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Media

Power Laws, Weblogs, and Your Given Name 449

Posted by michael from the ragnar-ragnarsson dept.
gummint writes "After contemplating the blogsphere and pondering whether "diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality", consider an old-media domain name: the one your parents gave you. How did they choose it? How many other persons have the same one? Get some facts, or a lot of facts. Or just comment anyway. The good news is that the extent of inequality can change massively over time: the popularity of the most popular given names has decreased dramatically since the Industrial Revolution."
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Power Laws, Weblogs, and Your Given Name More

Power Laws, Weblogs, and Your Given Name

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  • Names (Score:2, Insightful)

    by hackwrench ( 573697 )
    My name is Robert Lee Claypool. I live in Muncie There is another Robert Lee Claypool in Anderson in the next county over.
    • There's only one other person in the country with my same name (as far as I know). I live in New York and this person lives in Tacoma. Coincidentally, my mom moved from New York to Olympia a couple years ago.
  • I'm going to have my name legally changed to something 27 letters long with no vowels, just to watch people try to pronounce it.

  • Given Names and Media (Score:2, Insightful)

    by alue ( 253363 )
    As the popular films become more pervasive and as the movie industry becomes more proliferous and agressive with its idolization of superstar actors and actresses such as Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Rene Zellweger, etc, I wouldn't be surprised at all to find more and more people identifying their children with those names in mind.

  • Data from the government (Score:5, Informative)

    by syr ( 647840 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:04PM (#5304082)
    The Social Security Administration has a database [ssa.gov] with information on the most popular baby names of about the past 100 years.

    Sort by decade or year of birth. Pretty interesting, imo. It's fun to watch which names stay on the top 10 for decades in a row and which were popular at one point and then declined dramatically.

    GameTab [gametab.com] - Game Reviews Database

    • The Rise of Ryan (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ryants ( 310088 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:16PM (#5304207)
      I took a look at my name:
      • 1940s not even in the top 1000
      • 1950s #622
      • 1960s #242
      • 1970s #26
      • 1980s #14
      • 1990s #15
      and that's about where Ryan has been stuck now for 10 years, floating between #17 and #12.

      I was born in 1974. I wonder what happened in the 1950s - 1960s that caused such an upswing? I can't think of any popular celebrities named Ryan from that era. Any insights?

      • I was born in 1974. I wonder what happened in the 1950s - 1960s that caused such an upswing? I can't think of any popular celebrities named Ryan from that era. Any insights?

        It's that blasted Private Ryan.

        My name has stuck consistently in the 45-50 range... Strange. The name I have picked for my son when he comes (in a few years, hopefully no sooner) I plugged in and in the last 10 years has gone from Rank #846 to #372... It's a Japanese name, and I'm curious about the upswing on that as well.
      • Hmmmm. What year did "Ryan's Hope" come out as a daytime soap opera? I'd research it myself, but our firewall blocks IMDB [imdb.com].

        • The first link I found with any info claims it premiered in 1975. Not much reason to question that there isn't much incentive to spread disinfo about soap premieres (!).

          Wasn't there a Ryan aircraft manufacturing company? A lot of WWII pilots and crew were very fond of their planes and would attribute their survival to the quality of their craft. Perhaps WWII fathers chose to thank the company by naming a son after it, and then it just took off from there. Pun intended. Why do people apologize for puns anyway?

      • What about my name? (Michael) It has been #1 or #2 since 1953! And yet, people always spell it incorrectly as Micheal.

      • I wonder what happened in the 1950s - 1960s that caused such an upswing?

        Drugs. Lots of drugs.

    • Re:Data from the government (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bko ( 73379 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:22PM (#5304261) Journal
      Very nifty db. If i had moderator points, i would be slightly tempted to mod you up rather than post. Slightly.

      Favorite stat from 10 seconds of perusal:

      Popularity of the name Trinity:

      Year of birth Rank
      2001 67
      2000 74
      1999 216
      1998 555
      1997 547
      1996 687
      1995 683
      1994 821
      1993 951

      Curious, isn't it. Something seems to have caused a sudden jump in popularity in the middle of 1999!

      While i really enjoyed the matrix, i can't say that it ever occured to me that it would cause a sudden spike in people naming their daughters trinity.

