You named your kid WHAT?!

When I was pregnant with our first child, Mr. JB and I came to an agreement about how to name that child:  He would bestow the child’s family name, and I would choose the common names (he had veto power over something truly dreadful).  I find the idea of hyphenating or combining family names to create some kind of unwieldy, awful hybrid completely horrible for two reasons.  First, those names are just plain old impractical.  What happens when Rosie Parker-Wilson marries Sanjay Sharma-Kapoor and has a child? The kid is supposed to go by Dudley Parker-Wilson-Sharma-Kapoor? It’s just stupid.  Pick a fucking name.  Second, OBVIOUSLY it should be the father’s name.  The idea of “keeping my own name” after marriage hides the fact that we live in a PATRILINEAL society and women don’t have names of their own.  They have their FATHER’S name (unless they are a product of some righteous single mother who eradicated EVERY vestige of Daddy’s existence, in which case they have their GRANDFATHER’S name).

When a woman marries, she aligns her interests with her husband.  Time to let go of Daddy and focus on being a grown-up woman with responsibilities and obligations and privileges. Women who would rather go through life with their father’s name than their husband’s are off to a rocky start, to say the least.

So yes, obviously our children all have their father’s name as their last name. When it came to choosing common names, my principal concern was to bestow names that would weave my children into a tapestry of family, history and culture – provide them with a starting place to build their own personality and character.

True story:  every since I was a little girl, I knew that I would someday have a little girl of my own and she would have blue eyes and long blonde hair that she would wear in braids, and I would call her Heidi, like the brave, strong, kind little girl in the Joanna Spyri book.  I just knew it would happen.

And I DID have a little blue-eyed, flaxen haired daughter and I wanted to call her Heidi SO badly, but Mr. JB’s family name kinda sorta rhymes with Heidi and the names together sounded like a stripper or performer in a burlesque (which is fine, if that is what Heidi WANTS to be, but hell if I will thrust that on her).  If I gave her my beloved name, she would be something like Heidi Harley.  Terrible. To make matters worse, her Great-grandmother’s name (Mr. JB’s Nana, whom he adored) also started with H, so she would have been something like Heidi Hannah Harley.  Brutal.

So no Heidi.  Did you see what I just did there?  Yeah, I put the child’s needs and desires ahead of my own.  And that right there is the essence of choosing a name.  If you come from a long line of Snowflake Anastasia’s, then go ahead and name your kid Snowflake Anastasia, but if you name your kid Snowflake Anastasia because you think it’s whimsical and cute, you are a fucking retard.

Idiots who name their kids things like Hashtag are not giving one second’s thought to their child.  They are giving that child a BRAND designed to make the parent’s look edgy and cool.  A name like Hashtag is all about the PARENTS, and nothing to do with the child.  It’s actually downright cruel.  How in the hell do you look at a precious little baby and think to yourself:  yeah, let’s fuck up her whole life by giving her a shitty name that will be the source of endless amounts of derision and mocking and teasing because hey, it MAKES US SEEM REALLY COOL?  It doesn’t make you cool. It makes you stupid and heartless and  selfish.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/baby-hashtag_n_2199601.html

Your child’s name is a bridge to the future.  Let’s start by LEARNING HOW TO FUCKING SPELL. Madison is a stupid name to begin with (pretentious and social-climby).  Mahdeesyn is even more stupid, and I hope your ambition is for her to work at WalMart, because a resume with that name on it is going straight into the circular file.

Your child’s name comes loaded with a set of social assumptions regarding class and race and religion and aspirations. You may not LIKE that, but that’s rather like not enjoying gravity when your foot catches the rug and your ass hits the floor.  The truth is that people will make guesses about your child’s background and social class and race and religion based on his or her name and if you have even one fucking ounce of intelligence, you will NOT saddle your kid with a name that screams raised by a single mother in a drug den!  If you ARE a single mother living in a drug den, then for the love of god, give your kid a shot at a normal life by giving them a proper name!

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2005/04/a_roshanda_by_any_other_name.html

The fact is that LaShawanda isn’t going to get the job, no matter what her qualifications.  Lorraine will.  Jamal is fucked.  John isn’t.  Do your kid a favor and think about HIM first.  Give some goddamn thought to what it will be like for HER to go through life with the name Hashtag.

There are so many ways you can fuck up being a parent, and your kids will have to get over it.  That will be easier if they’re booking appointments at the therapist under the names Susan and Steve.  All the therapy in the world isn’t going to help Brajdyn and Elleighette.  They’re fucked for sure.

Lots of love,

JB