Perhaps naming laws aren’t such a bad thing, at least in cases like this: D’AlCapone AlPacino Morris was arrested by the U.S. Marshal’s Service last year on charges of murder, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and felonious assault. No word on what the alleged criminal’s parents were thinking when they named him. (HT: Peter Mintun)[%comments]
Rough Name, Rough Start?
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So why not name your child?:
It’s less likely to cause him trouble than having “Wayne” as a middle name.
I like the laugh test idea but it should go further…Submit possible names to a test group of fifth grade bullies.
Let’s just make the inevitable leap to serial numbers. Names are just an unnecessary bourgeois construct.
Brett, I think you miread LG’s post. The study quoted correlates the socio-economic factors behind people who are could name their child unusual names with how the child will turn out – regardless of the name. Basically socio-economic background of the parents to child’s likely life path.
I agree with LB. The SORT of parents that name their children so ignorantly and short-sightedly are the SORT of people that are far more likely to set bad examples, allow criminal behavior, etc.
I mean, really, do we have doubts that someone that names their son, say, Adolph Hitler Jones is going to raise a cultured gentleman?
A parent typically seeks to provide a meaningful name to their child. A grandparent, perhaps. Or a goodly name from literature. Or a Bible name of import. When a parent is so “broken” as to name their child after criminals, it indicates that that parent glorifies or otherwise places value on the name given…or perhaps it indicates that the parent does not place value on the child.
Why is it not OK to kill a child (leaving aside abortion for a moment), but it’s perfectly OK to name a child in a soul-damaging manner? I’m almost of the opinion that such a child would be better off if their parents were just arrested–perhaps shot–on the spot.
Idiots!
I doubt it’s having an unusual or wacky name that leads a person to delinquency. *If* there is a correlation between weird names and delinquency, I would guess it’s having parents with poor judgment and decision making skills (the name just being one sign of that) that leads a young adult to have a similar difficulty in making decisions.
When you’re born, you don’t get to choose your name, but there are a whole lot of things afterward that you can control, like whether or not to take up a life of crime.
I spent five years managing the Voluntary Paternity Acknowledgement Registry of a state Child Support Enforcement Agency. I can assure you that “problematic” names, both of parents and children, do tend to correlate with illegitimacy, poverty, and other social ills. Particularly troubling to me were the mothers who named their daughters after STDs. What were they thinking?