Recently I was at a baby shower for a co-worker when the subject of bizarre baby names came up. Since a majority of the women have backgrounds in early education, there was no shortage of conversation fodder.
“I was scanning the class roster when I saw the name ‘Le–a.’ I thought it was a typo. So I call out, ‘Lea? Lea?’ And one girl goes, ‘Me? My name’s not ‘Lea.’ It’s ‘Ledasha.'”
“Spelled ‘T-y-j-u-a-n.’ Pronounced ‘Taiwan.'”
“Who can name a defenseless baby girl ‘Bud’, anyway?”
I mentioned that a girl I went to high school with named her baby Brie (and managed not to use the word ‘white trash’), but I just couldn’t compete. Until this afternoon, when I looked at my receipt from Walgreens and saw:
Yogina. Reminds me of yogurt, yoga, and…. umm… well of course there’s a big difference between “Yo-JI-Na” and “Yo-GEE-Na.” Sort of like how the capital of Saskatchewan is not pronounced “Regina” like the girl’s name, but “Regina” like rhymes with vagina. The previous company that I worked for did a lot of business in the middle Canadian provinces, and so people were constantly flying to Regina. “How was Regina?” is really impossible to ask with a titter.
A quick Google reveals that Yogina is a Sanskrit word meaning “sorceress” (here). The fact that the teenagerish woman who rang me up at Walgreens was white and fat leads me to believe that her mother was a Wiccan who had very high hopes that her daughter would excel in the arts of potions, spells, and assorted black magic.
And here’s Yogina, working at Walgreens, thanking me for allowing her to serve me today. No, thank you, Yogina.
