Posted on 12/28/2002 6:21:39 AM PST by summer
At the same time, it is a very clever joke because it plays on a general truth: a lot of white, black, and Asian parents give their children names similar to these. It lampoons the high-chic pretentiousness of many white parents, the bizarre exotica preferred by many black parents, and the "don't have a clue" simplicity of many Asian parents.
No, no, no! They make them up. Seriously. They may combine the parents' names, or just choose something that "sounds pretty", but they make them up.
I used to teach high school biology in a largely minority area. In human genetics there was the "create a baby" lab, in which coins were flipped to determine which genes the baby would inherit. After all the characteristics were determined, the students could name the child and draw a picture of it. I got to watch the process first hand.
Summer, out of 100 students last semester, I had exactly one "David". I don't teach many Asians, so I couldn't comment on that part, but the article is pretty dead-on for the black & white students I teach.
I couldn't say their names with a straight face. Even after a few weeks. Guess that's why I'm not a teacher.
Gonorrhea Gloria (First name is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable. It sounds like Gonoria.)
Madison Avenue Washington
Epluribus Wilson
Nosmo King (Inspired by a NO SMOKING sign in a hospital waiting room)
Simian Cook
Anus Brown
All of the above are from John Ross' novel "Unintended Consequences."
I have a few more of my own.
Formica Dinette
Female (prouounced Fa-Male') (Inspired by wrist tag on unnamed baby)
Twins named Fiero and Ciera (actually appeared as a one year birthday announcement in a local paper.)
Big Meat Brown (from an arrest announcement in local newspaper.)
And, that's about all I can think of, but there are many more and they get funnier as the years roll by and the disfunctionality of our society festers and grows.
Austin? Dakota? What's next - naming your kid Chicago or New Mexico? And Brianna - isn't that some sort of food group? And Propecia... gall stone medicine, isn't it?
Looks like the whole country has gone light in the loafers.
Now, those are all good solid truck names for kids, but which ones for boys and which ones for girls?
I worked in an elementary school for a while, and always expected to find some pretty little black girl who'd say her name was "Dixie Lisa," spelled D-Y-S-L-E-X-I-A.
Brianna is either a name Stevie Nicks named herself or her kid or is a fictional name in one of her songs. Or it might be a goat cheese with a twist?
Regret is the only true weird black name I know of personally, but once at a job, we all got to discussing weird/unfortunate names people give their children. One of my black coworkers said she personally knew an Aquanetta. That wouldn't be too bad a name, if Aquanet the hair spray did not exist.
Just a few years ago (1996), a pregnant woman at yet another job mentioned that she knew she was going to have a girl, and that she intended to name her Keisha, pronounced KEY shuh. Her reasoning? "It's original, and she won't run into a lot of people who have that name too." This woman was white, BTW.
Bad baby names are funny for those who don't have to suffer them, but they can truly blight the victim's life. I believe that at least one little boy died because of his...unfortunate...name. His given Christian name was Stonewall Jackson "Whatever", and he was born in the 1980s. His parents called him Stoney. Sadly, little Stoney had some birth defects, fairly mild, but requiring surgery. The hospital allocated such surgeries on a 'triage' basis: Likelihood of the person's life expectancy and functioning being greatly improved if s/he got the surgery; severity of defects-and the education and intelligence of the parents. Little Stoney did not get the surgery and he died before his third birthday.When his parents learned that children with a less positive outcome prognosis and more severe defects had been granted the surgery ahead of him, they sued. Although my source book (I think it was the book Playing God in the Nursery) did not speculate, I believe that the doctors bumped Stoney down because they just assumed (possibly subconsciously) given his name, that his parents were too stupid and ignorant to provide him with proper aftercare, and that a child with a name celebrating a Confederate General was just "trash" anyway. This was not in a southern state, I believe the events occured in Illinois. Had the parents named the child Thomas Jackson "Whatever", he might be alive today.
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