June 27, 2011 • 20 mins
There's tons of research about how your name will affect your destiny. Some studies suggests your name is linked to your grades, your criminal record and your earning potential. Tune in to learn about what your name might mean for your future.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House Stu works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Today we're talking
(00:21):
about baby names and whether or not they make a
difference in life, and particularly more unique names. And while
Kristen is not the most unique name, they're plenty of
Christen's out there listening right now, I would bet. But
the spelling is a little unconventional, and I will say
(00:41):
that there have been times in my life when I
wish my parents hadn't been so creative. At the hospital,
it's c R I S T E N. Rarely does
someone spell it correctly on the first time. I understand
it's an unconventional spelling, but perhaps there are times when
that's a little bit annoying to you. It has been annoying,
and for some reason, maybe it's the way I say hello,
(01:04):
my name is Kristen. People typically respond, oh, hello, Christian
or what was that Christine? Kirsten, Kirsten, like any anything
that is not Kristen I have I've gotten like no, Actually,
it's Kristen. And fun fact about me, Originally my parents
were since this was in the early eighties, Um, they're
(01:28):
gonna name me Michelle. Not no offense. Michelle is out there.
But I'm kind of glad I'm a Kristen, you know.
I think that, um, it was gonna be Molly or
Emily for me, and well Emily. If I had been
an Emily, I would have been like one of ten
Emily's in my class. So I am glad that I
got Molly because it's not very common except among dogs.
(01:51):
If I had a dollar for every time someone told
me they had a dog named Molly, I could go
buy us a nice lunch. Today. Yeah, it's a very
common pet name. So um, yeah, that's what we want
to kind of get into. Everyone's got a story about
their name, whether it meant something to their parents, whether
they just liked it, which Geremala came from. And I
think that it's fair to say that naming a child
(02:13):
causes a lot of angst among expected parents, especially today.
If you look at the traffic numbers for like baby
name dot Com and all these different baby naming sites,
they have just gone through the roof in the past
few years. Everyone wants a good name. I mean you've
got to You've got to get like the perfect balance
between uh, common enough that everyone knows it, that you know,
(02:36):
people won't have trouble spelling it like a kristen Um,
but out there enough that you're not gonna be one
of you know, fifteen Emily's or John's or Matthews in
your class. And I feel like that's the line that
a lot of people are trying to walk. And as
a result, I think we're getting some more unusual baby names.
And before reading all of these sources, I had no idea,
first of all, the great effort that a lot of
(03:00):
arrants are going to these days, not only just looking
at baby named books and consulting you know, family names,
but also going to numerologists, going to branding consultants, specific
baby name consultants, taking Internet polls and surveys, so much
fretting over baby names, and lo and behold, there is
actually decent reason why, because researchers have put all this
(03:24):
effort into figuring out how your name impacts you down
the road. Yeah, let me let's throw out a few examples.
Let's say, for example, that you're a fella who was
given a name traditionally given to girls like an Ashley,
Yep or Shannon. Those boys are more likely to misbehave
than their counterparts with masculine names, according to some research,
(03:44):
because they're saying that, you know, if you're a male
Ashley and all of a sudden you're in a class
with a female Ashley, the bozos and the class are
gonna start giving you a hard time. You're gonna start fighting,
and that's your discipline record will look different than you know,
John does disciplinite record. And there's also correlation between how
much um someone likes their name and their self esteem,
(04:05):
So accumulating research is indicated that if you dislike your name,
you probably have lower self esteem. Right, yeah, here's another
one if you're kind of flip side the one I
just threw out. If you're a girl who has sort
of a masculine name, let's say Morgan versus Elizabeth, because
Morgan can go either way. The masculine named girls are
(04:27):
more likely to take those math and science classes that
you know, typically girls are you know, stereotypically not taking
then the girls with the more feminine names. But people say,
is this a difference in terms of how we treat
daughters with masculine names, or is it just that masculine
name gives you the the push to kind of go
into that more masculine dominated world. And speaking of academic performance,
(04:51):
there's also research indicating that names that sound like and
this is where we get into some controversial territory names
it sound as though they came from a family of
low socio economic status, might be tagged as less capable learners.
