Choosing a baby name that will not get your child taunted in later life is clearly higher on some parents' priorities than on others'. But certainly when you expect your kids might run into some hard times on the playground for other reasons—such as, for example, their parents are gay—it might jump up a notch or two on the list and start to compete with things like easy to spell and pronounce.
Not, honestly, that I thought about it in those terms when we were picking our daughter's name particularly, but perhaps I should have. Way Out Parent's guide to gay baby naming points out, for example, that naming a girl Billie Jean, shortens to BJ, a fact which will escape no teen boy. Despite what I think of as my innuendo-alert mind, I would not have thought of that one. Guess I'm not a teen boy. Phew.
I'm not sure what I think of all of Way Out parent's advice. I definitely question whether sons of lesbians have a need to be blessed with definitively masculine names more than sons of gay men. (We're talking taunt reducing here, not challenging stereotypes.) And suggesting such a short list of icons to name daughters after seems like, if heeded, would lead to those names starting to (1) be way overused and (2) scream "My parents are gay!"
But perhaps I take this humorous post too seriously. In fact, I almost certainly do. That's what happens when humor hits close to home. But really, any parents who have come to stalemate over their naming choices could use a dose of humor and a break from books full of 15 million inadvisable and outdated names. And maybe a bunch more Ellens and Marlenes in the world wouldn't be such a bad thing.
More from this author:
