited and my mother was so out of it when the nurse asked how they wanted it spelled (Duane or Dwayne) and my dad rambled off Dwyne forgetting the “a”. True story.

  42. One word. La-a. Pronounced La-dash-a. People should not be allowed to name their children if they haven’t got a clue what the hell is going on around them.

  43. One my friends jokingly told some people she’d just met that her name was Hyphen (as in ” – ” ). She’s into her literature and happens to like the sound of the word. The people then proceeded to call her Hyphen in front of other people…which was a combination of hilarious and awkward. She’s half-Pakistani so we wondered later if they thought it was an “ethnic name”…

    That’s my contribution to the Funny Naming Stories.

  45. Have to agree with everything…
    Definitely a boys name – if it’s a name at all.
    And seriously disturbing that ‘mom’ can spell hashtag but not night, weighs, or love.

  47. No one has yet to comment on the fact that her friend mentioned that she now has her “tweetybird.” This has to be a child having a child.

  50. Regarding “Shithead”, my mom-in-law taught a kid with that name. Really. They pronounced it “sheh – THEAD”.

  54. You can’t even turn that into a girly nickname. I have more issues with “weys” then I do the crazy name.

  55. That’s awful! I feel bad for that poor child.
    I teach in a lower income school and we have some interesting names there. Marrow Farrow is just one of the many. I actually had a really long conversation with a teacher who had been there forever about the different names she’s encountered.

  56. Headline from the future: “Pop star Hashtag Jameson, after a year in seclusion following the debacle that was her last album, ‘There Was This Thing Called Twitter,’ has resurfaced with promise of a new direction and a new album. She has also changed her hame. She now goes by ‘#’.”

  62. Holy God. That was so bad it hurt my feelings. Surprisingly, Hashtag was the least offending thing they wrote. Plus….. no baby girl is wrapped in a *BLUE* blanket when making the “she was just born” post.
    So lets all sleep better knowing that “Apple” is still amongst the worst names ever.

  63. I like it. It has a nice ring to it. And a name like Hashtag goes well with other names like “Backslash”, “Parentheses”, “Leftarrow”, “Rightarrow” and “Colon” (which is on my shortlist for my next baby- ultrasound technician says it’s a boy, so Colon should be fine, right?)

  65. As an inveterate buster of internet myths, I had to check into this to see if it’s true. Sadly, it is. I feel sorry for the nurses in the hospital who had to actually put that name on the paperwork for the birth certificate.

    Poor child. I’m sure this is only the start.

  66. If it’s a girl and she was born last night then why is the blanket blue? Hospitals don’t do that.

  67. It was in the Daily Mail today ( I just happened to notice…I don’t actually ‘read’ the Daily Mail…honest *shifty eyes*. If you have ever watched Jeremy Kyle, it is totally possible that this is true…..

  69. Has anyone else noticed that this baby doesn’t even look like a newborn who was born “last night?” To non-parents this could seem legit I guess (like how “newborn” babies in movies look like 6 month olds). This baby just doesn’t look fresh out of the shoot, but just a little older. So between that and the misspelling overkill, I call hoax.

  70. Regardless of what it is, the name really ages a person. It’s like a crone name. Something definitely old Dutch or perhaps new Amish. It’s only somewhat better when pronounced with a thick Swedish accent or a severe German one. In my head, at least.

  71. So many comments Full of Win! (this commenting system does not have thumbs up or likes, alas!)

  73. Hashtag is technically better than Adolf Hitler… which was an actual news item in Philadelphia a few years ago. The parents were causing an uproar at a grocery store for refusing to make their son a cake reading—Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler. Then child services got involved. Because naming your child after the god of Aryan-nation crazies sets off some alarms.

    And you thought Texas had all the lunatics.

  74. PS: who the #### spells “weighs” like “weys”. This poor baby girl obvs has bigger problems than her name, her illiterate parents are probably methheads.

  77. I totally believe that parents who would name their baby “Hashtag” would spell “weigh” as “wey”. So, yeah. It must be true.

  78. So completely excited that someone who can’t spell and named their child after a Twitter function (if this isn’t a hoax) is actually going to be raising a child, rather than, say, people who have education and financial stability going for them!

