Laken

I got this one off the back of a minivan, from one of those stickers that advertises every member of the family.

Like this:


Ahh... I love that sticker.

Anyway, this poor mite is named Laken, and as usual, I tried to follow the thought process of the adult who did the naming.

(You know it's a bad name when your spell checker objects, by the way.)

So maybe it's someone who didn't quite want to follow the Jayden trend. Commendable.

Then, perhaps, they thought of the Jayden alternative, Kalen.

(Always makes me think of kale, than name...)

So I suppose that they thought perhaps Kalen was slightly too trendy. The obvious thing to do, to them, was to switch the K and L around. Taa-daa! It's not Jayden, it's not Kalen, but it's just as frickin' stupid. Although I'm sure the parents gave themselves quite a pat on the back for cuteness and originality.

Or am I barking up the wrong tree here... is it pronounced a totally different way? Is it not lay'ken, after all, but rather la-ken'? God, that would be even worse. Laken doll. Heh.

Well, Laken with a long A is bad... Laken with a short A is much, much worse. I hope young Laken got off lightly (relatively) and got the long A.

And remember, people, creative spellings will cause creative pronunciations. Keep this in mind.

(I hope this kid's mother doesn't read my blog and start beating me over the head in the grocery store or something. I gotta find some bad names that are from out of the area.)

What a smurfing stupid smurf.

It's been awhile- things have been crazy here.

Fortunately, my daughter's school has sent me a school directory full of fodder, so I'll happily jump right in with the first atrocity that jumped out at me:

Azrael.

Because I guess someone's parents never watched The Smurfs.

He's got an average, ordinary, American-sounding last name, so they can't plead ignorance due to foreign customs (although they may plea insanity).

Maybe the parents were really young, and somehow slipped in the cracks between The Smurfs being on tv all the time and, well, The Smurfs being on tv all the time. I don't know.

Now, anything with "el" at the end is usually an angelic name (Michael, Uriel, Gabriel) and so we can conjecture that perhaps the parents were just trying for a unique angelic name, since Michael and Gabriel are so common and Ariel is now mostly a girl's name. (I can't say anything here, I named my son after The Little Mermaid, too. Just not, you know, Ariel.) Anyway, if they wanted to name the kid after an angel, I'm just saying that there are better angelic names out there (all of them).

I guess it could have been worse... the poor kid could have been named "Gargamel".

D'Brickashaw

The husband and I were watching football last night when suddenly a D'Brickashaw appeared, causing us to hunt frantically for the remote that doesn't exist for the DVR that doesn't work for the service we no longer have in order to STOP THE DAMN BALL GAME long enough to go, Shit, is his name really D'Brickashaw? Turns out that yes, indeed, that man's name is D'Brickashaw.

D'BRICKASHAW.

My god, but it's fun to say. It's a mouthful. It trips lightly past the tongue. But D'Brickashaw? Seriously?? I know people like to try to be unique, and D'Brickashaw certainly wins in at least that category (although sadly lacking in the Good Sensible Names category) but it is rather a mouthful, and upon examining its origins I am sadly confounded.

Did Mom and Dad look tenderly at Mom's growing belly and think, "Well, we like to say Brick, let's find a way to add to that. Brickshaw! Hmm... not enough. D'Brickshaw? Missing something. I know, I know... D'BrickAshaw! There's our winner!" It truly boggles the mind. I mean it. I'm boggled.

I also confess that I evilly love it. I will find a way to use this name. I'll name my bike D'Brickashaw, perhaps, or maybe the toaster. (In this house, we name our inanimate objects.) Hmmm... did it some from some word play with the term "rickshaw" perhaps? Or am I stretching too hard, trying to find a reason where no reason exists?

D'Brickashaw. I feel like Jo from Little Men, who named her dog Christopher Columbus just because she liked to say it. D'Brickashaw!

Kenyan

I only overheard this one. I don't know how they spell it. Maybe it's Kenyon. Or Kynyn. Or some other bastardization. Who knows.

Anyway, the kid in question was a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl. Definitely not from the country of Kenya, if you get my drift here. I mean, would you take a little African kid from Zaire and name him Belgian? How about a little Chinese kid named Colombian? Or an Australian named Iraqi?

I know, I know. They didn't really mean to name their kid something that suggests an African origin. They were just trying to be cute.

CLASSICAL NAMES EXIST FOR REASONS. One of them is to save people from their own ignorance.

