Day 38 - Glad I am not Known as Steak

When a baby comes into your world, a parent  instinctively feels that the child is the most beautiful, will become the most talented and will be loved more than any other child has ever been loved before. I get it. Every parent feels that way. And every parent wants to pick the perfect name for their precious bundle of joy. In the past it wasn't unusual to have sons named after fathers, thus becoming Jrs. Many kids were named after the favorite aunt or uncle, and many were named after war heroes or even the celebrity du jour. Now fast forward to the the 21st century, and baby names, especially those given to celebrity children, seem to have taken a turn to the exotic. To say a few of these names are "out there" is being kind. Robert Downey Jr. just named his son Exton, Beyonce named her daughter, Blue Ivy and Jermaine Jackson named his son Jermajesty. I think these folks make Gwyenneth Paltrow's naming her baby Apple, sound almost sane.
I feel bad for kids with wierd names and I am always hopeful that someone in school will give them a nickname. When I was a kid, there was a boy in the neighborhood whose first name was Hedley. And his mother would hang out the front window of her apartment and scream at the top of her lungs,"Hi - Ho - Heeeeeeeeeedddddddddddlllllllly" when she wanted him to come inside. I guess she needed to scream at him like that so that all the other Hedleys in the neighborhood wouldn't come running. Later, when he went to school the kids nicknamed him Stinky, I'm betting that he liked it more than Hedley.
It's tough being the kid with the weird name. Whether it is just plain odd, or whether it has a strange spelling, like Ving Rhames name for his daughter, Reignbeau, there is always going to be someone who is going to mispronounce it, or think the name is for a boy when it is a girl. If you were a teacher and the first name of the child was Suri, would you look for a boy or girl? Suri is the name that Tom Cruise gave to his daughter.
I think life is tough enough with a semi-normal name, these made up, one of a kind nonsense names just make things tougher. I thank my lucky stars that my parents were not avant-garde when it came to naming their children, I would have hated to be named after one of my dad's favorite things, Steak!

February 7, 2012: Herb tea makes me happy.