    Kill me now.

  79. Dafuq? How do you misspell the misspelling of “weighs”? Everyone knows it’s “ways”.

  80. I agree with Victor, Hashtag is a male name and Hashtag Jameson cannot be anything BUT a guys name. Poor little girl. She will have to be H. Jaime (Or Jaymie) when she grows up for people to even remotely think she’s female going by name.

    and seriously? weys? ‘ways’ I can kind of understand, ‘ways’ is an actual word after all. But “weys”? arrgghhh!!

  83. Oh and that’s not a blue hospital blanket, it’s probably a seat cover off their Citroen Saxo…..I’m amazed it wasn’t animal print… Please someone take this blog post off me, I can rant on for hours about chavs…

  85. and this is why some countries have laws on naming your children. To prevent kids from getting named stupid shit

  86. ‘Weys’…..bless her heart.

    And to think I gave my high school English teacher shit because he picked his daughter’s name according to alliteration. (To be fair, it was a totally normal little girl’s name, I just thought it was hilarious that that’s what he based the decision on. Especially after he told me that his wife hadn’t picked up on it)

    I always wonder if these kind of people actually hate their kids.

  88. I literally found out about that yesterday and told my brother, who then said, “But Hashtag is a BOY’S name.” Is Victor my brother?

  90. I gotta say, the names these people are giving their kids sound more and more like the names in “Hunger Games”…Sparkle, Glimmer, Thresh, Hashtag…

    It’s coming, my friends. Oh, yes it is…

  94. A friend swore to me that he knew a family with the last name of Cola. Yeah, you got it. daughter’s name was Coca. I have no idea if this is true but it makes for a fun story. It’s better than Hashtag, don’t u think?

  97. Would have been better to name her Tweetybird as the mother’s friend apparently suggested!

  99. I just know that old people everywhere will screw her name up. They’ll call her Skin Tag, Hashbrown, Corn Hash, Price Tag. Poor girl.

  100. Family of patients at my old practice

    -Oldest: Chlamydia
    Pronounced: Chlamydia
    *Middle: Gonorrhea
    Pronounced: Gon-*or*-ia
    -Youngest: Syphilis
    Pronounced See-*fi*-lus

    Their mother was strangely firm on these pronunciations. We were strangely firm in our belief that these were the diseases mom had at the times of their births.

  107. In the words of Phoebe on Friends, “And now I have seen everything!” Seriously, people just never cease to amaze me. I also loved the way she spelled “Weys”, lol!!

  109. No, Victor is totally right. I mean, I know we aren’t supposed to be gender biased anymore and obviously, this family is on that bandwagon, but Hashtag is totally a boy’s name.

  112. Nobody is saying the obvious, that is NOT a newborn! That baby is at least two months old and looks like a boy to me. I have never seen a brand new baby photographed in a position like that. She stole the photo and eventually it will become obvious. TG, because we don’t want her “taking care” of an infant.

  114. I thought the exact same thing!! Hashtag would totally be a boys name! THEN came the.. well that’s a crappy name anyway!

  115. This is why I love you Jenny Lawson – you just took a fairly crappy day and suddenly made it all seem worthwhile….

    [smile]

  119. I love how Victor wavers back and forth between being totally aghast at some of the things you say and totally engaging in conversation about some of your effed up observations. (And I say that in the most loving way possible.) It’s awesome.

  122. My daughter knows a girl named La’. It is pronounced “La-posterphe.”

    There is also an lmunique in her class.

  123. I worked at an amusement park with five siblings named after gems: Diamond, Topaz, Emerald, Sapphire, and Garnet. NONE of them were girls. It was horrifying.

  125. Hashtag sounds like something you’d be called when you’re teased on the playground. “Ha ha, you’re a HASHTAG!” Or perhaps a derogatory term, like instead of calling someone a dick or a douche you could call them a hashtag. “He looks like such a hashtag!” “Quit being such a hashtag, sheesh…”

  128. Hashtag, (although a boys name as your husband pointed out) is possibly better than “Cash Money Clay”…the name of one poor little boy I came across. I bet he’s really rich and I bet our little Hashtag here is gonna love potatoes.

