Ok, you can stop denying this. I'm not a lying racist, I'm currently an MSW student and would never perpetuate stupid, racist stereotypes for the sake of fucking fake internet points, which I already have enough of anyways.

Let me explain how cultural phenomena works: You're probably right, this may have started as a stupid rumor and may be horribly racist in nature. But in culture, especially in rural, lower-class, low-income households like most families in rural North Carolina (and not necessarily black - I jested earlier about white people being the primary offenders of spelling their kids' names in weird ways), access to things like the internet and education aren't given, they're seen as luxuries. I don't have empirical evidence on this other than my own observations and the obvious differences between schools' budgets in an upper-class town in the Triangle, like Durham, or a more rural town like Yadkinville - access to good, healthy lunches, computer access, gyms, auditoriums, books, etc. Most of these mothers don't even have a high school education. I witnessed completely different reactions to my iphone - in rural areas, having an iphone meant I had kids wanting to grab it or play with it and I always had to be sure to keep it hidden, whereas in other areas, they all had their own phones. Quotes from movies, cultural phenomena, and other universal phrases, colloquialisms, and metaphors are spread around by word of mouth in some way or another, like one giant, global game of telephone spanning centuries. (i.e. "god bless you," or "our way or the highway," or "the shoe's on the other foot," or "when in Rome.") Somewhere, somebody heard about this name from some rumor, article on the internet, list of weird baby names from Time.com, wherever, who knows - and the information got passed on. And on. And on. Until finally, a particularly poorly educated individual in one of those neighborhoods heard that name "La-a" completely out of context and liked it. For the same reason someone would name their kids "Edward" and "Bella." Do you and I think it's stupid? Yes, because we have the context of our social and cultural environments and know those names are the romantic leads of a particularly religious-agenda pushing author's book about vampires. Our friends, families, peers, co-workers, and things like reddit have taught us that's crazy, that these are terrible characters, and so and so forth. But what happens when someone who doesn't have the education or exposure to think about those characters as critically as you or I? Or maybe it's their age, or cultural identity, religious beliefs, some context, some understanding, something else we don't have that makes them connect to these characters, and thus decided to name their freaking children after them. If I asked you which was worse, someone naming their 2 kids "Edward" and "Bella," or someone naming their two kids "Tyrion" and "Khaleesi," you probably would lean less towards the latter simply because in the greater context of society, Twilight names are worse than weird ass Game of Thrones names, but because GOT is more culturally and socially acceptable, our perspectives lean immediately towards those. You may even object saying, "Khaleesi is her TITLE, not her name," because you have the context for it, whereas someone who named their daughter that may not know that, or maybe they do know that and don't care, or maybe they just like the sound of it, who the fuck knows. So what happens when you remove someone from the access to the internet, a phone, cable, etc. and then they hear that name out of context? That person has no idea that they're naming their kid something horribly racist that perpetuates racial stereotypes. I'm sure N'Spiration's mother thinks that's a gorgeous name. I'm sure she thought it was perfectly fine to invent a name like that and completely change the spelling. Is it? For us, probably not. For her, it is. So don't sit there and tell me I didn't meet a child named La-a. I certainly fucking did. There was only one, and I can remember the school she went to because I remember hearing those shitty rumors too, but I'll be damned, there she was. Her parents probably have absolutely no clue where that name comes from or the context associated with it, but they heard it somewhere away from its negative meaning and associations and decided they liked it enough to name their kid that. People really can be that ignorant, I know it's hard to imagine.

So do I feel for these kids? Yes. Am I outright making fun of them or their parents? No, dude, I understand that context is everything and uneducated individuals are more likely to name their child something they don't fully understand the meaning of. I'm not blaming them for their lack of education, lack of resources like the internet, or even for their ignorance, but don't sit there and ask me not to point out how irritating it is to see people name their kids this shit when you got pissed off just by me including that name on the list and, without any evidence besides an article, not knowing who I am or where I come from or what kind of person I am, accused me of lying because that's an easier idea to process than the idea of someone ACTUALLY naming their daughter La-a. That's how willful cultural ignorance works. This is the same thing that happens when people accuse those who have claimed they were sexually abused of lying for attention or whatever. It's easier to throw statistics of how many people lie about being raped than it is to process the fact that some people have actually been raped. You have no goddamn idea what you're talking about, so learn to accept that this shit got passed around enough that somewhere along the way, it lost its meaning and context and someone eventually named their kid that, probably citing that exact article saying, "look, someone ELSE named their kid that, it's not weird."