Baby Names Gone Wild
Toeing the line between creative and crackpot.
by Jeanne Sager
October 6, 2008
"It is really a catch-22," Hartstein says. "Having a unique and different name certainly can make a child feel special — certainly as a 'Jennifer' growing up in the '70s and '80s, I had to work hard to figure out how to distinguish myself from all the other Jennifers. It can also make them feel different. That difference can sometimes cause feelings of isolation and separateness. This is especially difficult when a child just wants to be like his or her peers."
Research points to a child's body size or shape as the prime impetus for schoolyard bullying, but Hartstein said a unique name can certainly provide fodder for a bully.
"When bullying does become a factor, I feel as though parents need to treat it as any other bullying issue," she says. "Of course, kids may say, 'But why did you have to name me that?' And I think parents should have a good answer."
The Root columnist Jimi Izrael wrote about African-American names in a July 2008 column. He took issue with "names like LeQuinta, Lexxus, Maxima or Versachi," and says he put his foot down when his youngest son's mother wanted to name their child after the rapper Nas. "We need to give our kids a chance," Izrael said. "I don't know how far you can reasonably expect a child named 'Fuquan' to get in life."
What affect a markedly ethnic name — or a bizarre name of any source — can do to a child earned a whole chapter in the popular 2005 book Freakonomics. Authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner debated whether the kids can ever attain success, but fell short of proving the names had any real affect. A boy named "Loser," for example, went on to become a sergeant in the New York Police Department. His brother, Winner, has a rap sheet a mile long. Whether their names played a role in their fates, Levitt and Dubner had no answer. The same goes for kids with what they call "black" names and those with "white" names. "The data show that, on average, a person with a distinctively black name . . . does have a worse life outcome than a woman named Molly or a man named Jake," they said. "But it isn't the fault of their names.""Parents today are putting a selfish burden on their children going with a name that seems cool at the time."
So is the to-do over Talula overblown?
"I'm all for creativity and special naming — family names mean the world to me," says Austin, Texas, mom Laura Beck. "But I do think parents today are putting a selfish burden on their children going with a name that seems cool and funky to them at the time, but that an individual has to carry through with them for eighty-some-odd years."
So she'd be a "normal" namer, right? If you consider Thea Fenway Cahoon normal, then, yeah.
Beck and husband Brendon celebrated their beloved Boston Red Sox first World Series win in eighty-six years with a deal — no matter the gender of the baby, its middle name would be after the Beantown stadium. When their little girl arrived, she was named for her great-grandmother, Elthea, and the home of the Green Monster.
"Fenway was something I was comfortable with as a middle name only," Beck admits. "We're okay with being a little different and having people kind of double take. But I could not and would not make it her first name. That was too much."
The "too much" category appears to be getting smaller every year. The "hottest naming trend of the twenty-first century," according to researcher Wattenberg, is to create a truly unique name, in part because such names are easier to Google. But we better watch out that crazy names don't become the new John and Emily. One sign that this may be in the works: "Each year," Wattenberg says, "hundreds of American babies are named 'Unique.'"
©2008 Jeanne Sager and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Jeanne Sager is a freelance writer and photographer living in upstate New York with her husband and daughter, Jillian. She maintains a blog of her award-winning columns at jeannesager.blogspot.com. |
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