  129. OMg, I am totally DYING from these comments. And all those who know Orangejello and Lemonjello and a boy name Shithead MUST live in Texas because I knew them (or of them) too.

    I just remind myself that you have to have a license to drive and one for your pet, but you don’t have to have one to parent.

  130. Oh god…..I even enjoy the whole “You finally have your tweetybird”….I can’t even stop reading this. I’m really hoping the child has a normal middle name or something. Maybe the government can get involved like some countrys do to prevent children from having to deal with this haha.

  131. I tweeted a link to the story this morning. At least they didn’t name her Tweep. Or Twit. Or Retweet. Or Favstar. I could go on, but I’ll spare everyone!

  132. Sigh. I get the propensity for stupid (I do plenty of stupid shit myself)…but inflicting stupid on your kid like that is just ridiculous.

    I’m waiting for “Tweeter” or just a symbol…you know, like Prince’s ridiculous attempt to be some random geometric drawing… hey, maybe she can just sign her credit card slips someday with #! I take it all back: how fucking CONVENIENT would that be?

  133. Agreed. Totally a boy’s name. That said though, I HATE the word hashtag in general. What happened to calling it a pound sign, number sign, or my personal favorite, Tic-Tac-Toe? Tic-Tac-Toe, now that would be a good name for a child. 😉

  134. my exhusband’s new kid has the middle name Action, (as in movie or figure?) I once worked with identical twins named Marc and Markus – because when you get surprised and don’t have a second name picked out-
    also lived next door to a girl who named her boys Day-Day ( think the friday movie’s) and Meeko ( the racoon from Pochantas) and I still think poor Hashtag is worst

  135. Yep, this is real. And terrifying.

    And Victor has an excellent point.

    Someone said she’ll probably go by “Ash”, as in short for “Ashley”. Once she grows up and realizes how horrible her parents are, that is. In about fifteen years, the pitiful email goes viral…little Hashtag, begging for money for her name change.

  136. Dammit, all the good names are being taken! There will be no original names left by the time my child is born. I was going to go with 2.0, but then I found out someone already beat me to it.

  138. When she grows up, finishes therapy, and changes her name, do you suppose she’ll go by The Artist Formerly Known as # ?

  139. I grew up with a Crystal Chandelier. She swore it was pronounced “shan-del-ee-AY”. Her sister was Carol, which didn’t have the same ring to it. They missed a great opportunity to name a daughter Capodimonte.

  140. To add another weird name to the mix, my husband grew up with a girl called Rosy. Rosy’s last name was Balls. Yeah. I think I would go by Rose. Seems somewhat classier.

  141. If this is real I’ve finally found a baby name worse than the couple who wanted to name their daughter “4Real”. And then they had to fight the law because it says you can’t have numbers in your name. But I think the law won.

  146. I wonder if the parent was actually trying to use a hashtag but didn’t understand how to do it. So perhaps the baby’s name is just Jameson. That misunderstanding might even be funnier than the fact that everyone thinks the kid’s name is “Hashtag”. Either way it’s complete and utter silliness.

  148. Dude, what makes this a complete tragedy is that there is no decent nickname to get from that. You get Hash or Tag, and kids are ruthless. Neither of those will go over well in middle school. I’ve already got at least 20 inappropriate and crude chants and comments that will be thought of by some hormonally charged adolescent boy. That doesn’t even account for the hateful chic clique that will no doubt spread some rumors of their own.

  149. That is exactly what I said! It is clearly a boy name. And furthermore, any name with more than on sylabol gets shortened. What to you shorten that to? Hash is no good. Tag? That’s not right.

  151. She’s going to have it so easy in Kindergarten. While all the other kids are learning to spell their names, she gets to just write #.

  154. And this is why teenagers should not be allowed to name their children. I pray that little Hashtag will grow up and change her name to something nice, like Seven.

  155. Unrelated, but I finally bought your book – and made the mistake of trying to read it at work. I’m laughing so hard my coworkers are giving me panicky looks.

  156. Well, someone’s ensuring future therapists have a patient. I had a WTF moment when I worked with someone called Rob Roberts and we wondered who would do that to their own child.

    That name seems so quaint, now.

