It has come to my attention that there is a recent celebrity baby naming incident that must be addressed. Let me first start by saying the subject of baby naming is just one of MANY things that I have definite (and vocal) opinions on—as if ya’ll don’t know that about me already!
I should clarify that I LOOOVE names and naming. I always have. I am absolutely fascinated with all sorts of aspects of names—origins, popularity, meanings. Blame it on my mom for deliberately misspelling my name. I blame everything else on her anyway.
As a child I fancied myself a budding author and would spend hours poring through name books to come up with characters names (hey, I was an only child after all, I had a lot of lonely time on my hands!). My characters tended to be just a little one-dimensional (they ended up having names only) and the plotlines… well, they were nonexistent. Yeah, I can’t say I ever actually finished a story, per se, but I did come up with some definite ideas on baby naming!
I even created one of my pet peeves from all this: dissonant sibling names. You know, names that just don’t go together. Like if you have a Gabrielle, her sister could logically be named Juliette cuz it sticks with the fancy French theme, but name her sister Fern and, well, that’s just mean. Why’d you do that, anyway? Or, if you have a Jonah, his brother could reasonably be named Elijah because of the matching ending, but a brother named Randy? Not as nice. Now I’m not talking you need to name all siblings with rhyming names or they all start with the same letter, in fact I heartily discourage that. I’m just saying if you’ve got a Madison, don’t name her sister Eleanor.
It can be assured that I got some pretty crazy looks from the clerks at the Waldenbooks when I bought piles of baby name books as a sixth-grader. But I was well-informed on baby naming trends even back then. Sure, developing all these opinions and specific rules about naming at such a young age was rather facile and shallow since my actual naming experience was limited to my toys and pets. Little did I know the true anguish of choosing a life-long moniker for a screaming, crying, red-faced little being; a being that could demand therapy-bill reimbursement later on. Time (and three children) has taught me that it truly is a nerve-racking experience to name your baby.
Let me also clarify my feelings on celebrity baby names—I am crazy fascinated by them! I look at every issue of Us Weekly for announcements of celebrity births. Not because I care who just got a new nanny for their baby’s daddy to diddle, or who is scheduling her tummy tuck, or who is hysterically crying in a hormone-induced rage, but because I’ve just got to know whether or not said celebrity has come up with a really cool, fucking balls-out name. And isn’t that what we demand from them? Shouldn’t we be able to expect that?? I mean, god bless Frank Zappa for bestowing the world with a Moon Unit and Dweezil. And Demi and Bruce, thank you! Rumer and Scout! For girls!! Sure, you lost your nerve a little with Tallulah, but two out of three ain’t bad—and really, if us plebs are going to steal one off of you, it will be the milder Tallulah anyway! Oh, and dear, sweet Shannyn Sossamon! Your career may fade away into indie obscurity, but the legacy of little baby Audio Science is something the world can treasure forever!
Now I’ll give you things have been a little slow on the baby-naming front since the heyday of the summer of 2006 when we got little Suri and Shiloh, Kingston and Grier. And sure, we all turned our noses up when we first heard them, "Suri? What, like with a fringe on top?" "Kingston. Huh." but now… not that crazy. Some even sound pretty good. And that is one of the jobs of celebrities (along with not eating, getting facial dermabrasion, and inventing crazy political causes that forget a minor thing called "eco-nom-ics"). One of my own brood was even influenced by celebrity baby naming, for Heaven’s sake!
You see, I wanted to name Boy Child 3 Oliver to keep with a vowel theme. That idiot I married claimed that Oliver was a pansy name. I told him Oliver Hudson (Kate’s brother) sure was hot, and totally not a pansy. Which led to, "Hey! Hudson is a cool name". But then the old man took it one further and started tripping over Kate’s son’s name. And so after a screaming, cursing, red-faced birth to a screaming, would-be-cursing-if-he-could, red-faced son I left the naming up to the king of the castle. He decided that Trey sounded a little tougher than Hudson, and since this little one showed up bellowing his lungs out and peeing on anyone in a three foot radius we’d go with Trey. It seems if he’d arrived shyly batting his eyelashes, and politely requesting a quick wipe-down and swaddling to take the chill off, we would have a little Hudson. {Author’s note: Accidents do happen! And while I’m officially DONE birthing, it is clear this lady only throws boys so I retain dibs on Hudson for any future miscalculations!}
Ok, so on to the issue at hand. It has come to my attention from someone in my wide network of hilarity-seeking spies that there has been a recent celebrity naming that needs to be looked at. And how! Now let me just say, it has been a rather boring year so far with the exception of Nicole Richie who actually did a pretty good job with little Harlow. The name is fancy and classy and glamorous and all the things that Mommy isn’t but would like to be—and for that, I say Brava!
