The Name Game

As many who know me know, I have become a dad.

This naturally leads to many new, irrational fears about the universe which I will no doubt expound on at a later date. At the moment my main focus will be on names.

My wife and I spent nearly the full 9 months (Not counting hypothetical conversations in the years before) deciding on names, and I think we did well to deliberate on this for such a long time, longer than we spent making many other decisions, because this is the name our child will be stuck with until it is legally old enough to change its name. Now I made some less than serious suggestions (Optimus Prime, Minime) but in the end I am happy with what we chose, and I think our child has a name it can live with (or at least a very normal middle name should it need a fallback)

However, others are not nearly so sensible.

In the bed opposite us were a couple who, despite being give 9 months had yet to decide on a name. Come on, really, did you have something more important to do.

Worse are some of the really strange names that people come up with, most of which go to show that perhaps they may not be that suitable to be parents. There was a couple who were annoyed that they weren't allowed to call their child 4Real, and so settled for Superman.

Superman!

And of course the Man U fan who named his boy after all 11 players on their team (of course if you did that with all 10 Doctors it would be Sad, but as its football its a bit eccentric)

Of course it seems like if you are a celebrity then absurd names are mandatory, Michael Jackson still probably the worst with the absurd Prince Michael, and the absurd and unimaginative Prince Michael II.

What has bugged me is that in the 4Real case, some kid will have to grow up with that name because his parents were so stupid they couldn't even master Velcro shoes. In fact the only reason 4Real (which will give the kid some really odd initials) was refused was because our system will only allow names made up of letters, no numbers. That's the entire criteria for what some poor little tyke will be stuck with for life. What we need is something like the french system.

in France, your name has to pass official scrutiny. So no Superman here. In fact you'd also have to make a pretty good argument for Kal'El, however, Clarke would be fine. A child could grow up as a Clarke, or a Kyle, or Tony or even a Logan without too much hassle. See I'm not wanting to limit names, just take out the really stupid ones. My system has a couple of extra features.

On first stupid name, a simple No, go away and think again is presented. There will be reasons as to why the name is stupid provided for future instruction.

On second stupid name a list of suggested names will be provided as a guideline, alongside a list of unsuitable ones. Unsuitable ones will be on a red sheet of paper with UNSUITABLE written at the top to avoid confusion.

On third attempt the parents are denied the opportunity to name their child and the name is decided from a list. The parents are also earmarked for further scrutiny by child services.

To all potential parents, giving your child a dumb name is child abuse, yes Nicholas Cage or Angelina Jolie do it, but their kids will never really live in the real world, yours will have to go to a normal school with normal cruel kids in. Introducing yourself as 4real will not go down well.