  159. While my initial thought upon hearing this yesterday was “WTF PEOPLE WHY DO YOU SUCK SO MUCH,” my second thought was identical to Victor’s: “and the baby was a GIRL?! That’s totally a boy’s name.”

  161. The blue blanket and onesie is clearly something the mom brought and not the hospital gear. I brought green froggy stuff for my baby. And it could be a newborn, it just has a weird chin shape.

    The worst names I can remember is the mother who introduced me to her twin boys: Shaun and Sean (seen as she said). I just blinked a few times and said, “Not only are you an idiot, but you are redundant as well.”

  162. I love Victors response. People need to think of their poor adult children. Can you picture a Doctor Hashtag?

  165. How can they name a baby Hashtag and not have a hashtag in the birth announcement? That’s just wrong.

  167. Tripp. Hashtag. It’s almost enough to make me want to get pregnant again just so I can name my kid Hotbox. Imagine if they all met and hung out together….

  168. See, I see it completely differently. An unusual name works as what we geeks like to call a “bozo filter”–keeps away all the losers who are afraid of being different from the crowd, or associated with such. So she will always have only the best kind of people as friends. And the mom’s spelling looks (mostly anyway) like the kind of phonetic shorthand a serious Twitter geek would get in the habit of using to stay under the 140 character limit. Or maybe she’s just that ignorant, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

    As for the whole girl’s name/boy’s name thing–isn’t that kind of arbitrary and pretty much established by usage? So if the only person in the world with the name “Hashtag” is a girl, well, doesn’t that kinda *make* it a girl’s name?

  170. Your title alone was enough to get my attention and smile…I have to wonder if they didn’t mean to actually use a hashtag…that would be funny…LOL

  171. I knew siblings named Mary Christmas Tree and Douglas Fir Tree…and I met a girl named Starsha once, except it was really spelled “Star symbol”sha.

    What. The. Fuck.

  172. I’d love to quiz them on what they think a Hashtag is. My guess is “the label on a bag of marijuana.”

    Can I say marijuana on here?

  173. When I worked in social services, I had a child on my caseload named Anesthesia. I even held her actual birth certificate once, so I’m sure. I can only assume they were going for “Anastasia.”

  174. You all are barking up the wrong tree! Clearly a family of stoners thinking ahead. First child “Hash”, next child, boy or girl, “MaryJane”. Plus the family name is Jameson!

  175. At least they didn’t use the past tense of “tweet” which, as we all know, is “twat”.

    Probably a hoax. But now I’m going to start calling my ex a hashtag. So much classier than douchebag.

  177. If my name was Hashtag, I’d have to seriously consider dropping the “tag” and moving to Colorado.

  179. I’m going to have to go against the grain here and say I think it’s fake because what are the odds that someone who cannot spell “weighs” *can* spell hashtag? This is clearly not the type of person who would use a dictionary so where could they have possibly learned the correct spelling of hastag??

    Also, in response to an earlier comment that implied a connection between lower income people and odd names: That might not be the most PC thing to go around saying on the internet without explanation…unless of course you’re Fox news.

  182. Nothing surprises me anymore…in defense of unusual names though, my grandson Van’s middle name is “Danger.” Everyone loves his middle name, and someday he’ll get to show people his driver’s license to prove it.

  184. Ten years ago I saw a birth announcement in the Cedar Rapids Iowa newspaper for a baby born on April 1 to a Mr. and Mrs. Jester, and they named the baby girl “April Phoyl Jester”. Funny for about the first week, stuck with it for life.

  188. TWEET-ybird…anybody else catch that unintentional pun? I’m going to assume this was unintentional humor because the people I usually find funny can spell and punctuate. (“youre” isn’t a word….”you’re” IS a contraction…)

  189. Poor baby, her mama doesn’t know how to spell, name or dress a baby girl.

    Because really, if you are going to dress a brand new baby in blue (and it be a girl) isn’t there a law you have to superglue some sort of bow on their head?

  191. Well, if it is a hoax, it’s a good one. It is being reported by HuffPo, New York Daily News, and PC Magazine.

  192. We seriously had a baby the parents thought was already named. Fe- MAL-eee? The card on the baby isolette read FEMALE JACKSON. Some people should not procreate.

