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An item about a child supposedly named Le-a began circulating on the Internet in early October 2008. While the unusually named child in versions circulated back then was almost always said to attend a school in Livingston Parish (Louisiana), we encountered one stray version that stated This child attends a school in Richland County, Georgia and another that said This child attends a school in Detroit, MI. The closing line of the anecdote (the dash don't be silent) positions the person who bestowed the moniker as African-American through its phrasing in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also known as Ebonics: Such use of don't be in place of isn't is particular to AAVE. The racist and disapproving aspect of this item is clearly expressed in comments appended to many versions, such as And we let these people vote! and They live among us, they vote, and they breed!: As to whether there is such a child, despite our hearing from dozens and dozens of readers who have claimed to us a girl bearing such a name was in their class or was in a class taught by a relative or acquaintance of theirs, we've yet to find documentation of anyone's bearing a name of Le-a that is pronounced Ledasha (or any other way). What we have found through searching online Social Security databases (which are not complete repositories of information and thus aren't the final say in the matter) showed that while there were more than 4,000 Leas, there weren't any Le-as. For what it's worth, references in various news stories document that Ledasha (fully spelled out, not in a Le-a form) has indeed been used as a girl's name. While the original e-mail quoted above dated from early October 2008, the first online appearance of the Ledasha story we've found so far is at least a month older. In that 5 September 2008 entry from ClayTravis.net, Ledasha spelled her name with an apostrophe: As to the use of symbols within (or in place of) names, while such practice is rare, it is not unknown. In 1993, recording artist Prince changed his name to an orthographic representation he dubbed Love Symbol and styled himself The Artist Formerly Known as Prince before reverting in 2000 to his original name. And the author of the 2008 book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles renders her name as Jennifer 8 Lee. Symbols and letters can be combined to form words that are easily pronounceable based on the understood sounds assigned to various symbols: The male name Matt could be rendered as M@ for instance, with most people easily working out how to say it. However, such a system of creative (or kre8tiv) spellings has some drawbacks, which we'll highlight by looking at how those factors would affect a name like Le-a: In the ten years since we first published this article, we've heard from hundreds of people who have claimed that they knew a student, classmate, patient, neighbor, co-worker -- or relative thereof -- named Le-a, yet the existence of any person actually so named remains elusively undocumented.
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