What's in a Name?

Naming our children was a serious issue for us.

Their name is something that they will have to live with for the rest of their lives.

Names have stigmas,

They have their own personalities.

Now we had certain criteria our children’s name had to meet.

Any name we considered, we looked up its meaning. Even if a name was cool, if it had a dumb or negative meaning it was nixed.

I read an article a while ago; a study in the USA correlating the delinquent tendencies of young people given names of famous bad people.

A British study showed that 1 in 5 parents regret the name they have given a child.

Another study says that boys with girly names have more disciplinary problems after the 6^th grade.

Adolf was once a very popular name in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Now no sane person would name his or her child Adolf today.

Now maybe we were a bit extreme,

We didn’t want a common name.

We wanted something classy

Something that would stand the test of time.

It had to be easily pronounced in both languages.

It couldn’t be too long (our last name is long enough)

A lot of names came and went. They didn’t pass the test.

I know a lot of families that also given strong consideration to the name that they gave their children.

Therefore I am still dumbfounded by what we read in the local church bulletin today under recent baptisms.

I have to ask. Is it a generational thing?

I don’t know the parents.

Maybe they are younger than us.

Maybe they didn’t grow up in the eighties. Maybe they have never heard of him.

Or maybe it's a sick joke.

Still, I can’t fathom naming my child “Freddy Krüger”