Does anyone ever guess right? Because knowing little kids, he’ll change it to make you have the wrong answer haha
Depends on his mood. The only people I’ve never seen win are his little brothers 
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I think that alternative spellings should at least follow the rules of whatever language the name is. You can’t break the rules of the language and then be mad when no one knows how to spell or pronounce the name.
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My tepid take:
I love the name Heidi even though it’s an old lady name in Germany because it has different connotations in my country, and that’s alright! I have been internally arguing with myself about the issue, so this newsflash might seem a bit unimpressive 
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I agree. [name_f]My[/name_f] cousin’s an elementary school teacher & there was a family at her school that all the siblings had names that left out vowels where there really needed to be a vowel, but no change to pronunciation. Something along the lines of Jadn, [name_m]Logn[/name_m], Devn, Coltn, Karsn, etc. Literally any vowel would be better than no vowel.
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Along those lines! Sometimes replacing “o” with “y” really confuses me, because I don’t know how the parents want it to be pronounced. Is Emersyn and Jordyn supposed to be said the same way as Emerson and Jordan?
Intuitively, if I see Emersyn I will pronounce it emer-sin (instead of emer-suhn), because that’s what makes sense linguistically, and I genuinely never know if that’s the right or wrong way to say it 
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in my accent, emerson // jordan and emersyn // jordyn sound exactly the same, so that might be part of why some people spell it with the -yn endings.
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A lukewarm take perhaps, but, I don’t mind mismatched sibsets!
I actually find them quite interesting - Like, what could have prompted the sibset [name_f]Emma[/name_f], [name_u]John[/name_u], and Scheherazade?! I have to know! 
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No, you’re not the only one! I see that quite often. I’ll quickly look for some examples.
I came across this Dutch webpage were these names that were used in the Netherlands in medieval times are being called exotic!
Another example: these lists with ‘exotic’ names include names like Alexandra, Jasmine, Freya, Aurora, Damian, Leonardo, Marley and Jaxon.
Exotische meisjesnamen, pagina 1, naar populariteit - ZeeVanNamen.nl, Exotische jongensnamen, pagina 1, naar populariteit - ZeeVanNamen.nl
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The y’s replacing practically every other vowel is one that annoys me because y making a short i sound (ih) is a Welsh thing, and people apply it to Scottish, Irish, and English names like it’s all the same. Kynnedy, fully breaks the rules of the language.
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I don’t think it’s exclusively Welsh, though? Plenty of English words have y in the middle pronounced like “ih” – hymn, onyx, or abyss come to mind, most of which came from Greek → Latin → English
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Yes but those words have all been adopted into English but originate from another language. You’re right, it’s not exclusively Welsh, that was just off the top of my head, my point was that people apply those rules improperly to names from languages with different rules.
I used the example of Kynnedy because it is a common alternative spelling of Kennedy, which is an Irish and Scottish name. The alternative spelling breaks the rules of the language of origin.
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They’re exclusively English! I just put the origins they evolved from to say they weren’t Welsh, sorry if that wasn’t clear! Like hymn came from the Greek humnos and abyss from abussos, but hymn and abyss themselves are English, unliked adopted words like tortilla or safari that are direct borrowings from other languages.
And I do understand your point. I just personally think it’s more about being pronounceable in the language of use rather than the language of origin. But I understand why spellings that don’t work with the rules for their original language might bother somebody!
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It’s interesting, it’s so uncommon I kinda forgot that y’s make that sound as long as they’re in the first syllable of a word. I wonder why we spell those words with y’s when they could be spelled with i’s and be less ambiguous, because y’s have so many different jobs in english.
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It’s true, there aren’t that many of them! I could only think of the three examples I used . It’s interesting all of them seem to have evolved Greek → Latin → [name_f]English[/name_f], changing a little each time, I wonder if that has something to do with it!
(And now I see your Wikipedia screenshot! Looks like that language evolution pattern is part of it. That’s super interesting, thank you for sharing! I took a linguistics class last semester in college and stuff like this makes me want to take more of them!)
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I don’t even see it as an old lady name. Adelheid as a full form as mostly died out and I don’t see Heidi coming back because of the cartoon. At this point I’d more likely assume a Heidi is an American whose parents drew inspiration from German than a German! Much like with Gretchen 
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Don’t know if this is a hot take or not but…
[name_u]Brooklyn[/name_u] > [name_f]Brooklynn[/name_f]
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The opposite would be a hot take
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Yeah, I see that now
I see so many people with two N’s in their name and it just looks strange to me.
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