Pet Peeves #9000
You know, I never have really wanted children but I have always been desperate to name some. I adore putting together baby names… and I think if I ever did have kids, I’d probably need to have about 10 to satiate my need to create the perfect family of names, each representing a romantic, ideal little child in my imaginary fairytale family.
That’s all babies are to me at this point: opportunities to name characters. And a lost opportunity- or, worse yet, a wasted one- upsets me to no end. The world doesn’t need another Madison or Connor; I might puke if another of my former friends names a child Brittany or Jayden (Jayden?!? I mean, really.)… and I particularly hate for people to spell perfectly lovely names like Courtney insane things like “Korten-ay.”
But nothing can top the recent horrendousness revealed to me by Facebook. A high school acquaintance of mine- her own name a mere jumble of crazy mismatched syllables- has named her baby Tilapia. As in the fish.
As in insanity.
Maybe you don’t encounter this issue as often as I, child of the South, do. Maybe it doesn’t irk you as it does me… but all this offends my artistic sensibilities, not to mention the lies I tell myself about the South being a place that’s not entirely full of unoriginal copycats and crazy people.
Of course, it was the 1920’s registry of a rural Georgia town that provided the romantic (and admittedly out there) names of the original Cabbage Patch Kids… could it be that in another 100 years I will be buying the grandchild I will not have a priceless doll named Tilapia Jayden Connor Smith? Heaven help me, if so.