And so it turns into um sort of a vicious
(05:12):
cycle of people, you know, educators perceiving this child based
on his or her name as coming from a low,
lower economic status and in putting them into the lower
learning groups. And even just let's say you've got a
common name, let's say Christian for example. They're saying in
this article by Jenni Brner that if you were constantly
(05:32):
asked like, is that really how you spell your name, Kristen,
that that would affect your self esteem too, right, that
eventually you would think, is that really how I spell
my name? Am I wrong? Am I wrong? Am I
my crazy? Is this name any good at all? They're
saying that kind of a very well effect on your
self esteem, right, because think about it like that starts
to happen what in kindergarten, you know, and teachers don't
don't want to, um, don't want to spell your name
(05:56):
that way, and it can it can really hurt. But
but and then just going on with this, like we said,
there is an astonishing amount of research. So just to
add to this pile criminal activity. Yeah, there's this whole
study from Shippensburg University that found a relationship between first
name popularity in adolescents in their tendency to make crime.
(06:19):
And basically they're saying that if you know you're a
a Eugene or Mildred and no one likes your name,
you're gonna go on a crime spree overcompensate for having
such a polarizing name. I liked on the record for
saying I'd love the name Mildred. Mildred is cute. Um,
But I think that if I have a daughter christ
and I'm gonna name her Deborah, Oh, I know why,
(06:41):
because you want a high achiever. I want a high
achieving daughter or son. So that's why Peter and Deborah
will will be the names of my children. According to
one study, those are the most common names of c E.
O s in the United States. Yeah, this was I
think it came from an extensive survey from information called
off linked in and they pulled out i mean, sixteen
(07:05):
million UM profiles and like you said, yes, Peter the
most popular. And the Deborah thing is interesting because Deborah
spelled with the A H ending is the number one
most popular female CEO name, and then number three is
Deborah A R A. So yeah, even just you know,
if you're making decision, oh, I like the name Deborah,
(07:26):
You've got to consider which spelling is gonna be better
for my child. Add on that h um. And you
know there are a lot of dentists whose name are dentists.
So um, yeah, you can see now why parents might
start to stress because it does seem like maybe your
name might influence what you do for a living, how
(07:46):
you get through high school, whether it's with a disciplinary
record or good grades or not. Um. Even when you're
sending out those first resumes, and this is where we
get kind of into touchy territory with racial names. Um,
they're saying that Molly for examples of very quote unquote
white name, and that if we sent the same resume
out for one Molly versus the same exact resume for
(08:07):
someone named like Rashonda, that Molly would get more hits
than Reshonda. And there have been a few economic studies
that have confirmed this. If employers are looking just side
by side at resumes um identical candidates, they haven't met
the anyone in person. But the resumes with the stereotypical
(08:28):
white names versus the more stereotypical black names, the white
names typically get more callbacks. And this is not just
a us phenomenon. We found one study where um in Sweden,
if those names were not stereotypically Swedish enough, those people
did not make as much money as the people who
had Swedish names when they were given a starting salary amount.
(08:49):
But here is an important point to make about especially
the white versus black names, and this is coming from
the book Freakonomics that talked a lot about this phin aminon,
and they looked at a very large data set as
well and examined the outcomes of white kids and black
kids with you know, the stereotypical white names, the stereotypical
(09:12):
black names, and then just crossover names just like you know,
names that have no racial distinction whatsoever. And again the
similar pattern occurred where kids with the stereotypical and they
called this super black names that as they quote uh,
ended up with the lowest outcome. They ended up making
(09:32):
the least amount of money, the most poorly educated. And
the Forre economics guy said, this really is not an
issue of the name, but it's an issue of the
what the name indicates. Because children with those super black names,
and I hate using that phrase over and over again,
but that's phrase they used typically come from lower socio
(09:56):
economic backgrounds with fewer opportunities, right, And there's some evidence
that people who give those quote unquote super black names
to their children are trying to associate themselves with the
socio economic group on purpose, you know, standing together in
solidarity with your community. Um. But then the question becomes
(10:17):
whether you're standing with the community or just trying to
give your kid a name that's kind of cool and edgy.
