laughing at 'silly' names

A girl at school had the surname 'Topless'.

It was the ongoing joke to ask 'Have you seen Samantha Topless?'.

Except they were making fun of the sound of the word not the islamic prophet or Islam. And they were kids

Even plain surnames get made fun of (although it normally stops much earlier)...my surname is mills and even i got jokes (windmills, pills, beverley hills etc...not good jokes).

Making fun of the name mills isn't making fun of millers.
And most jokes about being called mohamed (or other spellings) aren't about the prophet or religion.

Theres a tutor at my college called Dick Cummings....
So yeah.....

Why do people (usually immature children) laugh at and even sometimes pick on people cos of their name? I think it's quite sad really.

Your parents picked it and changing it (and on all your accounts and licences etc) is a faff, time consuming and expensive. And would probably make any historians job in the future harder to find out about you.

I had a bit of bother, but not too much. I'm female and part Scottish. My last name is Scottish, but also a fairly common boys name. Kids I went to school with (in England) thought it was wierd that I had a boys name as a last name especially as they didn't realise it was Scottish. What didn't help was the fact that on most school registers, your surname is printed before your first name. Even in sixth form teachers still make the mistakes of calling me it occaissionally when they're not paying attention.

So I didn't get it really bad, but I can sympathise with those that do. A guy at my sixth form has the last name Sparkhall, which is pronounced Sparkle by most people. A group of guys in our class find it hilarious

There's a Facebook group about no-one being able to spell your name properly. We were talking about people with funny names. There was some poor person called Wild Bull. Her maiden name was Rose.

People can never spell my first name properly (not clare). Someone I know who is called clare has her name spelt wrong all the time to - people add I a lot.

I had a high-school teacher called Mr. Pickup. My dad used to say 'pick-up truck' to him at Parents Evening. Bit embarrassing.

Even worse, Mr. Pickup was a Leeds United fan (like me). He knew this and belted out Leeds songs in the corridor when I saw him. This didn't go down well with the other kids in a Lancashire high-school...

Why do people (usually immature children) laugh at and even sometimes pick on people cos of their name? I think it's quite sad really.

Your parents picked it and changing it (and on all your accounts and licences etc) is a faff, time consuming and expensive. And would probably make any historians job in the future harder to find out about you.

I had a bit of bother, but not too much. I'm female and part Scottish. My last name is Scottish, but also a fairly common boys name. Kids I went to school with (in England) thought it was wierd that I had a boys name as a last name especially as they didn't realise it was Scottish. What didn't help was the fact that on most school registers, your surname is printed before your first name. Even in sixth form teachers still make the mistakes of calling me it occaissionally when they're not paying attention.

So I didn't get it really bad, but I can sympathise with those that do. A guy at my sixth form has the last name Sparkhall, which is pronounced Sparkle by most people. A group of guys in our class find it hilarious

My surname is "Smart" so, that gets annoying when everyone I meet makes the same jokes

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