Wind In My Head: What's in a name?
Wind In My Head
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
What's in a name?
I have blogged very regularly about names or about naming kids bad names especially since it's a hazard of my profession that I see so many bad names. There really does seem to be a strange culture in Singapore where we try to outdo one another by coming up with more and more ridiculous names for the children, totally disregarding the fact that the poor child will have to grow up with the name and live with it for the rest of his or her natural life and then have it carved out for eternity on the epitaph.This morning, I was floored when I chanced upon a blog where one of the kids was called Porthos. I thought, oh dear, poor thing, hopefully that was a one off thing. I mean, after all, Porthos was already quite bad and the kid did look somewhat portly. A closer inspection of the blog revealed that this parent had a cruel cruel sense of humour because Porthos had older brothers and naturally, they were named Aramis and Athos. Ok, yes, if I had 3 sons, I would love for them to be as close as the 3 Musketeers, but seriously? And what? If a fourth one came about, D'Artagnan?
We are now in the midst of trying to name our offspring and feel the heavy burden of picking names that the children have good meanings, can live with and won't hate us too much for and let me just say, it's really slim pickings out there.
Technorati Tags: Singapore, names
Ondine tossed this thought in at 15:41
1 thoughts...
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At 9:41 pm
justpassingby said... Hah, you thought that's bad? my latest little relative is named "Ay-rees"... nothing wrong, except that it's spelt Ares... Tell me what you think those polyclinic aunties will call him??? "are" and "s" don't make a good combination. And there's a theme going on, in case you're wondering... his sister is Xena. Yes, as in the princess warrior.