How does it affect the child? It affects some sort
of long term we're saying, you know, maybe there's a
little bit of you know, maybe there's some fun to
be had in terms of you name your kid a
dentists and he turns out to be a dentist. Or
you name your kid Mabel and chains of working at
(10:38):
Mabel's bakery, they might happen. Yeah. Well, there is a
theory that all of this effort that parents today are
putting into finding that perfectly unique name, you know, the
Surry Cruise, the Apple Poltro or whatever, the Martin Martin Um,
(11:00):
all this effort we're putting into it is only breeding narcissism,
because at birth, we're saying you are unique among children's
snowflake along snowflake, You're so special that I must fund
a word that has never been used as a child
name and put it on you. And so bearing this
unique name, they become self centered brats. Yeah, and and
(11:22):
it kind of they're saying, it says more about the
parents being kind of self centered brats as well, because
you could argue that any name says more about the
parents than it does about the child. Despite the fact
that people are going to branding experts saying what name
can I give my kid that will make someone really
rich higher them? But uh, you know, by choosing this
most unusual name than yeah, it's possible that we're going
(11:44):
to become this nation of narcissists. According to one theory,
but speaking of the branding and this, I think this
little anecdote is points to this parental role. You know,
maybe it's not the children that we're breeding that are
the problem, but maybe the parents who need to just
breathe and relax and name their kid George and get
it over with. So this guy in the Wall Street Journal,
(12:07):
he's a branding expert, Mr. Alper, He tells Wall Street
Journal about how he and his wife are just agonizing
over what to name their child. They end up naming
the child Beckett, and he says, quote that c K
sound is very well regarded in corporate circles, giving Kodak
(12:27):
and Coca Cola as examples. Quote, the hard stop forces
you to accentuate the syllable in a way that draws
attention to it. Poor Beckett or Beckett. Well, you know
there's one actor. Al said that there was a father
back at the turn the centry who named one kid
winner and one kid loser, and winner like sucked at life,
(12:49):
he became a criminal, did not do well. Loser goes
on to be like the most successful businessman of the neighborhood,
but people called him lou because it was uncompable. Calm loser. Yeah,
he actually ended up a sergeant with the NYPD, which
is kind of ironic because winners on one side of
the law and lou A losers on the winning side
of the law. I think, though, Molly, that we need
(13:10):
to get off the Internet and go back to colonial
times when parents would choose names by opening the Bible
and selecting a word at random. What sort of names
with that result? In Christen Well, some examples from the
Wall Street Journal were notwithstanding Griswold and maybe Barnes. But
(13:32):
that's just in the United States. It's unconventional naming practices.
But in other countries sometimes the law determines what your
child can be named. Yeah, if you want to name
your kid Metallica, you are out of luck in some countries.
Sweden does not take kindly to someone wanting to have
(13:53):
a baby, and as a joke, name in Ikea. No
Swedish authorities have rejected such names as Veranda Ikea and
Mattawa coup And there was a French law that was
enacted in the eighteen hundreds and was only repealed in
nine that prohibited all names except those on a preapproved list.
And then in Germany the government still bands invented names
(14:15):
and names, and this is interesting. Names that don't clearly
designate a child's sex. Very interesting. Well, every now and
you'll see a trend piece in this country of some
parents who wants to me and their kid hitler for
a laugh, like, should we have a law that prohibits,
you know, crazy names like that, or maybe we should
have a law against crazy parents being able to you know,
(14:36):
have children. Wait, that's eugenics. Never mind, here's what I
think we should do. Christen. Technology has all our answers.
