Tuesday
Sep132011
Less Generic, More Insulting
September 13, 2011 Let's look on the bright side, shall we?
At least they didn't address it to the dog.
Thanks to Anony M. for making me feel like a female.
September 13, 2011 
What's a Wreck?
A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.
Now, don't you have a photo you want to send me? ;)
- Jen
The Classics
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September 13, 2011 
Reader Comments (83)
Maybe it's really her name and they pronounce it "fem-ALL-ey" and tell people, "It's French." ;)
Sometimes my parents blank on my name and call me "You-- there-- female child!" I can totally sympathize.
Man, that's a lot of frosting.
True story, had a friend who worked at a hospital. Lady was in for her umpteenth birth, and had run out of name ideas, and saw this and thought it would be a wonderful name......
Pronounced Femmmm a leeee Spelling Female
No worse than L-D La Dasha Truth!
Rhymes with tamale!
Maybe we're just pronouncing it wrong -- perhaps her name rhymes with "tamale?"
It could have been worse. They could have addressed it to "ugly bag of mostly water."
Ya because if it was for the dog they would have put BITCH. (that isn't a swear)
WTF how are these people getting jobs in bakeries O_o
What makes you think it was not the dog?
I literally spit my coke out onto some pieces of paper from laughing... good thing they were not important.
Nice handwriting, though.
@Deb - that's an urban legend. Everybody knows somebody who saw somebody who saw female on the bassinet and decided to use the name.
Its the thought that counts.....right?
Oh, that's harsh. Almost as bad as a girl I once knew whose name was Male - pronounced "Molly" , but she still got a lot of grief for something her parents obviously thought was a good idea.
You all joke but I worry about what my grandchildren will be named. My eight year old wanted to name his baby brother Cora_ (that's Coraline, and that was a first and middle name, so _ was a name to itself) before we found out it was going to be a boy. He would probably think femalee was great!
Maybe the person who took the call didn't get the recipient's name, so they did this. I'm sure we can all agree that the result is much less embarrassing than calling back would have been.
I just wish they hadn't been so chintzy with the frosting.
Alternate theory: The original order was addressed to the dog in a nudge-nudge way, but the wreckerator, on viewing the result, decided it was in poor taste and applied the wrecker's equivalent of correction tape. The hole in this theory, of course, is that if wreckerators had taste, there wouldn't be any wrecks. (Noooooo!)
I was officially "Female (Secondname)" until the age of 12 because where I live parents have 40 days to regsiter a child and they couldn't think of a name in time. I had it changed when I needed a proper birth cert in order to register at my new school.
*singing* "I enjoy being a....female....."
The worst naming incident I ever heard of: A lady was in the doctor's office waiting for her examination has been reading the posters in the examining room. When the doctor comes in she announces that she's finally found a name for her unborn daughter - it's the prettiest word she's ever seen/heard. She's going to call her daughter di-AH-re-a. Doctor didn't even know where to begin to talk her out of it - she was just so happy with that name.
So what does she put on equivalent cakes? "Happy Birthday, Parental Unit"? Warm family.
@Craig -
"Wrecker's equivalent of correction tape..." You made me laugh! :)
Excuse me people, but we are all missing the really important issue here. They went overboard on the frosting, but only put one sprinkle at the bottom? By my count there are only 14 sprinkles in the entire picture. That is an outrage. Maybe if they had worried less about the gender of the child and more about what would really please them (ie sprinkles) the cake wouldn't have ended up here. :)
I have a friend who works as a nurse. She also tells the feh-mal-ee story. But she betters it with the tale of the woman who named her daughter Febreze. That's Feb-reez. It may be called something different in the States, but over here in the UK it's an air freshener. And you know what? If people are dumb enough to create the wrecks Jen and John have brought us, they're certainly dumb enough to name their children after household products. I personally plan on calling my first born, male or female, Kaikrex. Nice ring to it, don't you think?
OK, no urban legend here -- I've retired from a large federal agency everyone loves to hate. I'd daily take phone calls from people who had problems, most not serious, but it was to them. One day, a lady from West Virginia called. As I was taking her information, I asked her to spell her first name. Out came "M-a-r-g-a-r-i-n-e." She must've heard the same question marks in my silence, honed over 40 years of receiving the same sorts of responses over the years, because she then said, "it's pronounced the way I said it --'Mar-jar-EENE!"
My mother works in a medical lab, and consequently sees a *lot* of names in the course of a day. She sees a lot of "Boy" and "Son" as given names, along with car names, sports team names, and zingers like "Macho", "Prowess", and "Panache". The best one I can recall is "Vendetta" (soooo pretty! *choke*).
Other names that by some miracle were registered around here in the last few years:
- No. 16 Bus Shelter
- Violence
- Midnight Chardonnay
- Talula Does The Hula From Hawai'i (the poor child told all her friends she was called "K")
Some people..?!?
I'm a nurse and we had a baby come in with this name. They pronounced it "Fem-all-ee" True story...you can't even make this stuff up!!
Correction tape! I love it!
Female rhymes with tamale is probably correct. Daughter took baby photos in hospital newborn unit. Popular name: Nevaeh (heaven spelled backwards) L-A (ladasha) is real and being foisted on children. Also woman who has named 3 kids for liquers and yet has trouble spelling them. Considering her poor judgement, will probably continue to imbibe and reproduce.
No lie. My husband's boss's kid is named Female (pronounced Feh-MAHL-ee). Sad thing is... kid's his SON.
