Give Your Kids a Proper Name

I post the following link on Mother's Day as a way to encourage any new mother's out there to use some common sense and don't name that new beautiful baby girl of yours Kaetlynnne or Bryanna or George or some other nonsensical moniker.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/complaint-box-brittney-brittny-brittneigh/?ref=todayspaper

My wife has endured more than a few of my rants over the years about the ridiculous names unfit parents are foisting upon their defenseless infants. I see it as a form of child abuse. I was watching a kids show today with my daughter and they flashed a picture of a cute little boy with his Mom. They didn't name the Mom but the kid? Dartanion. DARTANION!! Outrageous. Bring the mother up on charges. First of all the name is spelled D'Artagnan as in The Three Musketeers. It's bad enough that you name your child after a swashbuckling  frilly shirt wearing Frenchman from the 1800's but then you go with a phonetic spelling?! If you're gonna go there then go all the way. Maybe the kid will actually read some day.

You have to call into question the motives of these parents. Is it for attention? Is it because they think their kid is so unbelievably special that they have to create a name out of thin air? Sarah Palin is a great example here. People are actually considering that she could be qualified for the Presidency when she has named her children the following: Track, Bristol, Piper, Willow and Trig. OK, deep breath....

A Track is what you run on
Bristol is a city in southwest England
Piper is a dog's name
Willow was a bad 80's movie and a tree but not a kids name
Trig is short for Trigonometry which I can't explain because I was a journalism major in college

And can we use gender specific names please. I'm getting older people. I grew up when James was exclusively a boys name. I'm certain that any girl named James would have been laughed out of elementary school.When you exclaim that "Madison did so well at soccer this weekend" do you see what position you're putting me in? Is Madison a boy or girl? Am I the fool? I think not. Dartanion's mom might be though.

Happy Mother's Day everyone.