Boone Spaulding's picture
Boone Spaulding from Coldwater, Michigan, U.S.A. is reading Solarcide Presents: Nova Parade March 29, 2012 - 5:12pm

@ Chitin: during a ten-month period, September 2010 to July 2011, when I worked for a Big Energy Company...

One name not on the list is Mrs. Smelley. Forgot her first name. She was a very sweet woman, and I actually called her "Mrs. Smelley" two or three times during the conversation...not as funny as it sounds, as she was a sweet woman suffering from a name that was Just Not Cool...

mutterhals's picture
mutterhals from Pittsburgh is reading A Confederacy of Dunces, The Inhuman Condition March 29, 2012 - 5:45pm

Molly Ringworm

Matt Attack's picture
Matt Attack from Richmond, Va. is reading As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner April 1, 2012 - 11:19am

Maybe this will help you write more authentically. I don't know whether this is a regional thing, but it is tradition for girls to carry unusual family names or male names back home. 

So, my nieces either have a male family members name to honor them, or a family surname

Katelyn Lee (Lee is my fathers name) 

Addison Mayle (Mayle is an old surname) 

I worked for a farmer who named his daughters:

Willie Whet 

Bly Miller 

or a friend of mine in high school was 

Cary Durphee 

Or cousin, 

Codie Lynn (family and male name)

I think it is an old south type thing, but there ya go. It is also sort of a thing to refer to people by their full first name or a first and middle. 

So, among my family (except my brother and father) I am called, Matthew Lawrence, or just Matthew instead of Matt. 

It sounds formal but it isn't. I have friends that I have never referred to as anything other than their first and last name. Never a nickname or first name. It's kind of like saying, "I know you" when use their full name. 

Clutch's picture
Clutch from Detroit Metro Area now living in Charlotte, NC is reading "The Spooky Art" by Norman Mailer April 2, 2012 - 4:24pm

J.K. Rowlings took the name Harry Potter from a 1986 B-Movie called "Troll". The character is even a child wizard.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092115/trivia