I couldn't look away. I couldn't stop reading. Even when I thought: surely, my eyes will begin to bleed if I look at one more entry; I simply could not look away.
And so, I must share the pain.
But I warn you, it will make you hate people who have children and insist on doing strange things in the process of naming said children.
You have been warned.
All I could think was: Oh, sweet shit. Over and over, that was the only thing escaping through the horrified immobility in my brain. Oh, sweet shit. (Thank you, Luigi, for the phrase.)
Sometime after I managed to wrench myself away from the carnage, I began to think about the problem these people were having. They wanted to name their children something interesting, or different, or (heaven defend us ) unique. The thing that creates the maddening, screaming irony is that these are probably the people who buy things advertised because everyone "needs" (wants/deserves/has) one. They are the cookie cutter masses, defined by the garbage media, up to their ears in consumer crap and hollow inside their designer shells. I believe they are subconsiously trying to save their children from the hell they (the parents) find they have created for themselves. I also believe that by tying such albatrosses around the necks of their children, they are consigning them to the exact hell they think they are trying to save them from.
Honestly, how many girls have you met in the last few years carrying around the moniker "McKenzie" in whatever incarnation her parents dreamed up for her? Or "Tyler"? I can think of at least 5 specific cases. And I don't know that many kids.
It is terrifying, my people. I flinch when I meet some poor child with a mangled name.
This thought has just occured to me: Names used to mean things; people were given names to define them, to give them attributes -- names used to be things of power, in one way or another. What happens to that attribute, that power, when the name is deliberately malformed? How could it possibly retain any of its former influence, when the substance is so tampered with? And I am not talking about simple linguistic evolution. I am talking about deliberate and forced mutation; and in ever increasing cases, parents are outright making shit up. I'm not wholly aginst this, mind you. I have met some truly interesting people with names that never existed before them. (I love the name Ijah. She is just as fabulous as you think she is, by the way.)
I am against: the syncophantic and emerging prevalence of the letters K, Y, and doubled Ns; phonetic spellings; product names; mismatching ethinic names and babies (in truly offensive manners, only. Noone who is Irish should be named "Omar".) Pretentious spellings of simple names; adding letters or syllables or (gods forbid) punctuation; giving boy's names to girls, and vice versa...
Oh, hell. Just go look at it for yourself. But rig some kind of electric shock, or set your computer to spontaneously combust, to save yourselves from the horror.
You have been warned.