I know you want to go back to the Bible,
I say, I said, we all use our smartphones because
I found out about this app that you can get
on your phone where you um a name will kind
of slide by on the app. You put it up
(14:57):
to your pregnant belly and when the baby kick after
hearing the name, they're saying the baby is selecting its name. Yes,
this is called the kick to Pick app. It's only
cs and cents for a great name any price. Yeah,
there you go, take all the take all the worry out.
I mean, I still I still think that maybe you
(15:19):
should honor the Lord and look it up in the bottom. Well,
what you can do. According to this article in Time
about the app, you can pre select sort of a
group of names. So let's say you want to put
like a big circle like biblical names on your app.
I would want a lot of hard stops to accentuate
the vowels and such um. And then you let that
(15:39):
go by on the app. And so the kid will
be picking a biblical name that you have preapproved. But
when he complains later about his name, you have to
be like, hey, Jesus, you picked this name. And that's
why they're always middle names. You know, parents, you're freaking out,
But just remember you got two names to play with.
I do over if you will. Yeah, guess that's one
(16:00):
of the things that this name regret, almost like buyer's remorse.
Just for one final statistic, kind listeners. A British study
of three thousand parents suggests that one in five regret
the name they chose for a child, and most of
the distress comes when they pick something unusual or odd.
So maybe go with something like George Slingshot. You know,
(16:24):
do something weird and do something conventional. You can mix
it up, and you know, kids will probably just rename
themselves when they become engsty fifteen year olds anyway. Yeah,
it's no big deal. And anecdotally, once kids passed sort
of that mark of getting through high school, getting their
first job, and kind of settling into the name, they're
fine with it. Yeah, even though people still must spell
my name all the time, I don't mind it. I
(16:46):
like it. Yeah, it's a distinguishing factor. I think that
the thing is is once you see the kid and
the names applied to them, it's set. Yeah, so expectant
parents out there. While we freaked you out in the
first half, the second half is just to tell you
to chill out, just relax, and people with odder unusual
or horribly ordinary, right in and tell us your stories.
(17:08):
We would like to hear them. It's mom stuff at
how stuff works dot com. And I've got an email
that was sent to that very same address. It's about
yeast infections. It's from Nicholas and he earned his five
gold stars by being a man who listened to all
of that podcast. And he writes, sometimes a woman's partner
(17:30):
can find signs of a East infection before the woman herself.
I was too embarrassed to mention anything the first time
I came across the East infection, but if I had,
it would have cut short my girlfriend's symptoms. And when
she found out, she was mortified. So to make things
easier for everyone, do not be afraid to tactfully say
something to her. Maybe a couple should even discuss how
they'll handle this in advance to avoid awkwardness and embarrassment.
(17:54):
I have an email here from Valerie, and this is
also from her East infection podcast in which we men
and thrush in babies. And I'm not going to go
into all the details, but let's just say Valerie got
a bad case of thrush from her baby because she
did not because thrush is oral, an oral yeast infection,
and she didn't realize how contagious it was. And she
(18:16):
would let him put his fingers in her mouth and
wipe off her pacifier with his mouth, and you know,
of course kiss him because he's a go little baby.
And then she got a bad case of thrush. And
she said that she tried to do everything natural with yogurt,
probiotics and changing her diet so that it didn't have
any sugar or beer, just yogurt and vegetables basically, and
(18:38):
everything eating everything else was very painful and then she
said when it spread her vagina, she finally went to
the doctor. So the moral of that painful story is,
if your child has thrush, be careful. Be careful because
it can apparently spread like wildfire. And that's a good
(19:00):
name for a baby, wildfire wildfire connor like it. Well.
If you would like to get in touch with us
via social media, you can a email us at Mom's
House at works dot com. But that's not really social,
so why don't you follow us on Facebook and like
us or follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast.
