All true.
Years ago I was in a co-op education program at an insurance company. It was common for Chinese people who moved to Canada to use a different first name. For example I have a friend named John Liew. I did not know for years that his actual name was, if I remember correctly, Sin Tam Liew. He just went by John Liew. Sometimes things got lost in translation as it were and you would run across an purely unintentional hilarious name solely because the person choosing the name did not know any better.
Which brings me back to the insurance company. Back in the day before the internet and fax machines all companies had mailrooms. Insurance applications would arrive from the brokers via mail or courier. One of my tasks was to record, stamp, and number new applications before they were handed out to the designated underwriter.
One of the applications caught my eye. The last name was Ho. The first name was Heidi.
I have never forgot that one.
I hope the underwriter you gave that application to was named Cab Calloway!
ReplyDeleteThis post made me smile. Back in the day when we still got daily newspapers I often would laugh at some of the names people chose for their babies. Some of them you just know didn't bother to put the initials together because the end result was often quite hilarious. Of course maybe they DID know and did it on purpose.
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