baby names

There has been a lot of talk about baby names lately. No, it's not because I'm pregnant. I'm sure you would have heard about that by now. But people name their children stupid things, and I am going to lay down some rules.

1. Don't name your baby something common, and then jack up the spelling. Example: Caitlin. Not Kayetlynn. Brandon. Not Brynndn. People have a penchant for y's and extra n's, it seems. Well, it's not cute. It's annoying. This is just going to lead to problems for the child later in life. Maybe they would like a personalized vanity plate for their bike. The store has Caitlin and Brandon, but no Kayetlynn or Brynndn. There can be a couple common variations in spelling, as in "desiree is clearly spelled correctly, whereas Dezerraye is not even a word." Choose one of these; you don't need to make up your own.

2. Don't name your child after a noun. No places or things. Brooklyn is a city, not a little white girl. Incidentally, I don't think there are any little white girls named Brooklyn that live in Brooklyn. It's that damn y/n combo again. They're deadly. No Denvers, no Dakotas, no Pittsburgs. Not Chastity, not Destiny, not Peace. April, May, & June are established, but they are still months. No Decembers, no Augusts, no Januarys. Same with flowers: Rose, Lily, Daisy. No Gerbera, no Verbena, no Daffodil.

2a. If you must name your child after a thing, don't try to be cute. Don't force your child to be a sentence fragment. No April Showers or Robin Birds. Not even a Holly Wood. (That's a place!)

3. Foreign languages -
Sometimes languages that are not our own sound pretty, and you can find a word that you would like someone to be called by. Thuc Nhi (took nee) means "petite sophisticate" in Vietnamese, Genevieve (jon vee ev) means "white wave" in French. However, Pahli, Sicamna, and Sica mean "mucus," "stink," and "ugly" in Lakota Sioux. (I copied that from one of the websites listed below.) Boy those are pretty names. Thanks mom.

I have a few baby names in mind for my own children, but I'm not going to share them with you because I've probably broken some of my own rules and I don't want you to call me on it. if you must torment me when I have children, print this out on a piece of paper and carry it with you. When you meet me and my sweet future children, you can point out my mistakes on the piece of paper. I will then grab the paper out of your hand and hit you upside the head with it for waking little Detroit Sahlee Smellypants.

Here are some websites that blatantly break my rules, and encourage others to follow suit.

http://www.babynameworld.com/unique.asp

http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/
This one is good because it takes people's conversations from a message board and points out each and every stupidity. Be warned: if you read this at work as I did, you will laugh out loud and your coworkers may steer clear of you because you are a nutcase. In my experience, this is a good thing.