  195. I met a Vaginique once. Yep. That happened. But don’t worry, she goes by “Vag” for short. Because that is clearly better. <>

  197. I’m trying to talk the wife into naming our first child Boobs Magee. I think It’s important to screw up the kid early on its life. I have also decide when my son tells everyone I was drugged out of my mind when I came up with His name and thought he was a girl I’m going to totally go along with it. I’m that cool of a parent!

  198. Back in the dark ages, when my Mom taught school in an inner-city area somewhere in the mid-west, she had two twin girls in her class. Their names were Sa-phyllis and Gone-or-eah. (Spelled syphillis and gonnoreah) – their Mom said she look up the names in a big book in the hospital. As wise old King Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun.” And as Forrest Gump’s Momma always said “Stupid is as Stupid does.”

  199. I’m from the ’60’s. One of my neighbors back then had a little boy she named Sky Bear. And what do you mean “legitimate news source like Fox”? Fox is a legitimate news source in the same way that marshmallows are a legitimate construction material for condominiums. Wait, is my irony detector broken again?

    (You might want to have it checked. ~ Jenny)

  205. I used to work for a photo studio, and one job was to sort the photos and package them for the customers. Among other things we did portraits for a local catholic school, and a ballet studio. The same little girl went to both, named Abcde (according to the photographer, her mom pronounced it ‘Absidee’). this same photographer once pissed off a mom by calling ‘mah-lah-chee’ up for his photo, when his name was Malachi.

    Best unusual-name-on-the-order-forms was a guy in the army with the last name Grenade.

  209. For those of you that didn’t get enough fo shizzle:
    A ho named ‘Hashtag’: Hoax and harbinger?
    New York Daily Shit – 9 hours ago – 174 related articles »
    “Hashtag Jizzyon started doin thangs at 10 oclock last nite. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass. Biatch weys 8poundz n’ i luv her so much!!!!!,” says tha Facebizzle photo’s caption, first …
    You’re welcome

  213. Every time I see a story like this, I think that more and more I like the way Quebec does things. When a child is registered, the name has to be approved by a government agency. If it does not pass, you cannot name your child that. Suffice to say there are no baby Apples, Mirabella Bunnies, or Bear Blus. Or worse, Moxie Crimefighter. It honestly doesn’t stop (or start) with celebrities.

  216. The funniest part of this post? Fox is a legitimate news source! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

  218. I don’t know…my MIL was a school registrar. Just 2 of the lovely names she came across: Female and Toiletta. Seriously.

  220. My sister’s husband is named Peter Small. Seriously. And one of his brothers pointed it out to her on his wedding day and she apologized. She told him it just never occurred to her. Meeting her, I can believe that.

  225. I kind of like the name hashtag but perhaps as a middle name… Then again I have friends who gave their daughter “Danger” for a middle name, which I think is AWESOME.

  226. Victor is totally right, it IS a boy’s name! I have long had a theory that Social Services should be able to swoop in and take kids with stupid names because clearly their parents have poor judgement!
    My best friend is a pharmacist and has come across La-a (“LaDASHa”). Actually, she got bitched out by the mom for pronouncing it incorrectly! My hairdresser (who is a full-time nurse) once had a patient who was adament on naming her daughter Urine, pronounced “urEEn”. English was her second language and she thought it sounded pretty. They tried to explain that she would be essentially naming her daughter “pee”, but the woman thought it was so pretty she insisted on it. Poor baby girl!!

  228. While Victor makes a valid point about the obvious maleness of this name, I am disappointed that she didn’t get creative and spell it with a #. #missedopportunity

  232. I once saw a group of children from a local daycare, touring the zoo. They were wearing nametags. One of the little girls was apparently named Latrina, which I assume is a female latrine. True story.

  233. Maybe I’m old school, but her nickname could be PoundSign. As in, “enter the extension, followed by the pound sign”.

  234. my friend’s mom is a teacher, and among the various strange names she came across- one of her students was named Sexina. Child’s mother called her Sexy. Stop the madness…..

  236. I feel like Hashtag Jones would fit better.

    Like some really cool 1970’s spy.

    That girl is going to have a rough life.