(19:23):
And then finally, during the week, you can go to
our blog It's stuff Mom Never told You and you
can find it and plenty of other articles about babies
and names at how Stuff works dot com. Be sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
(19:43):
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From House Stu works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Today we're talking
(00:21):
about baby names and whether or not they make a
difference in life, and particularly more unique names. And while
Kristen is not the most unique name, they're plenty of
Christen's out there listening right now, I would bet. But
the spelling is a little unconventional, and I will say
(00:41):
that there have been times in my life when I
wish my parents hadn't been so creative. At the hospital,
it's c R I S T E N. Rarely does
someone spell it correctly on the first time. I understand
it's an unconventional spelling, but perhaps there are times when
that's a little bit annoying to you. It has been annoying,
and for some reason, maybe it's the way I say hello,
(01:04):
my name is Kristen. People typically respond, oh, hello, Christian
or what was that Christine? Kirsten, Kirsten, like any anything
that is not Kristen I have I've gotten like no, Actually,
it's Kristen. And fun fact about me, Originally my parents
were since this was in the early eighties, Um, they're
(01:28):
gonna name me Michelle. Not no offense. Michelle is out there.
But I'm kind of glad I'm a Kristen, you know.
I think that, um, it was gonna be Molly or
Emily for me, and well Emily. If I had been
an Emily, I would have been like one of ten
Emily's in my class. So I am glad that I
got Molly because it's not very common except among dogs.
(01:51):
If I had a dollar for every time someone told
me they had a dog named Molly, I could go
buy us a nice lunch. Today. Yeah, it's a very
common pet name. So um, yeah, that's what we want
to kind of get into. Everyone's got a story about
their name, whether it meant something to their parents, whether
they just liked it, which Geremala came from. And I
think that it's fair to say that naming a child
(02:13):
causes a lot of angst among expected parents, especially today.
If you look at the traffic numbers for like baby
name dot Com and all these different baby naming sites,
they have just gone through the roof in the past
few years. Everyone wants a good name. I mean you've
got to You've got to get like the perfect balance
between uh, common enough that everyone knows it, that you know,
(02:36):
people won't have trouble spelling it like a kristen Um,
but out there enough that you're not gonna be one
of you know, fifteen Emily's or John's or Matthews in
your class. And I feel like that's the line that
a lot of people are trying to walk. And as
a result, I think we're getting some more unusual baby names.
And before reading all of these sources, I had no idea,
first of all, the great effort that a lot of
(03:00):
arrants are going to these days, not only just looking
at baby named books and consulting you know, family names,
but also going to numerologists, going to branding consultants, specific
baby name consultants, taking Internet polls and surveys, so much
fretting over baby names, and lo and behold, there is
actually decent reason why, because researchers have put all this
(03:24):
effort into figuring out how your name impacts you down
the road. Yeah, let me let's throw out a few examples.
Let's say, for example, that you're a fella who was
given a name traditionally given to girls like an Ashley,
Yep or Shannon. Those boys are more likely to misbehave
than their counterparts with masculine names, according to some research,
(03:44):
because they're saying that, you know, if you're a male
Ashley and all of a sudden you're in a class
with a female Ashley, the bozos and the class are
gonna start giving you a hard time. You're gonna start fighting,
and that's your discipline record will look different than you know,
John does disciplinite record. And there's also correlation between how
much um someone likes their name and their self esteem,
(04:05):
So accumulating research is indicated that if you dislike your name,
you probably have lower self esteem. Right, yeah, here's another
one if you're kind of flip side the one I
just threw out. If you're a girl who has sort
of a masculine name, let's say Morgan versus Elizabeth, because
Morgan can go either way. The masculine named girls are
(04:27):
more likely to take those math and science classes that
you know, typically girls are you know, stereotypically not taking
then the girls with the more feminine names. But people say,
is this a difference in terms of how we treat
daughters with masculine names, or is it just that masculine
name gives you the the push to kind of go
into that more masculine dominated world. And speaking of academic performance,
(04:51):
there's also research indicating that names that sound like and
this is where we get into some controversial territory names
it sound as though they came from a family of
low socio economic status, might be tagged as less capable learners.
