Thursday, June 26, 2008

Baby Names


Tonight I am having dinner with a friend of mine, Ariel, who is pregnant and almost due. In my opinion, even more important than deciding whether to have a child is what to name it. So I've been pestering Ariel to reveal the names of the kid, but she has sworn herself to secrecy and instead sent me a link to the most popular U.S. baby names according to the census or birth certificates or whatever. She told me that the baby girl name was on that list, and that, if I applied myself, I could figure it out. I was expecting the top 100 names on the list to be the usual suspects - Jennifer, Emily, Rachel, Christine, etc. but apparently people in the U.S. have become illiterate and traveled to Narnia because you would not believe some of the crap on there.

The name Brooklyn is more popular than Jennifer, and Nevaeh (Heaven backwards) is more popular than Rachel. Time to jump off the nearest cliff, because Jazmin, Julissa and Kaydence are apparently superior to Marin, which made the list for the first time in 2007. The boy names are even more ridiculous if you can believe that. If you're a giant chemistry nerd, Kelvin is available, but if your son seems like he'd enjoy sitting on the stoop with a smooth 40, best to name him Colt. Or, if your baby happens to be born with a tight short sleeve mock turtleneck and a jar of protein powder, the name Armani is available.

In any event, my final guesses for Ariel's girl baby name was Makayla Destinee or Breanna Genesis because I felt out of all the names on that list, those two combinations spoke to me and commanded the most respect. Though my guesses were incorrect, I confirmed with Ariel that she wasn't planning on stealing the name Charybdis, which I will be naming my daughter, or my future sons' names, which are La Strada, Bret Michaels and Lamb Choppe.

4 comments:

Cohen said...

My favorite baby name- which is quite popular, according to my friend who is a dr in the maternity/NICU ward of a city hospital -- is "Abcd." Which is pronounced..."abesity." Which, obviously, sounds like "obesity." Ridiculous. That same friend also says that the name "Female" is quite popular-- pronounced "Femalay." Strangely, when i asked, she told me that she had never met a baby named "male"/"malay"

Maria said...

Apparently someone knows a parent who named their children "lemonjello" and "orangejello", pronounced "Ohraanjulloh" and "Lemaanjulloh", with the emphasis on the aa.

rachsky said...

My mom was an ESL teacher and a lot of her students and their parents were right off the boat from the Dominican. She had one student who's name was pronounced undesiday, but was actually spelled undecided, because when her parents had her they didn't know what to name her so the hospital put undecided on her birth certificate and they thought that was her name. haha.

Jenna said...

Is the jello family from Utah? Because that would explain it.