An interesting side effect of my research for the book is that I’ve developed Bad Baby Name Sympathy. I find that I start defending the name-givers.

Take this blog post, for instance, about Cate Blanchett’s new child and baby name. No offense to the author, but I find it hard to believe that anyone these days is surprised or shocked by celebrity baby names. I mean, really? And this one isn’t that bad: Ignatius.

Apparently, our sense of justice and fairplay about names is deeply ingrained and not easily uprooted.

And I’m not just saying this because I secretly wanted to name my kid Ignatius. Promise.

Posted: April 14th, 2008 under Name Media.
Comments: 2

Yesterday, April Fool’s Day, was a day of unrealized dreams: dreams of all the great, funny names I could claim are true. But in reality, in this case, the truth is funnier than the pranks. Really. And if you don’t believe me, buy my book (more shameless self promotion, check out the links on the sidebar) or just browse through the comments on Assignment 1.

I did, however, see a number of fun, Bad Baby Name-related items. I’ll highlight two here:

The featured article on the main page of Wikipedia yesterday was about the infamous Ima Hogg. Is there any better example of a Bad Baby Name in the real world? Here are some interesting things gleaned from the article:

• Ima was named after something specific, in this case a character in a poem her uncle wrote. Apparently her father was unaware of what he was doing until after the christening. As I’ve said, well-meaning ignorance.
• Ima was made fun of in school.
• She disliked her own name. She purposely wrote her own signature illegibly and often avoided situations where she’d have to explain her name.
• There was no “Ura” or “Hoosa”. At least not in this family (I did find a Ura Hogg in Arkansas in 1880, though it may have been Ura Hagg—not much better).
• Despite her name, she was quite successful.
• She defended her father’s honor to the end.

It’s an interesting read into the psychology of bad baby naming. Check it out.

As to the other item, I need to explain a little. If you’ve read my book (can you say shameless self-promotion?), you know that I’m a geek. Stand proud, I say. You may have gleaned that from my Dungeon Dragon Gygax comment before. Well, on the Dungeons & Dragons homepage, they always go all out for April Fool’s and they had this “press release“.

Did anyone else see any good April Fool’s jokes that deserve mention here?

Posted: April 2nd, 2008 under Name Media.
Comments: 1

By far the most common question I get about my book is “What do you think motivates people to name their kids these things?” I don’t think anyone could come up with one single answer, but the fact that these kinds of names show up in every census in every state, not to mention that everyone has their own first-hand stories of so-called “bad baby names,” suggests there’s more to it than just a trend.

In general, my theory is that most people who name their kids crazy things fall into one of three categories: they are legitimately just being silly, they are well-meaning but ignorant of the name they’re bestowing, or they have some personal and special meaning behind the given name. I’ll talk about the first two later, but “Tm” left an interesting comment on Assignment 1 that talks to the last point.  The following is from a personal history that Tm sent me that expands on  the story some as a father explains to his son the origin of his interesting name:

“Ever since I set eyes on [your mother] she was the only one for me. So when she turned [my proposal of marriage] down I was a very much upset….So I told her that I was going away but if she should ever change her mind, just send me one message, ‘Return Richard’, and I would return as fast as my horse could bring me. At least in this case, the old provervb ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’, proved true, for it wasn’t many months until the message came to me, ‘Return Richard’. It was such a precious message that when your were born I insisted that Return Richard was to be your name.”

Now I think that’s romantic, and a story like that makes a name like Return not so hard to take, at least from my perspective.  A name bestowed for a special reason doesn’t have quite the same bite.  I suspect stories like this lie behind many of the crazy names in history, but what do I know?

Posted: March 25th, 2008 under Book, Name Highlight.
Comments: 1

It’s amazing how having a kid takes you out of the loop for a while. Thanks to everyone who’s been commenting and reading. Now it’s onward and upward.

Last week I ran across this article in Mental Floss magazine that’s apropos.

When I was researching The Book I actually came across this name (the longest name in recorded history, supposedly), Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenberger-
dorffvoralternwarengewissenhaftschaferswessenschafewaren-
wohlgepflegeundsorgfaltigkeitbeschutzenvonangreifendurch-
ihrraubgierigfeindewelchevoralternzwolftausendjahresvoran-
dieerscheinenwanderersteerdemenschderraumschiffgebrauch-
lichtalsseinursprungvonkraftgestartseinlangefahrthinzwischen-
sternartigraumaufdersuchenachdiesternwelchegehabtbewohn-
barplanetenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneurassevonver-
standigmenschlichkeitkonntefortplanzenundsicherfreuenan-
lebenslanglichfreudeundruhemitnichteinfurchtvorangreifenvon-
andererintelligentgeschopfsvonhinzwischensternartigraum, Senior.  In fact, I ran across it several times, though I could never verify where it came from. So this is nice, though I still haven’t found any actual proof of it. Then again, proof just kind of ruins good legends, doesn’t it?

Posted: March 24th, 2008 under Name Fun, Name Media.
Comments: 7