His wife is from some country. I forget which. The boss has since moved on to another division, or I'd totally ask him. Apparently the name actually means something in whatever language it is they speak there. Still didn't stop us from teasing him about it, though.
@ Diana
Reminds me of a linguistics story (have no idea if it''s true) but it goes that someone was doing some study of sounds, 'beautiful/lyrical' verses 'ugly/harsh' and surveyed non-English speakers about what words regardless of meaning sound the most phonetically beautiful
Winners: Diarrhea and gonorrhea
"At least they didn't address it to the dog."
How do you know is isn't addressed to the dog? That looks like a female dog to me, and we all know how squeamish some people are about using the correct formal term for a female dog ("bitch").
I have to agree with those who say most of these strange name stories are urban legends. They always happened to a friend of a friend. Still, so many people (including certain ex-governors of Alaska) give their kids bizarre and embarrassing names that you can never be sure a story isn't true somewhere.
A few years ago, I saw a list of the most popular names for babies born in Texas hospitals that year. One of the top five for girls was "Messiah." A hard name to live up to, I'm guessing.
Some things I've heard of people naming babies based on words they heard or saw in the hospital:
Placenta
Anesthesia (actually, I kind of like that one)
Oxygen
Nosmo King
Hydrangea
One thing I can vouch for: A relative of mine named her daughter "Medea," pronounced "media."
If you don't see why that's funny, look up the myth of Medea (hint: fratricide, dismemberment, poisoning, and infanticide).
Had a student long, long ago named Doctor. His mother wasn't taking any chances.
I once went to a urologist whose name was Dr. Chopp. His first name was Richard, but he went by Dick. Dr. Dick Chopp, who specialized in vasectomies. I wish I was making this up.
I went to school with Urban Grass and Ellis Island. Yes, children of the 60s.
My mother worked in the court system here in Orlando, FL, and "Female" is pronounced "fe-mal-ee." That one's not an urban myth- it's documented in court records. SMH
My sister knows a young lady named Abcde. Seriously! Pronounced abba see dee!!
I have met a woman named Trivia, and another named Latrine. Latrine isn't having a good life, I met her when I was volunteering in jail.
My grandfather knew a Rigger Mortis.
I've spoken to a woman named Velveeta and a guy whose name is Richard Moan who went by Dick. I always thought he would make it in the porno industry because he wouldn't have to change his name!
On a baby name announcement: Walmartia. Named after the store no doubt. I wonder if she might have been conceived there. Little sis was Tiffernia, which sounds like the name of a kingdom in a fantasy novel.
Then there are the names of kids in the early intervention program I work for. Many are normal and easy to read and pronounce. But every now and then, you get ones that make you wonder if the parents don't do the "30 years from now test."
...address it to the dog! I have to clean off my screen now...
(also loved the correction tape and "only 14 sprinkles")
"Had a student long, long ago named Doctor. His mother wasn't taking any chances."
I am *so* glad it's illegal in this country to bestow titles/honours/ranks as given names! (King, Duchess, Prince, Earl, Major, etc.)
On the topic of groovy names... I've known my fair share of kids with names like Petal Rose, Ocean Wave, and Gaia's Summer Skies ("Summer", who was known only as "G" from the age of 15, when she started wearing all-black and copious amounts of silver jewellery, often in the form of bats and spiders).
Pregnant with #2 overe her and after all the grief we got over #1's name, I'm telling everyone that we're naming the baby abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz. That's abka-defji-jekyll-monof-for-stew-wickzys.
Some racehorse owners I knew when I was a kid had named their son Prince Gay, as if he was a Thoroughbred. I assume he either changed it as soon as he legally could or grew up to be a psychotic cake wreckorator specializing in pony CCCs (patooie).
"You make me feel like a natural female."
I read in an article that over in some foreign countries, the authorities were having to talk people OUT of naming their children "vagina". It sounded pretty over there, and the authorities were having problems talking parents-to-be out of it.
My grandmother also told me about a girl named Pajama. It was pronounced Paj-a-mah and came out of the Sears catalog. No joke.
Sounds like it's from a Ferengi.
When my sibs and I were little and Mom would get angry with us, she’d forget our names. She’d point at one of us and yell, “WHOEVER YOU ARE, GO TO YOUR ROOM!”
@Meg: Gaia's Summer Skies sounds like a name for a show dog, not a baby!
I worked in a public health center and we had people name their poor childdren: Nausea (I kid you not!), Lord michael, Duke Thomas and Princess Queen. My uncle was named baby boy by the doctor because my grandparents had no clue what to name him. (he was the sixth boy in the family and they had picked out a girls name in hope.)
I have a friend that worked for the Dept. of child services. He said you would not believe some of the names he saw. So far every one listed here appeared in his files (as well as the one I'm adding).
I think the best one is S-*-*-T-H-E-A-D. Pronounced s**- theed. Not kidding. The rumor was going around in high school that a girl with that named worked at Wal-Mart. We actually went to Wal-Mart and tracked her down. Yes, she had a name tag with that name on it!
Bree, I knew a Velveeta as well. She was a patient of mine, but used the name Vicky. I never had the nerve to ask if her siblings were Jack, Colby and Brie.
My mother called all five of us "George" when she got flustered. Regardless of gender.
I used to work in a hospital and assisted the vital statistics registrar with typing birth certificates. One woman named her son "Lord Almighty Allah Gibson". Are you allowed to name your kid God? We did try to talk her out of it. Who needs another male who thinks he's God's gift?