I figure this is as good a thread as any to bring this up - does anyone know the real reason Stephen King's son goes by Joe Hill? Because I can't help but think Stephen named his own damn child Joe King (joking) :/
I have no idea what his actual name is, but iirc the reason he goes by Joe Hill is that when he was starting, he didn't want people to just think of him as Stephen King's son--he wanted his works to be judged on their own merits. So he used a pseudonym that was disconnected from his dad's name. ...I REALLY hope Joe King isn't his real name though. :/
I guess. (shrug) Why is it that many English first names can be acceptable surnames but not the other way around?
I mean O'Brian is literally Of Brian so it doesn't work as a given name unless you really really want to make it clear the person belongs to another, unfortunate implications ftw
Mild example, solely because it's weirdly repetitive: there's apparently another doctor at my obgyn office named JoAnn Johansen. I wonder if she's ever gone by Jojo. Also, I'd like to bitch about my own name. My given name is unusually spelled/pronounced--Johanna, with the J pronounced as in juice and a silent H (jo-ANN-uh, like the girl from The Hunger Games). It's an accepted form of the name, but it almost never gets spelled or pronounced properly (usually they pronounce the H). So when I started middle school, I began going by Anna. You'd think that would be simple enough, right? HAHA NOPE. It's pronounced ANN-uh, but I've had so many people inexplicably pronounce it AW-nuh despite the former pronunciation being far more common in the states. (And yes, Frozen seems to have made that happen more, THANKS DISNEY.) A lot of people misspell it as Ana too--again, despite Anna being the more common American spelling. But that wasn't the real issue. The real issue is that my last name is Nickel, and I was in middle school when Anna Nicole Smith was all over the tabloids. I got called Anna Nickel Smith by the shitty kids CONSTANTLY, to the extent that I gave myself a new middle name (changed it from Denise, which I just don't care for and which doesn't fit me, to Cassidy) so I could have a full name people wouldn't mock me for. At least I got a cute name (and the excellent nickname of Acey!) out of it, but jfc.
Alekz. Not sure if that's short for a genuine alternate spelling of Alexander or not--I've seen Aleks before I'm pretty sure, but the Z is throwing me off so bad.