The internet has a lot to say about the unique baby names parents are choosing these days. On Reddit, one user posed the question, “What is the worst baby name you've heard recently?” What resulted was a list of very interesting choices.
In fact, the top worst baby name dubbed by Reddit was Elizabreth – and that’s no typo! One user noted that this could be easily confused with “The Lizard Breath” if said too quickly.
Flip through the slideshow below to see the full list of worst baby names, according to Reddit. These top 10 choices were based on hundreds of comments and upvotes made by users on the site.
Worst Baby Names Of 2016
Not only did the thread start a discussion about worst baby names, but also about the trend of using creative spellings. In particular, Redditors found the use of “y” in replace of vowels the most “annoying” and “pretentious.”
“I fucking hate, hate, hate when parents do the whole ‘creative spelling’ thing,” one user passionately wrote. “In almost all interactions, it doesn't matter how it's spelled, because you're just saying the name. But then when it does matter, it's a hassle to all involved, with no benefit whatsoever.
“Seriously, prospective parents. You're not being clever doing this. Not at all.”
Another countered by saying that there were some exceptions to unique spellings of names: “I don’t always mind it, if it's something like Nichole, Ashlie, Courtnie, etc., whatever. But something like Khrystyne is just disgusting.”
Despite these arguments, one Redditor, who has a name with a unique spelling, saw no downside to the trend.
“The spelling of my name is probably the least common of all the variants, and it hasn't affected me negatively whatsoever,” the user explained. “Sure, I have to tell people how to spell my name more than once a lot of the time, and I have people mispronounce my name, but it's just something I have gotten used to, no big deal.”
The trend of creative spellings has really taken off in recent years. According to Lucie Strachonova Wisco, editor of baby name site BellyBallot, “Parents want a little uniqueness or some kind of difference, so they come up with wacky spellings.”
For instance, Jackson, which was the top baby boy name in Ontario in 2015, is now spelled with all sorts of variations. These include Jaxon, Jaxson, Jaxen, Jaxxon and Jaxyn.
“A good 10 percent of parents are really pushing the limits," Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard, told Fit Pregnancy. “There are a lot of names you wouldn’t expect— more parents are inventing new names based on either sound or spelling.”