A Rose By Any Other Name...

Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.
Jim Morrison 

A rose by any other name may still smell as sweet, but we call it a rose.

We spell it "r-o-s-e."

This leads me to one of my biggest pet peeves that really shouldn't be, but is.

Names.

Recently in the news, not that she is newsworthy, but that aside, Kim Kardashian and her spousal unit decided to name their unsuspecting child "North." Seriously? That poor child is going to grow up with all sorts of complexes as it is and you have just laden it with the mother of them all - a crappy name.

One might think that I would be appalled because Frank Zappa named his kids Moon Unit or Dweezil. Not really. One would expect something like that from the outrageously creative Zappa. Jane or Harry would have been totally out of character for him.  But naming a child "North West" opens the doors to many, many years of childhood jokes that no amount of money can buy your way out of. (Let's just start with "The Wicked Witch of the North West" and work our way from there...)

But North isn't the only baby name that I find incredibly bad.  "Cricket" makes my top ten list as well as Rainbow Aurora, Blue Ivy, Kal-El Cage (Superman jokes anyone?), Pilot Inspektor Riesgraf Lee, Moxie Crimefighter Jillette (That's Penn Jillette's son. I swear I hope he becomes a cop.) There's also kids named, Sailor and Seven and Daisy Boo.  One I find strangely cute, Apple - Gwen Paltrow's daughter, and I hesitate putting it on the list. There are others of course, but North is pretty freakin' horrible. 

But beyond that phenomena, is the "creative spelling" of names that drives me "Banzai Bat Crap Crazy." I deal with a lot of people on a daily basis and the older I get, the weirder names and spellings have become. I don't know why parents have to do this. Is it because they think it's "cute", "creative" or "original?" Is it because they want to be different? I don't rightly know.  Poor "Maddisyn" (actual spelling of a kid's name I saw in a local yearbook) hasn't got a prayer of ANYONE ever spelling her name correctly ... EVER. And take it from me, I have a fairly "normal" if not quite so common name and few people have a clue how to spell correctly, if at all. 

There is a scene in the book by Billie Letts, "Where the Heart Is" which was also made into a movie. (Excellent by the way...) There is discussion about the main character, Novalee, naming her child. She's given the advice to name her child a good, sturdy name - a name that means something.  

I stand by that philosophy and I'm sure plenty of people will be ticked when they read this. When you name a child, their name SHOULD stand for something. It should hold it's ground and be the pillar for that child. A name like "North" doesn't do that. It's shaky and opens the child to ridicule which is unnecessary. I'm not saying you have to go all 1950's names, but really, at the end of the day, why do we want to set our kids up for misery?