Pick A Reason To Slap This Woman

I can think of several. Basically, this lady in Britian who can't afford kids has 13 and one more on the way.

Normally I'm all about people who choose to have big families. I wanted a huge family myself, but it doesn't look like things are going to work out that way. This lady lives in a 3-bedroom house, though, and her husband makes very little money.

But that's not why we're here today. We're not here to snark at her large household, or her lack of money, or her earnest desire to have twins.

We're here to snark at the godawful names she's given her children.

Let's run down the list:

Patrick: Nothing wrong here. Unless you're like me and have a personal gripe with the man who drove the pagans out of Ireland. But that's just me.

Stephen: Nothing to see here, move along.

Malachi: Eh, well, it's England and they have different names over there.

Peppermint: PEPPERMINT? Are you SH*TTING ME? Why not just name her Stripper Who Will Get Knocked Up at 16? Do you WANT men to visualize your teenage daughter as a lickable candy? Do you WANT to traumatize your daughter by giving her aname no one is able to take seriously? If she was born at Christmas, which is my theory here, why not name her Holly or Natalie, not friggin PEPPERMINT.

Echo: Time-honored hippy name. I might have snarked a bit more if I didn't have some good ones further down the list. I will say that I for one don't want my child to think of herself as an echo of anyone or anything else, though.

Eli: Nothing wrong here. Lady, you obviously have SOME sense in choosing names, did you just go batsh*t crazy for the others? Like poor little:

Rogue: I see you're a comic book fan. I like comic books, too. I won't be naming my kids after fictional comic book characters , though, or even after Tolkien, like poor little:

Frodo: No. No no no no no. Frodo is just a horrible, ugly name... that's why no one ever uses it, even though he's one of the top fictional characters ever. Looks like, oh, EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD has a little more sense than this lady.

Morpheus: :::headdesk::: In civilized society today, it's generally understood that if you MUST name a child after The Matrix, you confine yourself to "Trinity". We do NOT use Morpheus.

Artemis: I see you're having a flirtation with Greek mythology here, what with Morpheus (also the god of dreams) and now Artemis. You couldn't have just went with Diana? Too simple for your tastes?

Blackbird: This goes back to my earlier post about the difference between pet names and baby names. "Blackbird" is not a baby name. I'm not a big fan of the name Raven (Let's name our kid after a carrion-eater!) but even that would be preferable to Blackbird.

Baudelaire: Yeah, give your Brit kid a French name. I'm sure that'll go over well for the rest of his life.

And finally, little Voorhees.

Voorhees.

I'm tempted to think that this name comes from Jason Voorhess, but I don't want to think that. I want to think that there's some perfectly good, logical reason for naming the kid Voorhees. Of course, most of the other baby names that came from this woman showed very little logic, or even thought of any kind, so I can't be sure that the kid isn't named after the Friday the 13th movies.

So, out of all the reasons to slap this woman, Voorhees is the one I pick. How about you?

If It Doesn't Have Floppy Ears And A Tail, Don't Name It Rocket

I'm back... it's been a hectic few days, but I've had more bad baby names stewing in my head. Today, specifically, I'm going to focus on people who give dog names to their babies.

You know what I mean. Rainy. Apple. Rocket. Fury. These are names that are far more appropriate to some sort of furry quadruped than they are to your adorable little baby, who by the way is going to someday be old and grizzled and probably ashamed of that oh-so-cutesy name.

(I just can't say it enough, people; these kids are going to grow up and out of their cute little baby names. KEEP THIS IN MIND.)

Here are a few notable pet-like baby names I have come across personally in my time:

Rainy and Breezy, two sisters. It was the first time I had ever seen adverbs used as baby names. I was appalled.

Chaos and Fury, two brothers. What I wanted to tell their mother was this: "Just because you consider yourself to be a freak, and have a neck tattoo and gauged-out earrings, and in your mind you're just terribly cool, is no reason to saddle your kids with horrible horse-names."

Rocket as a middle name. Having it as a middle name makes it NO BETTER. A friend of mine in high school had Star as a middle name, and even this agonized her to the point where she begged the DOT not to put it on her driver's license.

And of course then there's Apple. It's cute and all, but really, is there any other kid out there named for food?

Ugh. Cute is for baby clothes, not baby names. If you must use a cutesy name, how about using one of those old fashioned things called "nicknames"? If you think that Rocket is just the best name ever for a kid, let that kid retain his dignity and name him Robert. Call him Rocket at home for the rest of his life, but allow him to conduct his professional affairs without anyone else knowing about it.

Better yet, confine noun names to your dogs...