And so it turns into um sort of a vicious
(05:12):
cycle of people, you know, educators perceiving this child based
on his or her name as coming from a low,
lower economic status and in putting them into the lower
learning groups. And even just let's say you've got a
common name, let's say Christian for example. They're saying in
this article by Jenni Brner that if you were constantly
(05:32):
asked like, is that really how you spell your name, Kristen,
that that would affect your self esteem too, right, that
eventually you would think, is that really how I spell
my name? Am I wrong? Am I wrong? Am I
my crazy? Is this name any good at all? They're
saying that kind of a very well effect on your
self esteem, right, because think about it like that starts
to happen what in kindergarten, you know, and teachers don't
don't want to, um, don't want to spell your name
(05:56):
that way, and it can it can really hurt. But
but and then just going on with this, like we said,
there is an astonishing amount of research. So just to
add to this pile criminal activity. Yeah, there's this whole
study from Shippensburg University that found a relationship between first
name popularity in adolescents in their tendency to make crime.
(06:19):
And basically they're saying that if you know you're a
a Eugene or Mildred and no one likes your name,
you're gonna go on a crime spree overcompensate for having
such a polarizing name. I liked on the record for
saying I'd love the name Mildred. Mildred is cute. Um,
But I think that if I have a daughter christ
and I'm gonna name her Deborah, Oh, I know why,
(06:41):
because you want a high achiever. I want a high
achieving daughter or son. So that's why Peter and Deborah
will will be the names of my children. According to
one study, those are the most common names of c E.
O s in the United States. Yeah, this was I
think it came from an extensive survey from information called
off linked in and they pulled out i mean, sixteen
(07:05):
million UM profiles and like you said, yes, Peter the
most popular. And the Deborah thing is interesting because Deborah
spelled with the A H ending is the number one
most popular female CEO name, and then number three is
Deborah A R A. So yeah, even just you know,
if you're making decision, oh, I like the name Deborah,
(07:26):
You've got to consider which spelling is gonna be better
for my child. Add on that h um. And you
know there are a lot of dentists whose name are dentists.
So um, yeah, you can see now why parents might
start to stress because it does seem like maybe your
name might influence what you do for a living, how
(07:46):
you get through high school, whether it's with a disciplinary
record or good grades or not. Um. Even when you're
sending out those first resumes, and this is where we
get kind of into touchy territory with racial names. Um,
they're saying that Molly for examples of very quote unquote
white name, and that if we sent the same resume
out for one Molly versus the same exact resume for
(08:07):
someone named like Rashonda, that Molly would get more hits
than Reshonda. And there have been a few economic studies
that have confirmed this. If employers are looking just side
by side at resumes um identical candidates, they haven't met
the anyone in person. But the resumes with the stereotypical
(08:28):
white names versus the more stereotypical black names, the white
names typically get more callbacks. And this is not just
a us phenomenon. We found one study where um in Sweden,
if those names were not stereotypically Swedish enough, those people
did not make as much money as the people who
had Swedish names when they were given a starting salary amount.
(08:49):
But here is an important point to make about especially
the white versus black names, and this is coming from
the book Freakonomics that talked a lot about this phin aminon,
and they looked at a very large data set as
well and examined the outcomes of white kids and black
kids with you know, the stereotypical white names, the stereotypical
(09:12):
black names, and then just crossover names just like you know,
names that have no racial distinction whatsoever. And again the
similar pattern occurred where kids with the stereotypical and they
called this super black names that as they quote uh,
ended up with the lowest outcome. They ended up making
(09:32):
the least amount of money, the most poorly educated. And
the Forre economics guy said, this really is not an
issue of the name, but it's an issue of the
what the name indicates. Because children with those super black names,
and I hate using that phrase over and over again,
but that's phrase they used typically come from lower socio
(09:56):
economic backgrounds with fewer opportunities, right, And there's some evidence
that people who give those quote unquote super black names
to their children are trying to associate themselves with the
socio economic group on purpose, you know, standing together in
solidarity with your community. Um. But then the question becomes
(10:17):
whether you're standing with the community or just trying to
give your kid a name that's kind of cool and edgy.
