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[Facts] Themistocles
There's a comment about this name in the database that says if anyone's named Themistocles, they must have had a tough time through school. Why is this? I'm not sure what Themistocles sounds like that would cause the kid to have a hard time through school.-------------------------------------------------------
As I said before, I never repeat myself.
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Some people assume that any very unusual name, especially if it's one with four syllables, will cause other kids to make fun of the name bearer. And that expectation is probably a bit greater with boys than with girls. I would also suppose that the fact that the accented syllable is pronounced like "Miss" might be a bit hard for some boys in English speaking countries to deal with.
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Try it in South Africa! Here, 'mis' is the word for, er, manure ... and Phyllis, if pronounced in an Afrikaans accent, sounds identical with the Afrikaans word for garbage or rubbish. A minefield ... however, my husband's very Afrikaans granny named her first daughter Phyllis, which was fashionable at the time: the child died at the age of 3, so nobody knows how she would have grown up, thought of her name etc.
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