Top Ten Tuesday: Most Unfortunate Character Names

The "Top Ten Tuesday" meme is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish, and this week's topic is unfortunately named characters.

So, in no particular order...

1.) Mundungus Fletcher from Harry Potter — It's a fun name to say, but the whole second syllable of "dung" makes it a very unfortunate name to have.

2.) Gollum/Smeagol from Lord of the Rings — the poor guy has 2 names to choose from and they are both equally awful! No wonder he was so evil. Grima Wormtongue gets an honourable mention here, because really, who wants a last name like that?

3.) Mr. Kissler from Golden by Jennifer Lynn Barnes — because he's the villain, and yet his name contains the word "kiss." Also because when you say "Mr. Kissler" out loud it almost rhymes...

4.) A huge number of names from Lloyd Alexander's The Iron Ring. I love Lloyd Alexander's writing, but the names in this one? They are very strange. Hashkat, Garuda, Rajaswami, Adi-Kavi, Nahusha...I can't decide which is the most unfortunate!

5.) Multiple names from Margaret Buffie's The Watcher's Quest series: Huw (how do you even pronounce that?), Eefa, Gormala, Yegg, Badba... once again, I just can't choose.

6.) Ancilla Trent from Georgette Heyer's The Nonesuch — because it makes her sound about a hundred years old, and she isn't. Runner-up: her love interest Waldo. *shudders*

7.) Jehu from Jennifer Holm's Boston Jane series — Great character, but I never knew how to pronounce his name. Was it like "jeh - hoo" or was it kind of Spanish, like "yay - hoo"? I dunno, in my head it usually sounded like the first one until I started trying to puzzle it out again, at which point I often ended up getting "hey - you" out of it, which can't be right.

8.) Alis from Denise Jaden's Losing Faith — Because he's a guy, and he's saddled with the nickname of "Alis" for "Alistair." No matter how you spin that, it's still pretty unfortunate.

9.) Helmut from Martha Attema's When the War is Over — I'm sure it is nothing out of the ordinary to those familiar with German names, but for me, I tend to think of "helmet" when I see it.

10.) St. John from Jane Eyre — I always thought the pronunciation of it as "sin - jun" (that's how it's said in the movie versions) was pretty ridiculous, to begin with... and secondly why would anybody name their child "Saint" anything? *shakes head*