Ledasha redux

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 3:46 PM, Doug Harris wrote:
>
>David A. Daniel wrote:
> >The first of these blogs mentions that while punctuation in names is on the
> >rise, it would be stripped out of data bases, so that Le-a would be listed
> >simply as Lea. This no-punctuation or accents policy was the bane of a
> >friend of mine as far back as the 1960's. Her first name was Noné (accent on
> >the e and pronounced no-nay). But when dealing with anything involving a
> >form or a db, it would of course show as First Name: None. Try spending your
> >life explaining that one to bureaucrats...
>
> The only thing distinguishing that from the urban legend names is
> the fact the story is told first, or second, hand. Otherwise, I'd be
> inclined to doubt not even one parent wouldn't foresee no end
> of problems with the name None'.
> (The family name was Above', was it?)

I was going to guess Sousé, as in W.C. Fields' character in "The Bank Dick."

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1859/


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org