      • I'm confused. Your list there has 1999 with a drop of over 300 from the year before, and dropping even further in the two years after that

        • Re:Data from the government (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I applaud you for your courage in showing how unintelligent you are. That takes a lot of nerve. Most people would have read the heading that said "rank" and figured it out themselves without embarassment.
      • Hmmmm. I wonder if the names "Neo", "Morpheous", or "Switch" showed up anywhere.

        (Although naming your kid Anderson would be kind of cool).

      • Re:Data from the government (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pknoll ( 215959 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @03:47PM (#5305092)
        How about this counterexample?

        Popularity of the name Chelsea:

        2001 156

        2000 140

        1999 123

        1998 94

        1997 73

        1996 57

        1995 48

        1994 46

        1993 25

        1992 15

        1991 19

        1990 24

        I guess parent-child reputation goes both ways.

      • Similar trend?
        Hmmm, what happened with a Monica in 1998 that made that such an undesirable name???

        Popularity of the name Monica

        Year of birth Rank
        2001 185
        2000 168
        1999 150
        1998 97
        1997 77
        1996 80
        1995 85
        1994 84
        1993 80
        1992 72
        1991 76
        1990 73

    • Names (Score:2)

      by sulli ( 195030 )
      This hilarious webpage [notwithoutmyhandbag.com] lists a very large number of truly awful baby names. Most notable is the new trend of intentionally misspelling names to make them unique. Horrid! If I ever suggest doing this to my kid, dear readers, please tie me up in duct tape and throw me in San Francisco Bay.
    • Top Five boy names:
      Jacob
      Michael
      Matthew
      Joshua
      Christopher

      All biblical names. Of course this doesn't track for the female names:

      Emily
      Madison
      Hannah
      Ashley
      Alexis

  • iceland (Score:2, Funny)

    by arnorhs ( 650507 )
    I come from iceland, which has a much smaller population then most other countries, so obviously there is a lesser chance that anybody else has the same name as I. Still there is another Arnór Heiðar Sigurðsson in my country, and it's not that uncommon... so I'm wondering if there could simply be fewer names in iceland... hmmm? I'm just posting for the fun, I don't even know if what I said makes any sense... :)

  • My name. (Score:4, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:08PM (#5304129) Homepage Journal

    When I was a lad still living on the Indian reserve I asked "Father, how did you name me?" he replied "Son, when a new child is born into our tribe, the father looks at the landscape and names the child after the first thing he sees.

    I nodded "Ok, go on."

    "For instance," my father continued, "your sister 'Soaring Eagle' was named after an eagle I saw high in the sky. Does this answer your question, Two Dogs Fucking?"

    • Re:My name. (Score:3, Funny)

      by Em Emalb ( 452530 )
      You forgot the ending.

      IIRC, it goes a little something like this:

      I shook my head in the affirmative.

      "Good", he said, "Now go play with your sister, Broken Rubber."

    • Re:My name. (Score:3, Funny)

      by liquidsin ( 398151 )
      A talent agent has a young man come to him. The man is a wonderful actor, and the agent wants to sign him immediately. When he asks the young man for his name, he replies "Penis Von Lesbian". The agent tells him that his name is no good for show business and he must change it, but the young actor is adamant. "This is a family name, and to change it would be a horrible thing to my family." The young man leaves, disgusted. Many years later, on the set of a television show, the agent encounters the man again, and is amazed to find out how well he's doing. "How'd you do it?" asked the agent. "Well," said the man, "I had to change my name. I go by 'Dick Van Dyke' now."
  • After my parents die I'm changing my name to something less generic. With hundreds of competitors, I need a name so distinctive it shoots me to the top of Google search results.

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by macrom ( 537566 )
    Maybe it's because I haven't had enough caffeine today. Maybe it's because I just got back from lunch and I'm really sleepy. But could somebody please repost this topic in the King's English? What's up there sounds like a whole lot of nonsense that has nothing to do with anything. Post something a little more sensical, please.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)

      by forgetmenot ( 467513 )
      I think the point is that personal names follow "power law" distributions - IE. despite lots of freedom of choice in names, popularity still tends to clump towards a very select few. For example: look at the popularity of names like John or William, consistently in the top 10 over the last 100 years. I haven't looked at the female names as closely but they seem to be more prone to variance. Perhaps it's a result of a greater tendency of males to be named after an ancestor, whereas female names seem to follow "fashion trends".
  • Given names are out and Internet userids are in. I've always had this peculiar problem where I can remember userids like hampy and doiner, but I have a real hard time remembering people's real names. I think that user-chosen userids are much more descriptive, and usually more unique, and therefore more memorable. I used to be called my username when I was in college, and even today I'm known as $$$$$exyGal.

