Alright, so many of my friends in the last couple of years have either had babies, are currently pregnant with babies, or are trying to get knocked up with babies, so a very common conversation in my life revolves around baby names. I get that naming a baby is very personal for the expectant parents. That's a big deal, because a lot of times it seems like a person's name ends up defining their character. Don't you just look at people sometimes and think, "He is SUCH a Larry? That name suits him perfectly." Okay, maybe you don't, but I do. Take my friend Shelby for instance. Shelby to me is a somewhat traditional, no-nonsense, warmly pleasant name, all of which are traits that coincide with her personality.
I also get that naming your children can be about honoring family members. When my husband and I were playing tennis with the idea of having a baby (the final verdict - no babies for the Hanns, thank you very much), we agreed that if we were to ever have a daughter, we were set on honoring our grandmothers. Their names are Kathleen, Belle, and Rosalee, three names that I believe are very beautiful. Originally we thought, "Oooo, Bella Kathleen would be nice," but with the influx of Bellas all over the world thanks to Twilight (which I'm disgustingly obsessed with just as much as the next immature bitch who is too old to lust after 17 year-olds), we threw that out the window. We finally settled on a name should we ever happen to end up having a daughter, which I doubt is very likely, but it's a secret for now.
So anyway, I get wanting to honor family members, and sometimes family members just don't have attractive names. But what about the people who just want to name their kid something unique and different, something that not everyone else is going to name their kid? I'm all for it, considering I was one in a sea of Brittanys growing up. I remember my 10th grade honors science class had four Brittanys total, and I happened to be friends with two of the other ones which could be exceedingly confusing. Needless to say, it was a complete pain in the ass most of my adolescent life. I like the idea of naming your kid something that's different. But, as with all things, there is a fine line between "unique" and "just plain ridiculous." I was perusing through the recent births at Cabell Huntington hospital, and came across these names that I'm just appalled by.
Unique - Really? You're really going to name your kid that?
Journey - Life's a journey, not a destination, blah blah blah...
Lyric - Unless they're guaranteed to go into the music business, I think this name is stupid.
Briley - What is that?
Kayleanah - This is just disgusting.
Owlsley - What the hell is this?
Nevaeh - This, in my opinion, is probably the number one worst name ever. "Heaven" spelled backwards reads, "DUMB ASS PARENTS."
Myson - Get it? My Son. Yeah, I think it's stupid, too.
Kipton
Falcon - This is for real. I didn't make this shit up.
Americus - Yes, just like the book/movie "Where the Heart Is."
Raylen
Kyellee - I don't even know what the hell this is.
Steeler - Look, I know you're a fan but even Roethlisberger thinks this is a stupid name, and look what a winner HE is.
Ova - This is obviously a gynecologist's kid.
Paidynn
Another thing when it comes to naming children that I absolutely hate is when people choose perfectly decent or even spectacular names and ruin them with absurd spelling. How the hell is your kid ever going to be able to learn how to spell their name? How the hell are people going to learn how to pronounce it? I came across quite a few interesting spellings in my research for this post (the worst part is I found most of these names more than once spelled this way - SO unique, though!)
Kinzley - Such a cute name, right? But why do we have to have a "z" in it? That looks dumb.
Jaxon - This unfortunately is one of the suggestions my husband had in case we ever had a son, so I have to group him into the category of dumbass people who spell their kids' names stupid. I love this name, not this spelling. And I saw this at LEAST 15 times. Or Jaxson.
Kennadie
Kayelea - How do you even say that?
Haedynn
Raegan - There are a LOT of little girls with this name in the world right now, my friend Laura is the mother to one of them. Love the name, but I came across this spelling at least 5 times on Cabell's website within the past 3 months. WHY?
Kyndall
Izzabella
Brycen
Caydance
Shyanne
Griffyn - There's so many things wrong with this name. It reminds me of Gryffindor from Harry Potter, except they messed up where they put the "y".
Adyson - There they go, ruining a perfectly lovely name.
Lezleigh - I'm going to guess that the birth mother was a surrogate for a nice lesbian couple.
Bayleigh
Another trend I noticed is people naming their kids after cars, hobbies, or things they like in general: Harley, Lexus, Twila (another one I just can't make up on my own), Fashion (poor, poor kid). I mean, if that's the cool thing to do, maybe I should have a kid and name it Carrot since I'm a vegan. Or maybe Lipgloss. How about Stiletto? Possibly Macbook. I've even considered Potato Casserole.
You may think this is mean-spirited, and you're right, it is. I'm blatantly making fun of poor innocent babies' names. But the bottom line is, I'm making fun of their idiot parents for choosing them. People, when you're pregnant or talking about having kids and the name thing comes up, would you PLEASE for the love of everything holy think about when your child has to fill out college applications, or even worse, job applications, and put a completely stupid name on them? They're going to be adults one day, too, and they're going to resent you for naming them something lame.
Maybe all you parents-to-be need to pick up a copy of this so you don't name your kid something stupid.