How does it affect the child? It affects some sort
of long term we're saying, you know, maybe there's a
little bit of you know, maybe there's some fun to
be had in terms of you name your kid a
dentists and he turns out to be a dentist. Or
you name your kid Mabel and chains of working at
(10:38):
Mabel's bakery, they might happen. Yeah. Well, there is a
theory that all of this effort that parents today are
putting into finding that perfectly unique name, you know, the
Surry Cruise, the Apple Poltro or whatever, the Martin Martin Um,
(11:00):
all this effort we're putting into it is only breeding narcissism,
because at birth, we're saying you are unique among children's
snowflake along snowflake, You're so special that I must fund
a word that has never been used as a child
name and put it on you. And so bearing this
unique name, they become self centered brats. Yeah, and and
(11:22):
it kind of they're saying, it says more about the
parents being kind of self centered brats as well, because
you could argue that any name says more about the
parents than it does about the child. Despite the fact
that people are going to branding experts saying what name
can I give my kid that will make someone really
rich higher them? But uh, you know, by choosing this
most unusual name than yeah, it's possible that we're going
(11:44):
to become this nation of narcissists. According to one theory,
but speaking of the branding and this, I think this
little anecdote is points to this parental role. You know,
maybe it's not the children that we're breeding that are
the problem, but maybe the parents who need to just
breathe and relax and name their kid George and get
it over with. So this guy in the Wall Street Journal,
(12:07):
he's a branding expert, Mr. Alper, He tells Wall Street
Journal about how he and his wife are just agonizing
over what to name their child. They end up naming
the child Beckett, and he says, quote that c K
sound is very well regarded in corporate circles, giving Kodak
(12:27):
and Coca Cola as examples. Quote, the hard stop forces
you to accentuate the syllable in a way that draws
attention to it. Poor Beckett or Beckett. Well, you know
there's one actor. Al said that there was a father
back at the turn the centry who named one kid
winner and one kid loser, and winner like sucked at life,
(12:49):
he became a criminal, did not do well. Loser goes
on to be like the most successful businessman of the neighborhood,
but people called him lou because it was uncompable. Calm loser. Yeah,
he actually ended up a sergeant with the NYPD, which
is kind of ironic because winners on one side of
the law and lou A losers on the winning side
of the law. I think, though, Molly, that we need
(13:10):
to get off the Internet and go back to colonial
times when parents would choose names by opening the Bible
and selecting a word at random. What sort of names
with that result? In Christen Well, some examples from the
Wall Street Journal were notwithstanding Griswold and maybe Barnes. But
(13:32):
that's just in the United States. It's unconventional naming practices.
But in other countries sometimes the law determines what your
child can be named. Yeah, if you want to name
your kid Metallica, you are out of luck in some countries.
Sweden does not take kindly to someone wanting to have
(13:53):
a baby, and as a joke, name in Ikea. No
Swedish authorities have rejected such names as Veranda Ikea and
Mattawa coup And there was a French law that was
enacted in the eighteen hundreds and was only repealed in
nine that prohibited all names except those on a preapproved list.
And then in Germany the government still bands invented names
(14:15):
and names, and this is interesting. Names that don't clearly
designate a child's sex. Very interesting. Well, every now and
you'll see a trend piece in this country of some
parents who wants to me and their kid hitler for
a laugh, like, should we have a law that prohibits,
you know, crazy names like that, or maybe we should
have a law against crazy parents being able to you know,
(14:36):
have children. Wait, that's eugenics. Never mind, here's what I
think we should do. Christen. Technology has all our answers.
