Nothing could be worse than X Æ A-12.

I would like to provide a counterexample. There are plenty of these people in the US intermountain west, but there are at least some cases where there is no one at fault. Next time you see one of these names without context (though we clearly have the context in this case), before judging, consider Nariaw:

I am a teacher, and one year I found that my roster included a student named "Nariaw". As a public school, we register your student based on what's on the birth certificate. I ask all of my students to pronounce their names for me when I first meet them, for the reason we see in so many of the replies here and with shit like "abcde". However, when this girl came to my class, she said her name was pronounced "Miriam". I spent a good twenty seconds looking at my roster, and had to ask her to spell it for me. I didn't ask any rude and impertinent questions at that point, so it wasn't until a few months later that I got the full story:

Her mother, an immigrant from Ethiopia, was still unfamiliar with Latin script when her daughter was born here in the US. So when she attempted to write out the name, which she wanted to transliterate as "Mariam", she ended up writing only half of the first M, and wrote the second one upside-down. Whoever did the data entry for the government records dutifully recorded the child's name as "Nariaw". Was the mother at fault for being expected to write a name which, while she knew how to represent it in Amharic, she was forced to write in a language in which she was illiterate?

Never knew anyone with a weird spelling but I knew a dude who had the unfortunate name of Harry Butt. Already bad enough your family name is "Butt" but his parents did him hella dirty naming him Harry.

Was always funny getting a sub thinking he was just fucking with them tho.

X Æ A-Xii . I could not resist. I apologize.

I am happy that here in Finland you can't name your child whatever you want.

Tragedeigh

"Breighdone" (Brayden) is probably the most egregious one I haven't brain-bleached yet.

My friend works in the billing department of a local hospital, and she will occasionally text me some crazy spellings she comes across.

There's a girl in my kid's class named Eighmee. Pronounced "Amy". I thought it was weird but there's a street in a neighboring town named Eighmee Street.

La-a (Pronounced La-dash-ah) is the weirdest one I've seen

Toneigh 🐴🐴🐴. As in Toni or Tony.

T'Fanny for Tiffany. She's about 30 now, so that was a bad decision from a long time ago.

Abcde (pronounced AB-sid-ee) was certainly memorable if nothing else.

I once met a girl called "Xinhergi" (Synergy).

I named my son Jaxin because my wife wanted Jax and I didn't want my son to have a dog's name.

I regret not just naming him Jackson because nobody in Taiwan knows how to pronounce Jaxin.

Verbalee. I met this in IRL.

Not so much the spelling, just... I went to school with a girl who's father fled the law and they ended up near us in Canada... they were originally from a trailer park in Tennessee

Her name was "Dollarina"

"Shithead"

Pronounced: shi-THEED

Spelled: Shit Head

The solution is to put all of the uniqueness in the middle name. Then you still get to feel “special” while not forcing your kid to go by “tragedeigh” or whatever.

When I chose my name - I made my first as milquetoast and appropriate to my age as possible. My middle I went balls out - I guarantee I have a cooler middle name than you do.

I was at a medical appointment, and the (very cute) nurse was named "Kaelea" pronounced Kaylee.

The guiness book of records had an entry for the worst spelling in the old days before the book was dumbed down. Trying to spell 'usage' the incorrect attempt was youzitch achieving only one correct letter.

Anybody else use their real name as their lemmy user name ?

Anferny.

Brayden, Hayden, jayden, tayden, kayden, rayden, shayden, cayden, pretty much the whole alphabet ending in den. And yes I met every single one of these

For once I’m on the cop’s side.

Jewelee (Julie) because they wanted Jewel in there I guess

I used to know an Alyssa whose name was pronounced like Alicia. Her parents went let's give her one name but spell it just like another name.