    No one wants to refer to Hashtag as sexy.

    I bet she’ll have a ton of Twitter jokes coming her way. #totally

  238. It sounds like a really unpleasant combination of hashbrowns and toe tags, and your husband’s right it is totally a boy’s name, or the name of a band where at least one member will inevitably OD ironically on hashish (is that even possible?). For the kid’s sake I’m hoping it’s a hoax. I’m not judging the parents solely on the name choice alone, no I would never do that, their atrocious spelling is also a large part of my consternation…and also their stupid friend’s poor spelling.

  239. When reading this aloud to my husband his response was, “Hashtag IS a boy’s name.”

  240. I used to have an acquaintance who was a midwife in Minneapolis, which has a large southeast Asian community. She delivered a baby whose mother decided to name her Placenta because she thought it was a pretty word. Poor kid probably goes by Kate now…

  242. My daughter’s instructor’s name is SALTY. For real. Who would look at a tiny baby and say “hey, this guy looks ‘salty'”? Sheesh

  243. Hahaha this post and the comments were just the kind of start I needed for today 🙂

    I used to know a lady with the name Lada-Van. I asked her if her name had a special meaning. She said her parents feared an invasion and wasn’t sure if it would be the Russians, or the Americans and decided they’d cover both possibilities and named her after both a Russian and an American car. She then went on to say that her best friend growing up was named Coke…

  244. Those parents should be sent to social services ASAP. Then the judge should force them to change their names to Ampersand and Comma.

    Poor kid!

  245. My Nana used to do taxes & had to file for a woman that named her daughter Vagina (Va-GEE-na) cuz she saw it somewhere and liked the sound. No lie.

  246. Damn, seriously? This reminds me of this years Summer Olympics when I was watching women’s volleyball, and this one amazing player in particular — her name is Destinee Hooker. I am still floored, (appalled, incredulous…) by the thought that her parents essentially assigned her that vocation, and I am smiling at the fact that she could totally smack down anyone that tried to make her do so.

  247. Prediction: Baby-Mama will be pregnant again in two months, and little Hashtag will have an Irish twin named Retweet. Isn’t that sweet?

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go stab myself repeatedly with a spork.

  249. When I was working with 1st graders in South Africa I had a sweet student in my class – the daughter of Congolese refugees who introduced her to me (in their wonderful accent) as “Uh-pee-niss.”

    I kid you not.

    My eyes went wide as I asked for the name ONE more time. Then I just smiled that panicked teacher smile and said, “won’t you write that down for me? They obliged and wrote: Happiness.

    Phew!

  250. I absolutely love _Where the Heart Is_, but I’m constantly annoyed by the fact that Novalee Nation (Natalie Portman’s character) called her daughter *Americus* which is clearly a *boy’s* name. Although if she’d had a boy she could have called him American (like McGee) in which case his full name would have been American Nation. Which would have been either awesome or really, really dumb.

  252. Oh, I just remembered another one! I used to work with a guy whose original name was Harold Crease. Seriously – HARRY CREASE. As an adult he decided to change his first name as a result of the years of ridicule. So he renamed himself….Skid. Skid Crease. Sigh.

  253. Hashtag does sound like a guy’s name to me…but I’m more concerned about her inevitable nickname of ‘Hash’. I hope she’s a very confident, brash kind of girl who pull that off.

    Oh and, by the way? Totally better than Fox any day. Especially because, um, we don’t have Fox in Australia…

  254. Why is ‘she’ dressed entirely in blue and wrapped in a blue receiving blanket? Has anyone else noticed that? I mean, obviously it’s fine for girls to wear blue, but still, you’d think there’d be *some* pink in there.

    To try and maintain some semblance of hope in mankind, I’m going to tell myself that she thought she was having a boy and was planning to name him Jameson… Jameson. You know, like ‘Robert Roberts’ or whatever.

  257. They might as well have named that kid picked on, because that is what it is going to be #hashtag

  261. I was going to try to come up with some witty comment, but looks like I was beaten to it. So instead I will just shake my head…

  262. This will be one little girl who changes her name as soon as she realizes what her parents have done to her.
    I foresee many years of therapy in her future!