    --sex [slashdot.org]

  • I'll say that when I was born, my first name was extremely rare. I didn't run into three other people with it throughout my childhood. And Bob McAllister at Wonderama never saw me in the magic mirror.

    But, for the past 11 years or so, my name has ranked in the top ten according to SSA.gov [ssa.gov]. Personally, I preferred when it was rare and obscure.

    • In the past 11 years, my name has been in the top 20....and i'm sure its been longer than that

      However, I have met a total of maybee 10 people in my lifetime that share the same first name as me....as common of a name as it is
    • My real name is so common that I was perpetually stuck with nicknames my whole life. At one point I lived in a small town (2000 people) and there were 4 people in the same grade as me with the same name. My name was quite popular in the 1970's but waned in the 1980's (well, if going from 3 to 11 is waning :)

      And yet my youngest brothers' name never even shows up on these lists.

      It's a wonder that I am so eccentric and he is so Joe Sixpack.

  • Two names and two surnames... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mfarah ( 231411 ) <miguel@NOspaM.farah.cl> on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:13PM (#5304181) Homepage
    Don't you hate when there's several people with the same name as yours? I know more than 10 different "Miguel Farah" besides myself, and that's only within my family.

    That's why most spanish-speaking countries keep using the two names + two surnames (the father's and the mother's) method for the full name of a person. That way, my full name is "Miguel Braxton Farah Fugate", which decreases dramatically the probabilty of a name collision (even more for people with relatively uncommon surnames, like myself).

    This practice was started somewhere in the Middle ages, and while it's not as good as a unique number or ID, the cases of people with two identical full names are very rare.
    • Yeah that can be kind of irritating. You wouldn't think my name, "Patrick Tschetter", would be very common, but there's at least one other person with my same name in my hometown. One time a few years ago the other Patrick Tschetter (who must be 10 or 12 years younger than me) was in the hospital listing in the local paper, and a friend of my family called my mom to ask her what was going on. Of course my mom got all worried about me, since I'd been perfectly healthy when I'd left home to drive to high school that morning.
    • Obligatory Office Space comment...

      I admit it, I'm a Michael Bolton fan! I celebrate the guy's entire collection! For my money it doesn't get any better than when he sings "When a Man Loves a Woman"!

      • Re:Well as long as you're not Michael Bolton.... (Score:5, Funny)

        by catch23 ( 97972 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:49PM (#5304523)
        Actually I think the most applicable quote is this one:

        Michael: Yeah, well, at least your name isn't Michael Bolton.
        Samir: You know, there's nothing wrong with that name.
        Michael: There WAS nothing wrong with it. Until I was about 12 years old, and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.
        Samir: Well, why don't you just go by Mike instead of Michael?.
        Michael: No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!
    • My First and Surname are very common in my family. The family name comes from a parish in England, and the "family first name" was used starting with someone with the title "Sir". He was brother in law to a King back in the 1300's (Henry II?), so the first name has always been given to first born males.

      It kinda got confusing with so many people with the same first/last name, so I am refered to by my middle name.

      It could be confusing for formal mail, governement or banking info, as unless they include the middle name, it could be for me, my uncle, my grandfather etc. It's happened a few times, where a branch of my Great Grandfathers family (his brother) lives near my, and I'd get mail for him as well. Plus he was a deadbeat, so bill collectors calling for him would end up calling me on a whim...most annoying.

  • Since my wife and I have eleven-month old twins, and another baby coming next month (yes, Irish Triplettes) we've pondered this issue quite a bit lately. Here's our process:

    Twin #1 (boy): First name Haines comes from his great-grandad (and oldest living relative). Middle name is a family name from waaaay back.
    Twin #2 (girl): First name Hillary was just something we liked the sound of, although we LATER found out that if I or either of my brothers had been girls, we would have been a Hillary. Too wierd...
    Baby #3 on the way is to be named Harrison - partly because we like the sound and partly to a friend of the family who was a prominent writer and social critic.