I know you want to go back to the Bible,
I say, I said, we all use our smartphones because
I found out about this app that you can get
on your phone where you um a name will kind
of slide by on the app. You put it up
(14:57):
to your pregnant belly and when the baby kick after
hearing the name, they're saying the baby is selecting its name. Yes,
this is called the kick to Pick app. It's only
cs and cents for a great name any price. Yeah,
there you go, take all the take all the worry out.
I mean, I still I still think that maybe you
(15:19):
should honor the Lord and look it up in the bottom. Well,
what you can do. According to this article in Time
about the app, you can pre select sort of a
group of names. So let's say you want to put
like a big circle like biblical names on your app.
I would want a lot of hard stops to accentuate
the vowels and such um. And then you let that
(15:39):
go by on the app. And so the kid will
be picking a biblical name that you have preapproved. But
when he complains later about his name, you have to
be like, hey, Jesus, you picked this name. And that's
why they're always middle names. You know, parents, you're freaking out,
But just remember you got two names to play with.
I do over if you will. Yeah, guess that's one
(16:00):
of the things that this name regret, almost like buyer's remorse.
Just for one final statistic, kind listeners. A British study
of three thousand parents suggests that one in five regret
the name they chose for a child, and most of
the distress comes when they pick something unusual or odd.
So maybe go with something like George Slingshot. You know,
(16:24):
do something weird and do something conventional. You can mix
it up, and you know, kids will probably just rename
themselves when they become engsty fifteen year olds anyway. Yeah,
it's no big deal. And anecdotally, once kids passed sort
of that mark of getting through high school, getting their
first job, and kind of settling into the name, they're
fine with it. Yeah, even though people still must spell
my name all the time, I don't mind it. I
(16:46):
like it. Yeah, it's a distinguishing factor. I think that
the thing is is once you see the kid and
the names applied to them, it's set. Yeah, so expectant
parents out there. While we freaked you out in the
first half, the second half is just to tell you
to chill out, just relax, and people with odder unusual
or horribly ordinary, right in and tell us your stories.
(17:08):
We would like to hear them. It's mom stuff at
how stuff works dot com. And I've got an email
that was sent to that very same address. It's about
yeast infections. It's from Nicholas and he earned his five
gold stars by being a man who listened to all
of that podcast. And he writes, sometimes a woman's partner
(17:30):
can find signs of a East infection before the woman herself.
I was too embarrassed to mention anything the first time
I came across the East infection, but if I had,
it would have cut short my girlfriend's symptoms. And when
she found out, she was mortified. So to make things
easier for everyone, do not be afraid to tactfully say
something to her. Maybe a couple should even discuss how
they'll handle this in advance to avoid awkwardness and embarrassment.
(17:54):
I have an email here from Valerie, and this is
also from her East infection podcast in which we men
and thrush in babies. And I'm not going to go
into all the details, but let's just say Valerie got
a bad case of thrush from her baby because she
did not because thrush is oral, an oral yeast infection,
and she didn't realize how contagious it was. And she
(18:16):
would let him put his fingers in her mouth and
wipe off her pacifier with his mouth, and you know,
of course kiss him because he's a go little baby.
And then she got a bad case of thrush. And
she said that she tried to do everything natural with yogurt,
probiotics and changing her diet so that it didn't have
any sugar or beer, just yogurt and vegetables basically, and
(18:38):
everything eating everything else was very painful and then she
said when it spread her vagina, she finally went to
the doctor. So the moral of that painful story is,
if your child has thrush, be careful. Be careful because
it can apparently spread like wildfire. And that's a good
(19:00):
name for a baby, wildfire wildfire connor like it. Well.
If you would like to get in touch with us
via social media, you can a email us at Mom's
House at works dot com. But that's not really social,
so why don't you follow us on Facebook and like
us or follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast.
(19:23):
And then finally, during the week, you can go to
our blog It's stuff Mom Never told You and you
can find it and plenty of other articles about babies
and names at how Stuff works dot com. Be sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
(19:43):
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works
iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought
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