It's Happening...The Name Game

The increasingly strange art of what to call your kid by Peter Gilstrap


Once upon a time in the not too distant past, babies were given simple names: John, Jane, Frank, Alice, Brian, Barbara. Wonderfully stock, standard handles that gave the youngster room to create him or herself of their own accord, to fashion their own personality free from the pressure to live up to some kind of pre-ordained parental vision.

Then the ‘60s came along cluttered with that ridiculous hippie aesthetic—be wild, be original, do your own thing, man—and, with all that free love reproduction arrived a slew of absurd appellations. Sunflower, Rainbow, Moonjava, Snowphish. All well and groovy, but growing into adulthood and introducing yourself as Windsong doesn’t make you feel special, it makes you feel like an idiot.

Consider David Bowie’s son, who the Thin White Duke christened Zowie; by the time he was 12, he was calling himself Joe.

These days, apparently the recent surge in quasi-Ellis Island throwbacks like Liam, Hannah, and Joshua is not enough. Be it boredom or a misplaced quest for wacky originality, names worldwide are taking a turn toward the bizarre. In China alone, some 3,500 newborns will be answering to “Olympics.” But it doesn’t stop there…

What could be worse than an infant who can’t use his name as an Internet domain? “The trend hints at the potential importance of domain names in establishing one’s future digital identity,” stresses Yahoo news. Maybe there’s a point here. After all, someone snared the dot com identity for Britney’s spawn. And children, along with the world wide web, are our future. As the song goes, “God bless the child that’s got his own…”

A Chinese couple, apparently eschewing the now prosaic “Olympics,” has chosen “@” as their kid’s moniker. It could certainly stand out in a playground full of  &’s, *’s and !’s.

Having “Slayer” tattooed on your left breast is one thing, but a Swedish mommy is gung ho to name her son “Metallica.” The country’s tax authority (Big Blond Brother controls the population registry) is none too pleased, stating that the name is “ugly.” Good thing she isn’t a fan of The 1910 Fruit Gum Company.


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