    I think my favorite part is that none of these names is particularly common, yet they are familiar and carry some tradition...

  • My mother had this idea that she was going to name me Robert Keith, but call me Keith. My dad asked why they couldn't just name me Keith Robert. Mom said that it "didn't sound as good." Dad asked what difference it made how it sounds if nobody would use it that way. Dad's Lesson Learned: Do Not Argue With Pregnant Women. I think he slept in the garage.

    At my birth, Mom took one look at me and decided that I was the spitting image of her grandfather. She decided to name me after him, so she called me Robert Scott. Problem is, her grandpa's name was DAVID. For a long time, I thought it must have been the painkillers talking, but Grandpa David was born in Scotland, and so everyone called him Scotty.

    He *hated that. He thought it was akin to calling someone Polack, or Czech-boy, or Canook. He probably spins like a gyroscope every time someone uses my name.

    Scott
  • I was named 'Dylan' after the cool dude rabbit in the Magic Roundabout (a British kids show in the 70s). Well, my Dad claims it was Dylan Thomas, but I had to face endless torture at school by being named after a rabbit who was always stoned on marajuana.

    Unfortunately, I've found out that an actor shares my name (Dylan Smith). I'm just wondering when I will get the first UDRP attack on my domain dylansmith.net (if the little puke tries to get dylansmith.co.im off me he's got a fight on his hands as I live right next door to nic.im)
  • I wonder how it feels to change your name for some reason (actors, writers, whatever) and then become wildly successful.

    I would think that it has to feel kinda fake, and detract a little from the success. I can't imagine spending the formative years of my life being Jeremy Whiporell, then becoming 'Jack Whip' and being famous. I'd always feel like a bit of a fraud, as if who I really were just wasn't good enough. Kind of schizophrenic, when you think about it.

    The only example I can think of off the top of my head is John Mellencamp, who I distinctly remember debuting, and performing for years, as John Cougar.

  • In high school I had several classes with more than six classmates with the same first name as myself. Luckily no two of us went by the same derivation. I have a fried with the same first and last name as myself. There is also a minister in my town with the same first and last name as myself who lives three blocks away on the same street as I do. This has probably cause him a world of embarrassment.
    • There were six people in your high school class named "RatBastard"?
    • Wow, six people in your class were named "RatBastard"?

      I am guessing that your name is Jason.

      When I was teaching I used to tell my students, if I can't remember your name and you're a guy, I'll guess 'Jason', if you're a girl, I'll guess 'Jennifer". I once had a class with 8 women, 3 of whom were named Jennifer.

      blog-O-rama [annmariabell.com]

  • Isn't that enough, I ask.
  • Nothing rhymes with Bart...
  • I legally had my name changed. My given name was really boring and I was getting nowhere in life. So I looked for a new name and found one on my wife's hairdryer.


    Max Power!


    Now I get all kinds of attention.

  • Well... (Score:5, Funny)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:30PM (#5304342) Journal
    My last name is Case, and my father wanted to name me Justin. My mother threatened him with unspecified dire consequences.
  • like Apple employee Bo3b Johnson (author of the Sillyballs DTS sample code). It certainly gave his common name a geeky uniqueness.

  • Men and Women (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wizarddc ( 105860 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:38PM (#5304400) Homepage Journal
    I was having a little thought experiment going through these lists of names and such, and something dawned on me. It's fairly obvious from the data on these lists that men's names hang around a lot longer than women, and generally, it seems the top 10 was very stable in males (up until very recently, I had no idea Jacob was that popular...) while female names change top 10 at least once a generation. I was thnking why this happened, and when you think of female names, there are definitely "old" sounding names compared to males. No one thinks James or Robert sounds old, but Mildred and Ruth sound like older women's names. The one thing that came to me is that women "don't want to end up like their mother" while men look up to their father, even after he chops your hand off in a lightsaber battle. It seems like women's names gain a stigma of "old", and it's worse for a woman to be old than a man, so women name their daughter's newer, cuter names, where men respect their elders more (or something), so continue the line of Michael's and William's. Or I'm a sexist nutjob who should actually be working at work instead of reading /.
  • Of course,somebody named Michael would come up with this topic.

