All in a Name

Alright, confession time. Sometimes the articles that people read from the Facebook "Washington Post" intrigue me and I read them. An even more embarrassing confession...sometimes I read the Yahoo ones too. (But at least I have enough sense to change my settings to private so that the whole Facebook world doesn't know every little thing I do with my life. And really, have you people never heard of Pandora or Grooveshark? I don't want to be notified every three and half minutes that you're listening to a new Kelly Clarkson song. Facebook has crossed a line of ridiculousness--a ridiculous that I actually do not like--but that is a tangent that I will refrain from discussing right now.)

Anyways, I just read an article entitled "10 Illegal Baby Names". And it just made me think for a bit about the gift and responsibility that comes with naming a child. The article only discusses countries in Europe and Asia and talks about all of the strict laws about naming babies that some of these countries have. Some countries have a list that you have to look at and pick a name off of. Immediately my mind jumped to, "Wow, I'm so glad I live in America where I can name my child whatever the heck I want."

And then I thought...maybe we should have some kind of restrictions or rules. Some people give their kids  pretty unusual and well...dumb names. As someone going into education, I have worked with lots of interestingly named children. There aren't any that come to mind immediately as being so crazily ridiculous that I need to mention them here, but there have been some that I've looked at and kind of scoffed at, thinking, "Really? You poor child."

So then my thoughts developed into the inquiry of why do people feel the need to give their children psychotic names? Do people really crave that huge of a sense of individuality that they have to invent strange names for their baby? Do they ever stop and think, "How will other people react to this name? Will they be able to spell it? Pronounce it? Say it without laughing?" I don't think most people who invent strange names do think about it. They just decide because they invented the name it must be cool and their child will obviously love it.

Now I will admit, it doesn't excite me to think of my children having common names where they will have to be distinguished by their last initial. That would be annoying to have three other people in the same room as you with your name. You don't have to look up the top 20 names of the year and name your child accordingly. Goodness knows that in my teaching years I'm gonna have plenty of Bellas and Jacobs and Edwards running through my classroom (I am very much shaking my head at this moment). But really, I think that there is a line that can be crossed too easily with giving your child a strange name.

I guess my plea is this: think before you write that name on your baby's birth certificate. Think about how this name is what this human being is going to be stuck with for the rest of their life. They will have to write it daily on homework assignments and later on all kinds of various applications. It will be on name plaques on desks and doors. It will be found in directories and labeled on personal belongings. A weird name can make a person seem foolish. Don't doom your child to be prejudged as a fool by their name. Let them pull that one off on their own.