Parenting Magazine Fail

I happened to be at my OB clinic the other day, and to pass the time I picked up the ubiquitous Parenting magazine often found in such an environment. This one had an article about baby names in it; one might imagine that I perused it with much fervor.

(I'm sorry. I've been reading His Majesty's Dragon. They all talk like this in the book, and I just can't seem to help myself.)

Anyway, I thought it might give me plenty of fodder, and so it has. Today, in honor of the Temeraire series, I will make fun of one name in particular form the Parenting article: Navy.

Hopefully this is just a suggestion, albeit a truly horrible one. Hopefully no one has gone and named their baby Navy. Oh, the associations that come with this name-that-is-hopefully-not-a-name: Navy beans, Navy blue, the Village People, humongous battleships, crusty old captains, submarines.... there are, in my opinion, better ways to show one's patriotism.

How about naming your kid after someone IN the Navy, like perhaps a relative or ancestor? Or a famous Naval officer? I mean, you wouldn't just go and name your kid Army or Air Force or Marine, so why Navy?

Is it because Navy sounds cuter?

It is, isn't it?

:::bangs head on desk:::

For our New Year's Resolution this year, let's resolve to not worry about cute names, and to remember that children will grow into adults some day and deserve dignity and respect when you go to name them. And if any of you know an expecting mother who is in danger of naming her kid something the kid will regret for his/her entire life, please point them to this page. Spread the word. End cutesy names in 2010!

Mackenzy the huge linebacker

He may not be a linebacker. I may be intentionally vague here. He's a pro football player, though, and 20-some years ago an adoring mother looked at her little baby and couldn't help but give him a cute and adorable name. She couldn't even stop herself from sticking a Y on the end. How cute. How adorable. How...sweet. Mackenzy.

I have issues with the name Mackenzie even if it's a girl name and it's spelled right. Yeah, you know, I think it's a cute name, but I'm not gonna saddle a child with it or anything. I read an article a long time ago about a woman who loved the name Victoria. She spent her whole life waiting to have a daughter so she could name her Victoria. Then she had her kid and thought that she looked (at the ripe old age of 3 minutes) too "mischievous" to be called Victoria, so instead of going the Vicki route, or even the Tori route, she went full cutesy and named the kid Mackenzie. The theory here was that she would save Victoria for some hypothetical future daughter who perhaps would be born without the look of future juvenile delinquency in her eyes.

I have issues with this.

Of course.

Let me just get them off my chest here.

The "mac" part of the surname Mackenzie means "son of." While this is great for Mr. Big Hulking Football player (although that ending Y is unfortunate) it's bad news for Little Miss Mischief. Poor kid could have gotten a nice, classic name, but no. Mama had to go trendy.

And what is this crap about your newborn baby looking "mischeivous"? I know what a newborn baby looks like. Asleep, feeding, or crying.Red. Wrinkly. Covered in ick. They don't exhibit personality traits. They don't yet have them.

But back to Pro Football Guy. He's a victim of Cutenization. Is it any wonder this guy was compelled to play football? He makes a living beating other people up. I'm sure it has to do with his silly name. (although Marcades, Atari, and Cadillac, also football players, could give him a good run for the money in the silly name division.) Mackenzy is a good example of why you shouldn't let yourself cutesy up your kids' names... that name on an adult football player just looks and sounds ridiculous. Think about how much worse it would be if he was running for office.


Cutenization: Don't Let It Happen To YOUR Kid. This Public Service Announcement brought to you by It Was Late, and I Was Tired.

A Southern Tradition

Here in the South, it is generally considered acceptable to give female babies masculine last names as first names. This trend predates Madison by over a hundred years, and has the caveat that the name be a family name of some sort. This is the way names such as "Meredith," originally a last name, became popular.

I think one couple has taken this trend to an extreme, though, simply naming their daughter "Smith."

Now, I know this is supposed to be a generally acceptable thing here in the South, but people, let's be real about this. You just can't get more masculine than Smith. It doesn't conjure up images of frilly lace and lipstick, or even baby dolls and ponies. It conjures up images of big, hairy, sweaty men working hard, nasty jobs. This is maybe not the imagery you want associated with your baby's name, no matter how cute you thought it might be, or how personal it is to your family.

I just hope there is a good family reason for this name, and that it's not a product of someone who was simply looking for another way to use a last name as a first name in some misguided attempt to be original. Originality is for writing, painting, decorating, and other forms of art. Originality is not for hanging a moniker on your child that will affect her every day for the rest of her life, or at least until she can legally change it.