  263. At least it will be easy to write. #
    I hope they don’t call her Hash for short. And I agree , it’s a boys name.
    AND what will they name the next one????…..

  264. OMG!! I think you need a like button on the comments, Jenny!! Some of these are completely awesome!!

    That poor kid. Some day she’ll be in charge of picking out her mother’s nursing home. They do say revenge is a dish best served cold. Can’t get much colder than that!!

  265. and this is what happens when children have children…..you get children named hashtag

  267. I am a professional face painter, I meet and chat with a lot of kids. I met a little girl and her name was..are you ready? ” Vagina ” I asked her to repeat it twice… WTF was her mom thinking?

  268. I so saw this and thought about posting about it, but it just kinda made me hurl. That and the fact that, as you said, I wasn’t even sure if it was true. But then again, isn’t everything on the interwebs true?

    My only question is, why didn’t they do like Prince and just name the kid #? That would have been WAY cooler. Spelling it out is so…NORMAL. Who the fuck wants THAT? If I have another kid, I’m naming it $##@!*, which is pretty much how I talk most of the time anyhow.

  269. Had neighbors with the last name Sheets.
    Several years ago, one of the brothers named his daughter Satin.
    Yes, really.
    I guess on the plus side of that name, she’s really hard to do an internet search for.

  273. And I shall call her Pound Sign. Which works equally well if she becomes a whore or alcoholic…

  274. This is why teens shouldn’t be allowed to come up with “original” names for their kids. Plus~ Girl or boy???? They called it a girl, but it’s all in blue…is there perhaps more confusion that originally suspected???

  276. I met a woman whose name was Labia, pronounced la-be-ya. Seriously? She wore her Taco Bell nametag with pride.

  278. “Octothorpe” would have been much more refined and lady-sounding, and would mean the same thing, but maybe the mother didnt know the wey to spell it.

  279. Favorite stupid kid name I’ve ever heard: a friend of mine was student teaching in Columbus, Ohio. She had a student she knew as “Shay.” It wasn’t until she’d been there for several weeks that she saw Shay’s transcript and discovered the child’s full name was Shay Shay Baby She So Fine.

  280. That kid has exactly zero chance of ever winning a spelling bee. Parents who name their kids stupid shit deserve to get slapped upside the head, preferably by the giant, flaming hand of Wise The Fuck Up.

  281. Based on the spelling I’m seeing here, they obviously meant to name her Ashley and got confused.

  282. And then there was this little boy whose parents decided to give him the very masculine name of Knife. He was very quick to correct us on it’s pronunciation. Knee-fay.

  283. Pronounce this: Or-anjelo and Le-monjelo. Twins to a new mother. I’m assuming the jello choices were orange and lemon that particular day. True story from a friend that worked at the hospital.

  284. I was reading the birth announcements in the paper a few years ago and came upon a child whose whole first name was Heaven A Blessin’ Time …i think the last name was something common but I can’t really remember since i was too bowled over by the first name. Really, what are some people smoking/drinking/taking to think that these are good ideas to brand your offspring for life???

  285. I see a pole in that girl’s future…along with a nice solid crack addiction. But maybe she’ll be smarter than those who created her and change her name and move the hell away as soon as she’s 18.

  287. WoW. First time I’ve paid attention long enough to learn the sex of their child…I’m on Team Victor with this one, totally thought this was a boy.

  289. Working in a social service agency I see a lot of weird names for kids. Once I met a little boy named Doctor. I’m not even kidding. When he’s working at McDonald’s everyone will pity him, thinking he was a medical genius who fell on hard times.

  291. I knew a friend of a friend who named her daughter Chlamydia because she thought it was such a pretty name.

    (Maybe she had chlamydia and it was so advanced it was eating away at her brain?)

  295. Damn, another off the wall baby name taken. I guess I will just have to name my baby Chimichanga. Or is that name taken too?

  297. I assisted a man named Peter Pahn once. He was wheelchair bound, developmentally disabled, and short in stature so I’m sure many didn’t believe him. He had a wicked sense of humor, which one would need in that situation.

