WHILST most teachers love their jobs, educating the next generation can come with plenty of downsides.
One teacher, however, has taken to social media to rant about an unusually named kid in her class and it’s so ‘wild’ it even has punctuation!
Though kids often stick out for bad behaviour or their personality quirks, this little one is memorable because of their extremely hard to pronounce moniker.
It has proven so problematic that Devin Dennis, a US dance teacher, has taken to Tiktok to rant about the parents’ choice of name and punctuation.
Stitching her video with a naming consultant (yes, that’s a real job), the teacher explained how she accidentally learnt how pronounced the name during a call with the tot’s parents.
“When you teach kids you see a lot of wild and out names, I get it - everyone wants to be different. But I’m going to put this name up here for you,” she said in the now viral video, as she shared the child’s name: La/a – with a forward slash.
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“How would you [do] think you say that name?” Devin pointedly asked her followers, adding: “If you think you know it, no you don’t.”
Despite teaching dance for several years, she was tripped up revealing that she thought the name was pronounced ‘Leia’ after starring at it for ages.
As she rung the little one’s parents, she was confident that she’d got the difficult moniker down and even asked for Leia’s parents.
Recalling the toe-curling phone call, she asked: “Hello, is this Leia’s parents?”
When this was met with a luke warm reception, Devin then desperately tried to say the name right with mixed results.
“Le Uh?” she said, to which the parent pointedly responded: “…That’s the wrong name.”
For those of you who are curious about how you say this unusual name, it is accurately pronounced: Le Dasha.
Yes, you pronounce the forward slash as 'dash'.
“The dash ain’t silent,” Devin exclaimed, saying: “In what world and time has a dash in fact not been silent?”
Surprisingly, it isn’t the only kids’ name she has seen with this punctuation.
Later in the video, she even revealed that she once met a child called La/Money.
As the video went rapidly viral online, it gained over 4.8 million views with fans struggling to believe that these names were real.
“Isn’t this an urban legend? I’ve heard this exact story so many times,” asked one confused viewer, with another revealing that they’d come across a very similar name at the school gate.
They wrote: “It's not. There's a La-a at my son's school. Her mom actually used a dash though. Not a forward slash.”
Others also commented on the parents’ choice of punctuation, with a third joking: “Me looking for the dash.”
Thankfully, you probably won’t find such unusual spelling at your kids’ school as much more traditional names seem to be in style.
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According to the experts at BabyCentre, the most popular girls name in 2023 was Olivia which was closely followed by Amelia and Isla.
At least, Devin will have no problem pronouncing those.