    (I am also a Michael, btw)

  • My surname is Cantwell, which is an Irish corruption of Comte de Ville, which is French. Quite a common name in the US, apparently, due to the number of Irish immigrants.

    My first name, I regret to say, was taken from a member of the 1966 World Cup-winning team because my father is obsessed by football (that's "soccer" to you 'merkins).

  • Or just comment anyway.

    And exactly how is this different from the usual Slashdot posting?

    I'm guessing that you're single, and not (yet) seriously considering children. Had you even come close to the Childbirth section of your local bookstore, you'd have been deluged by books such as Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana : What To Name Your Baby Now [amazon.com].

    You haven't stumbled on to anything new here.

    Or check out one of the "Moms To Be" chat boards - the importance of selecting the right name is a Big Deal, and always has been. One can't pick a name that's too popular, or too obscure. And there's that unpleasant shock when the "perfect" name has been found, only to find that it's the rising star of the Baby Names Top 10 List - back to the drawing board.

    Perhaps the most important issue is "teasability". You can have hours of fun with your spouse, shooting down every name they think up by turning it into a childish taunt:

    • Her: What about "Duncan"?

      You : Yeah, I can hear it now: "Come here, Mister Dunkin' Donuts!"

      Her : Isn't there any name you like?

      You : I'm just saying... But now that you mention it, have you considered "Guy"?

      Her : No. Have you considered an frontal lobotamy?

    Hours of fun, kids! Those 9 months of pregnancy will be gone before you know it.

    Personally, I've found the most effective strategy is to waffle until the baby's been born. Then, once your wife is back in the recovery room, all doped up and groggy from pain that men can't even imagine (thank goodness for epidurals and pain-induced memory blocks), pop your suggestion to her:

    • You :So, what do you think of the name Roscoe [utk.edu]?

      Her : (groggy): Hrm? Bosco? [boscoworld.com] Yes, I'm thirsty...

      You : Excellent! Roscoe it is! Wasn't that easy?

    Thank goodness for blogs on slow days like this!

  • kirk israel (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:43PM (#5304446) Homepage
    I always thought that when saddled with a name like "Kirk Israel", it would at least be unqiue.

    Nope.

    And I'm not even jewish...I come from Germans who came to the USA (pre-world wars), wanted to dodge the German/Prussian draft, and changed their name and all the records they could find. And then chose something Semetic sounding, so they would be seen as less than desirable soldiers for Der Fatherland.

  • my parents were very un-original (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:50PM (#5304528) Journal
    Christopher Jason Smith

    When I had shoulder surgery in 1993, there was another Christopher J Smith there for the same basic operation, on the other shoulder. Of course the anesthesiologist switched the files! Basic idea was to put meds in one arm, operate on the other. He was rather offended when I yanked the I.V. out of my arm while asking "what are the first 3 numbers of the SSN on that chart?" Ten minutes later, after some ID checking and whatnot, I was on my way to dreamland.
  • Notice how these comments are getting horrible ratings? Well, it makes sense; they're almost all worthless.

    Why? Well, what interesting/insightful/funny comment can be made on this subject, especially on slashdot?

    This is a discussion forum with a general tradition of *avoiding* usage of given names. Right off the bat, this causes abortive comments like, "I have a really interesting name, kinda like this other name, but I'm not going to tell you what it is, because my boss might be googling me."

    And what insight can a techie offer about given names? Yeah, some of us have the same name. Some don't. They serve a useful purpose, but not one really worth talking about.

    I guess some names are sorta funny, and some naming stories are funny, but nothing that's going to make you wet your pants. I know of a guy whose parents wanted to give him an English name but didn't know any English themselves, so they grabbed a book for inspiration... and named him "Oxford University Press".

    See? Ok, but who would moderate that up past a 2?

    New discussion: how can we help our slashdot editors to select better discussion topics?

  • The Power of Names (Score:3, Insightful)

    by handy_vandal ( 606174 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @02:56PM (#5304583) Homepage Journal
    According to the Old Testament, God gave Adam the power to name the birds and the beasts -- thus giving Adam dominion over the natural world.

