[Tom4784]

Southwest Airlines has apologised after a member of its staff mocked a five-year-old girl's name.

Traci Redford and her daughter, Abcde (pronounced ab-si-dee), were en route home to El Paso, Texas, from California's John Wayne Airport when the incident occurred.

A gate agent allegedly began laughing and took a photo of the child's boarding pass and posted it online.

Airline spokesperson Chris Mainz offered the family a "sincere apology".

Ms Redford said the gate agent "started laughing, pointing at me and my daughter, talking to other employees", and her daughter had asked her why they were mocking her.

"She said: 'Mom, why is she laughing at my name?' And I said not everyone is nice and not everyone is going to be nice and it's unfortunate," Ms Redford said.

Vocativ, a news and data website, published a piece in 2014 saying there were at that time 328 children in the US named "Abcde", according to the Social Security Administration.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46393501

The employee was in the wrong for posting it online and laughing in front of the customers but wtf is the mother thinking with that spelling? Why not spell it Absidee or Absidy if she wanted to give her daughter a unique name? That girl is gonna get mocked relentlessly until she's old enough to change her name.

Names like that are basically child abuse.