Fun With Names

A colleague of mine is expecting his first child in couple of weeks. They think it's going to be a girl, although he said he has friends who have gone to the hospital expecting one gender and birthing the other. If that happens, he says, his son will be wearing dresses until age 3. He reported that he and his wife are stumped on the name question and he suspects that they'll be calling her (Shrug) or "Hey Kid" at her college graduation. Too bad it's not a boy, I wanted to say, then you could call it "Dude." With just over a month to go, it's getting closer to decision time.

He had not read these articles in Slate discussing what baby name say about both racial and socio-economic situations in the United States. Without a child to expect, I have no idea whether this information would freeze me with indecision or put my mind at ease. My sense is the latter. Since our families are white, relatively well-off, and educated, our daughter would be fine if she were named Shit Weasel (Shi or Weezie for short).

One name I would not pick would be Ron Mexico, since Atlanta quarterback Michael Vick allegedly used that name before sleeping with a woman who says she got herpes from him. The NFL, which stands for No Fun League, has decided that if you want to buy a jersey from them and put a name on the back, "Mexico" is no longer an option.

Ron Mexico is a shitty alias because it sounds like a porn star name. If anyone introduced themselves to me with a name like that, I'd immediately sue them because they would clearly be a famous person in disguise. Anna has a ready-made alias, Gina Anatoli, which is pretty good to give out if you were underage and hung around skeevy New York clubs. Apparently there are no Anatoli's in the NYC phonebook. Anna also says Jake Hinkle would be a good one for me. I trust her. She has a database of names she's been collecting for years and is longing to name a child, preferably someone else's for the moment.