Christina Aguilera, on the other hand… a little disappointed over here. Max? Seriously? Have you no friends with kids that could have tipped you off on just how over-exposed this name has become? Yeah, maybe ten years ago Max would cut it, but in 2008? For a celebrity’s baby?!? C’mon! Its so popular it has officially become a DOG name, for Pete’s sake! [From the Sixth Rule of Naming: Any name so prevalent on playgrounds that it causes mass confusion when yelled aloud shall be henceforth relegated to use by every fourth domesticated furball until such time that it falls out of favor]. Trust me on this, I have a dog-godson named Maxwell Vega.
So now we find ourselves facing what may be the worst celebrity naming incident in recent history. It seems that JLo and Marc Anthony have named their spawn Max and Emme. (I still can’t tell if that rhymes with Emma or Emmy, but no matter, its all the same name anyhow!) Yeah. You heard me. Max and Emme. Not ONLY did JLo use the SAME name as Christina Aguilera, [which there ain’t NO excuse for that, sister! I don’t’ care what block you from! Once Xtina shat out that lil Jordan Bratman mess and called him Max, the jig was up! Even if you had dibs on the name Max way back from 2nd grade, I’m sorry, she beat you to the delivery, the name is hers! (That said, I realize now that my earlier stance on Hudson is rather precarious, and ok, fine, if you do squeeze out a boy before I do and you want it, have at it. I KNOW how hard it is to think up good boys names that aren’t already overplayed, playa!)], but it doesn’t stop there with this naming mess! Get this: her twins have the same names as the little chumps from that gayhole cartoon DRAGON TALES!
..
I KNOOOOW! I can’t believe it either! Clearly, JLo isn’t hip to children’s programming like the rest of us or else she would’ve known that she was not only naming her kids after cartoon kids but also that they are the WORST kind of shoot-yourself-in-the-head-it-sucks-so-bad cartoon kids! (Unlike, say, "Yo Gabba Gabba" which is amazingly, oddly cool, a little bit entrancing and might even pass for adult entertainment – not that kind, perv — after some doobage and a highball.)
So yeah, coming from a woman so into naming she created a second name for HERSELF and her miniature little husband who cribbed his name from one of Western Civilizations great historical figures comes something so yawningly boring as Max and Emme and it turns out it is ripped off! Which perhaps shouldn’t be such a surprise considering Marc’s name, which, frankly, I’ll never forgive him for. Its not fair to get famous using an already famous name! That’s like guys showing up at American Idol and being like, "Hey! Call me Napoleon Bonaparte!" or "What up? You can just call me Mahatma Gandhi, yo!" Just adding a "h" doesn’t make us forget that we already KNOW that name, cheesedick!
There is a conspiracy theory afoot that this may have something to do with the shared heritage of both the Dragon Tales doofuses (doofii?) and the LopAnthony Twins… yep. They are all Puerto Rican. Coincidence? You decide. At any rate just at first blush I can think up two reasonable alternatives for them that get the same general feeling they are after but aren’t so frickin’ mainstream. Instead of Emme and Max, why not Esme and Rex? Huh?
But here’s the bottom line, the cut to the quick, the inner of this outer that really matters to you and me (or, really, to Dena and me):
Obviously we see that celebrities are major forerunners of baby names, and we KNOW that Miz JLo is quite the trendsetter herself. I think the writing is on the wall here, folks. It couldn’t be any plainer. Dammit, Dena! Take the donkey by the tail (I’m so sick of the abuse of bulls and their horns! Let’s give the poor beasts a rest!)!! This is yet ANOTHER sign… a sign that screams you MUST adopt two little black boys! And you MUST name them Willis and Arnold! You’ll be at the front of the trend! Get on it now!!! Both black adoption (thanks, Angie and Madge!) and TV character naming (holla, Jen and Marc!)!!! Welcome home, Willis and Arnold Drummond Vega. Welcome Home.
