Today, it’s not just sadistic rock stars tripping on acid who inflict their progeny with monikers like Moon Unit and Zowie. The Chinese government recently fined a couple for naming their child “@.” In New Zealand, the proud parents of the future punching bag for every bully in the South Pacific named him “Superman” after officials rejected their first choice of “4Real.”
How are American mommies and daddies choosing truly unique names for their kids when “Moxie CrimeFighter” is the new Mary? By hiring consultants to choose names for them, of course.
Ostensibly, they do so with the best of intentions. Their lives are busy, their schedules packed; they know they may not always be able to pencil in Junior to their calendars, so they attempt to take the shortcut to self-actualization by outsourcing the labeling of their infants to bona fide experts.
According to The Wall Street Journal, however, even the leading practitioners of this nascent service industry are only charging between $25 and $350 to brand a new generation of tots. And imagine the psychic damage that will cause in, say, 2019: “Yes, Chesapeake, it’s true. Not only did we let a complete stranger take the first step in shaping your destiny, we only paid him 25 bucks to do it. That’s how special you were to us—we spent less on your name than we spent on our toaster! But, really, isn’t this something you should be taking up with your therapist?”
Don’t be too quick to blame the parents, though. Naming a child is an intimate, symbolic, arguably sacred act—and any so-called “nameologist” who charges less than five figures for her services is doing a grave disservice not just to her clients but also to humanity in general. After all, corporate naming consultants charge big bucks to invent appellations like Aldara and Gardasil—and don’t parents deserve the same opportunity as genital-warts scientists to prove how much they value their products?
Paying $350 for a customized baby name seems cheap at best, and perhaps even deliberately malicious, but if Daddy has to forsake a 911 Turbo to spare his issue the shame of shuffling through life as yet another Jacob, how can little Crosby Fairfax not feel loved?
Also, why stop at the name that goes on the birth certificate? Let’s say, for example, that your daughter grows up to be a porn star. Now that real names have gotten so self-consciously contrived, it’s harder than ever to coin the sort of obviously fake names the industry requires. If left to her own devices, your child will probably just settle on “Nikki” or “Briana”—but why not give her a leg up in this increasingly competitive business by hiring an expert who can devise a sexy, completely unique new way to misspell Tiffany?
Screen names are another crucial component to our overall brand identity, and look how we botch them when we try to do it ourselves. Do you really want to shell out fifty grand to give your kid a strikingly exotic moniker like Liotord or Pomegranate, only to have him to sabotage its majesty with a screen name like Liotord3547? Even worse, of course, are more expressive online handles—but if you hire an expert to create your kids’ screen names for them, you will never have to explain to your friends why your child goes by the name bEdPooPeR4eVaH.
Any truly conscientious parent should also consider the impact of peer-given nicknames on their child’s development, social standing and future career opportunities. Does it matter, for example, that you spent $100,000 on a name of such commanding, euphonious grandeur it practically ensures your firstborn’s fate as a Hollywood action hero or senator if all his classmates constantly refer to him as Boogernuts? Parents who naively believe that a naming consultant alone can guarantee their child’s appellative verve are essentially committing a form of child abuse: Those who truly care about their kids will also enlist the services of age-appropriate stealth marketers who know how to introduce positive, cachet-enhancing nicknames to cafeterias and playgrounds in a convincingly organic way.
Then of course there are band names, pet names, names for his first car. Yes, it will get expensive, but those parents who balk at such necessities might as well just doom their child to a life of bland conformist mediocrity and name him Dweezil.