    Similarly, in her "Earthsea Trilogy" series, Ursula K. LeGuin emphasizes that everything has a true name, and that this true name is what wizards use when conjuring.

    In my own line of work, I've learned that good programming begins with good naming conventions.

    Everything has a name -- even if it's nothing more than "Hey! You!"
  • This has caused me a great deal of consternation over the years.

    Mom's brother always went by his middle name, and used his first initial only for his legal signature. (I'm not certain if that was his choice or my grandparents.) Mom thought "J. Scott" would be a nice signature, and so I was named John Scott. I have never in my life been called anything other than Scott by my family.

    Fast-forward a few decades. Databases that accept only first name, middle initial (all required fields). Systems (like my employers) who require using a login based on first name/last name. The government wants all three names, and will then never let go of "John".

    At one time I was thinking of legally changing my first name to an initial only (J.) after my parents died. Going through the job hunting gig of late, with all the attendant forms, I may not wait that long.

  • What's a Last Name? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by linuxdoctor ( 126962 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @03:06PM (#5304660) Homepage
    My own family didn't have last names until after the First World War and the loss land and power after that war. We were identified by our membership in particular Royal houses. We were addressed as Emperor, or King, or Duke, or Prince with the appropriate titles that went with it.

    With the First World War and beginning with the English Royal Family abandoning it's German roots by adopting the name of Windsor, they set the tone for the dismantling of the house system. My great-great-granduncle, German Kaiser Wilhelm II at the time of the English abandonment of their heritage, remarked that he always enjoyed the comic operetta "The Merry Wives of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha," a reference to the British Royal family's true German name. Two of those house names are also part of my name.

    My own grandfather, an Archduke in the Austrian Empire had to abandon his titles and adopted a name that was taken from the name of the his ancestral home in the south of Austria. He was later appraoched by Hitler to help with the union of Austria and Germany, but categorically refused him. After the anschlus in 1938 his vocal anti-Nazi stance got him into more trouble and his lands were seized.

    This is all probably not very interesting, and I'll probably loose a few karma point by this post. But who cares? There is no such thing as Karma anyway.
  • How common is MY name? Let's put it this way, it is usually faster for me to have support personnel or customer service look me up by my first name than to enter my SSN.

    A google search (at least for the first few pages) reveals information about me and my dad. And that's about it.

    Of course, I keep assuming that the number of Ewan's will rise after the actor - but at least in the US that doesn't seem to be the case.

    Just another data point...
  • So, I have a question. I'm 14-years-old and I've been Stephen Smith (Stephen after my step-dad's middle name, "Stefan," of Romanian descent) all my life. So, I'm looking through that red filing cabinet with all of the important stuff in it at my mom's house (parents are divorced--mom's last name is Saftoiu [Romanian] and dad's last name is Smith) and I find the birth announcement. Guess how my name is spelled? Stephan. Unfortunately we couldn't find my birth certificate to verify anything. I asked my mom about it, and she was just as stunned as I was. So what do I do? It would be kind of embarassing explaining to people why I'm all of the sudden changing my name, eh? But man, Stephan Saftoiu would be infinitely better than Stephen Smith (unfortunately there isn't much of a chance of me being able to change my last name to my mom's last name).
  • What about the guy who changed his name to this [tjharman.com]?

  • Name Choices (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Wastl ( 809 )
    My wife and I have two little daughters, so we went through the prcoess of name-giving recently. I will not post the names we chose, but here are our selection criteria:
    • the name should exist or at least be pronouncible in as many languages as possible since you can never know where your children will live in this ever-shrinking world
    • the name should not be in the top 10 of the last years
    It looked sensible to us to use names of the Old Testament, as it is the foundation of three of the major religions.

    Sebastian

  • WTF?!?! (Score:3, Funny)

    by aengblom ( 123492 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @03:30PM (#5304932) Homepage
    Damn V-day! First, my bastion of geekness tells me I need a date. Now, one hour later, it tells me I have a kid and I have to name it.

    ACK!
  • I was lucky with my name. It's easy to remember.

    Although when I was younger and the kids didn't know what the word "stoner" meant, they called me Joe Boner.

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