  300. Sorry. “Hashtag” will have to compete with “Placenta” for worse name ever. No shit.

  301. There is a doctor in my area whose name is John John. Then when I worked for a while in the returns department for a large mail order company I saw oodles of crazy names. My coworkers and I had lists going of some of the best ones. Example: Richard Paine. Dick Paine hawhawhaw!

  302. There was a spacy lady in my childbirth class that wanted to name her baby Meconium. As in the sticky, black, tarry poop that a baby passes just after birth. She just thought the word sounded cool when the nurse said it.

  303. When I worked at JCPenney, we had a guy come in named Asshole Jones. We know this because he wrote a check for the sneakers he bought. He pronounced it ‘Ah-shole’

  304. I’m offended by commet #26. Though I’m not the “Sparkle” she is talking about…because I promise I am smarter than a post, lol, I resent what was said about my name. While Sparkle is a unique name, it’s difficult having Sparkle as a REAL name. ALL my life, everyone has thought Sparkle is just my nickname…my parents are hippies…or think I am a stripper.

    In truth, I got my name, as my ethnic name translates to Shiny Light. Hence, why my American name is Sparkle. Which is way more AWESOME than Hashtag…poor baby!

    PS…I love you, your book, and your blog! I came and saw you in Seattle on your tour!

  305. I am upset that no hash tags were used in the announcing of the birth of young Hashtag. Or should we call her Hashtag the First, cause we all know more are going to follow? Anyway, no hashtag in Hashtag’s announcement…that’s just lazy.

  308. In trying to determine if this was real, I came across a couple articles that said other parents named children “Like” and “Facebook” . Do parents not consider the consequences of their choices?

    My mother always called my by my middle name, so that it the name I use. But it’s a legal mess when you don’t actually go by your first name. Basically, I end up using my first initial, middle name. Try squeezing your middle name into those little boxes made for initials. And now and then I get telemarketer calls asking to talk to “P”.

  309. My issue wasn’t with the name but with the lack of spelling skills! “Weys” is not a word! She shortened “weighs” but spelled out “pounds” instead of using “lbs” like most people would?! The Social Networking era has truly screwed up an entire generation. Unfortunately, I am a part of that generation that will forever be stereotyped with poor grammar and spelling! Ugh!

  310. Am I the only one that likes the name? Me and my daughter Mailbox Post are all for it.

  312. I once met a two year old named Stalin. He told me I was crazy because our dog is named Tiger. He just kept laughing, saying “That’s not a tiger! That’s a dog!” Since he was 2, I didn’t have the heart to ask him how many people he had sent to Siberia that day.

    And then there’s my BIL, who suggested that we name our son Aryan. Um, yeah, dear BIL, maybe you associate that with ancient migrations in India, but the Western world will think our baby is a skinhead. No thanks. (Plus then his initials would have been A – S – S, and you just don’t do that to a kid.)

  313. This is what happens when kids have kids. They are allowed to name the babies after their favorite things.

    Come to think of it…that’s not a bad idea. I mean, Cheese is a great name for a child, right? Perhaps I will name my future daughter Bellavitano Havarti (Insert last name here). That sounds fancy right? I mean, in school they would call her Bella. Crap, then she’d be like all the other Twilight babies.

    Hmmm… I’ll have to keep thinking on this one.

  314. When my mom was a kid my grandparents had a housekeeper whose kids names were Cookie and Cupcake. Not their nicknames, their given names. Is this real life?

  315. I used to babysit a girl named Pepsi. Apparently sometime when her mother was pregnant with her she had sat a can of the soda on her belly (for whatever reason) and the baby kicked so hard that she knocked it over. I think she should be grateful she didn’t get named Diet Dr. Pepper.

    Also, Hashtag sounds vaguely Scottish to me. Hashtag MacCleland has a nice ring to it.

  316. # and & met at a party. They fell in love and got married. They now have 3 children @, *, and & junior. (They considered naming & junior $, but they felt it was just too cliche.)

  317. Holy crap. I see a lot of baby names in my proffession, but this opens up a whole new level of craziness. One day she will have to tell her friends and people she meets, “Yeah….I was a twenty tenth’s baby…..my parents were going through a phase…..”

  321. I’m just assuming the mother got an EXTRA good ‘epidural’. She’ll fix the name when that shit wears off.

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