Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

As you might imagine, growing up with a last name of Boyink had it’s moments.  While school kids can usually find a way to make fun of *any* name, Boyink is an obvious target.  I learned early on to diffuse the joke potential by being the first one to have fun with it.  Usually on the first day of class the teacher would be taking roll, and there would be a pause as they came to my name.  I would quickly pipe up and pronounce it for them, then say it was “like a sound effect” or something, get a few laughs and that would be the end of it.

Now fast forward 30 years and I really appreciate the name.  It’s short, punchy, memorable, and Googles well (as long as you overlook some of the odd referrers that come in that are obviously expecting something totally not web development related…I’ll let you stew on that one…). 

I was listening to NPR today, and they had a segment on people with unusual names. I felt inclined to call into a radio show for the first time in my life - just to point out the internet-age advantages of an unusual name.  Turns out I’m not alone in that thinking as NPR linked to this Wall Street Journal article about new parents evaluating the search engine placement of potential names for their children.  Ah well - no great surprise there I guess.

So anyway - “pfooey” to all the teasers growing up - viva la “Boyink”!  And “Strawberry”.  And “Chantilly”  And “Burgess”..

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. Nathan Smith on June 14, 2007

   Haha, that’s awesome. I’ve felt the exact opposite my whole life. I was getting my car worked on the other day, and the mechanic said: “Nathan… Smith. You in the witness protection program?”

2. Joshua on June 19, 2007

   My last name is “Wehner”. The fun-making opportunities are obvious, but that never slowed anyone down.

   I’m always surprised by the efforts people seem to go to semi-deliberately mispronounce it: no, not “Werner” or “Wemner” or “Warner”.

   It’s particularly frustrating in the airport, or other public-announcement-prone environments: When they call “Werner” to the podium, I go up, just in case.

   I lived in Germany for a year during university, and it was a wonderful change of pace.

3. Boyink (Author) on June 19, 2007

   Joshua - I feel for ya!

   We get the deliberate misprounciation as well, mostly with people wanting to make Boyink into two syllables.

   Its funny…reading the comments on that NPR blog even people with more normal names seem to have issues.

Back to Article