The naming of children

Darren has a nice set of guidelines when it comes to naming your children.

I am, in any number of ways, a relatively-conservative curmudgeon. One of those ways is the naming of children. I have no children, and have never meaningfully contributed to the naming of another child. Nonetheless, I have devised a few simple rules for safely naming your kids:

1. Do not draw on an ethnic tradition that is not your own. This to me smacks of cultural imperialism and a kind of yearning for deeper roots. As a Canadian of many generations, I can sympathize with your lame, vanilla, Anglo-Saxon background. Tough luck.
2. Do not devise a creative spelling for your child’s otherwise-ordinary name. All you’re doing is making yourself look flaky and cursing the kid with a lifetime of saying, “uh, no, with two i’s”.
3. As a kind of corollary to #2, don’t use a normal-looking name but insist on an abnormal pronounciation. Unfortuntaly, the kid may do this on their own when they get to college.
4. Do not manufacture a name. People have been naming children for thousands of years. All of human history has done a better job inventing names than you will. Buy a baby name book and pick one you like.

I agree with those rules though certainly people will and do break them. I may even break them when I eventually have children. I constantly suggest to Marcy that we name our children “Quasar” or “Jukebox” (so far no luck in persuading but I’ll keep on trying).

I think most parents are sensible when it comes to names (I’m sure we’ll be included) but there are some people out there who want to differentiate themselves and it’s their children who are forced to deal with the consequences of this attempt at being a “cut above the rest”. When it comes to it, rule #4 is probably our best bet.

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