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Thursday, February 28, 2008

Thursday Silly Blogging: 10 Thoughts On Naming Children
Posted by Jill | 7:26 PM
This list grew out of a discussion on why every male of a particular age is named Michael or Matthew. If any of you are planning to reproduce, please keep these concepts in mind. Thank you. That is all.

1) Benjamin, Solomon, and Jacob are old Jewish guys. Not children. No teenager is going to want to be called "Benny", and no toddler should be part of a circle of friends that sounds like a bunch of guys playing pinochle around the pool at Century Village in Boca Raton.

2) If your child has more than one friend with the same name as his/hers, you are a sheep and you have lost all right to consider yourself a nonconformist.

3) Avoid the temptation to give your daughters names that sound like they're out of romance novels. That means names like Alexa, Alanna, Alexandra, Ashley, Brianna.....etc.

4) If you are passing your male pattern baldness or endomorphic genes to your son, please give him an ordinary sounding name. If I had been a boy, I'd be 52, overweight, bald, and my name would be Seth. I probably would have put a bullet in my head 10 years ago. 'nuff said.

5) No naming your kids after pop stars. There are 2,047,682 Britneys in this country right at this moment who want to kill their parents.

6) Don't get the idea that the answer to all this is to have a revival of names like "Betty", "Gladys", and "Ethel."

7) "Tallulah" is the coolest girls' name ever. Save it for a child who can handle the special *je ne sais quoi* required to be a Tallulah.

8) When a Google image search on the name you want to give your daughter brings up more photos of cats than of children, it's time to reconsider.

9) If you insist on naming your son after a Gospel, choose "Luke". The others are overused.

10) Not everyone in the world is Irish. If you are two Ashkenazic Jews, you may not name your child "Sean", "Caitlin", "Patrick", "Ewan" or "Meghan." "Caitlin Meghan Leibowitz" is a ridiculous name. Note that being Jewish does not give you an exemption from #1, either.) If you want Biblical, you have David, Daniel, Joshua, and Jesse at your disposal for boys, and Rachel, Deborah, Leah, and hell, even Bathsheba available for girls. Jonah is no longer permitted because Jonah Goldberg has soiled that name for all eternity.
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7 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I have a cousin who was given a very Jewish first name and a very Southern middle name. No shock he was a notable wrestler in High School. I'd learn to fight too if I had his name!

-- a regular poster who chooses to remain nameless.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
As the parent of a school-age child, I am continuously shocked by the names people have inflicted upon their children. My son's school mates include girls named Paris Hilton and Indiana Jones. I wish I was kidding.

Blogger Citizen Carrie said...
I remember when "Misty" was all the rage. All of those poor girls must have changed their names, since I haven't run into anyone named "Misty" in about 35 years.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
We ended up naming our daughter Samantha, thereby addressing the "coolness" factor, as well as the "gravitas" factor. (If she had been a boy, it would have been Alexander.) Both are uncommon enough to be cool, but not so uncommon as to be idiotic. Both are pompous enough to have weight when used as a byline or the name on a dimploma, but it can also fulfill the requirement laid out by the father of Samwise Gamgee in "Lord of the Rings" for naming his son's daughter: "Make it short, so you don't have to cut it short to use it." The names can be cut short to "Sam" and "Alex", which is what the kids end up calling them on the playground (which is what happened). If you name your kid "Beauregard", the kids are going to call him "Bo".

So we figure we found the best of all worlds.

Blogger missy said...
When I took my son to our local pumpkin patch last year, I stood next to a father who was trying to get his son to come off the hay pyramid.

The poor kid's name? "KEVLAR."

I wouldn't answer to it either.

I'm a 42-y.o. Missy, and I'm grateful that the teeming millions of poodles and dachshunds that shared my name when I was growing up have died off. But growing up and into adulthood with such a foofy name, I made sure when our son was born that we gave him a name too short and direct to be morphed into any kind of nickname.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Yes to the rules!!!And weird spellings either. Creative spelling just means the kids spends their entire life spelling their name for everyone. I know an Ebuni and a Jewish Shawna.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Yes to the rules!!!And weird spellings either. Creative spelling just means the kids spends their entire life spelling their name for everyone. I know an Ebuni and a Jewish Shawna.