PS- Dena, I’m sorry if this is not all you hoped it could be, or if it prattled on and on too long. I hope you are not disappointed, but I take baby naming very seriously and that would be like me joke-blogging about Affirmative Action or something. There’s just some shiz that can’t be taken to lightly! ;-} Also, since the original On Naming Post was lost and I had to recreate an ENTIRE new one, I hope I have proved to you how very, very much I love you. Now you can have the brain back. I’m spent.
HolierThanThou writes:
If conservatives had their way, they'd still be credited with an extra three fifths of a vote for every slave they owned.
The fact that ordinary Democrats believe that their party is the party of civil rights, though incorrect, is grounds for a significant amount of forgiveness. Their hearts are in the right place (on this issue) and they are, after all, being duped by a gigantic system designed to do just that. I myself was once among their number."
To stop the Democrats’ pro-slavery agenda, anti-slavery activists founded the Republican Party, starting with a few dozen men and women in Ripon, Wisconsin on March 20, 1854. The party spread across the northern and western United States like a prairie fire of freedom. The first Republican state convention was held in Jackson, Michigan in July 1854. The Republican National Committee met for the first time in 1856, followed four months later by the first Republican National Convention.
In the election of 1860, Republicans swept to victory in the White House and won majorities in both houses of Congress. Just six years after the party’s founding, the Governor of every northern state in America was a Republican. That phenomenal progress was possible only because the Republican Party was based on the powerful idea that our nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality, must live up to its founding principles.
Despite fierce Democrat opposition, Republicans passed constitutional amendments banning slavery, extending the Bill of Rights to the states, guaranteeing equal protection of the laws and due process to all citizens, and extending the right to vote to persons of all races and backgrounds.
Republicans in Congress also enacted the nation’s first-ever Civil Rights Act, which extended citizenship and equal rights to people of all races, all colors, and all creeds.In 1875, the Republicans expanded these protections to give all citizens the right of equal access to all public accommodations. Struck down by the Supreme Court eight years later, this landmark legislation would be reborn as the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Republicans led the fight for women’s rights, and most suffragists were Republicans. In fact, Susan B. Anthony bragged about how, after voting (illegally) in 1872, she had voted a straight Republican ticket. The suffragists included two African-American women who were also co-founders of the NAACP: Ida Wells and Mary Terrell, great Republicans, both of them.
Republican Senator Aaron Sargent wrote the women’s suffrage amendment in 1878,though it would not be passed by Congress until Republicans again won control of both houses 40 years later. It was in 1916 that the first woman was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Jeannette Rankin. The first woman mayor was elected in 1926, the Honorable Bertha Landes of Seattle, another great Republican.
Democratic opposition to Republican efforts to protect the civil rights of all Americans lasted not only throughout Reconstruction, but well into the 20th century. In the South, those Democrats who most bitterly opposed equality for blacks founded the Ku Klux Klan, which operated as the party’s terrorist wing.
Every single African-American in Congress until 1935 was a Republican. Among the Republican pioneers were South Carolina’s Joseph Rainey, the first black member of the House of Representatives, in 1870. Republican Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first black U. S. Senator the same year. Two years later, Pinckney Pinchback of Louisiana became the nation’s first blac Governor.
Californi was the first state to have a Hispanic governor, Republican Romualdo Pacheco, in 1875. The first Hispanic U. S. Senator, Octaviano Larrazolo, came to Washington from New Mexico as a Republican in 1928. The first Jewish U.S. Senator outside the former Confederacy was a Republican from Oregon, Joseph Simon, and the first Jewish woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives was a California Republican, Florence Kahn.
In 2004, America marked the 50th anniversary of the modern civil rights movement, which began with the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. That landmark decision was written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the three-term Republican Governor of California appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. The author of Brown was also the 1948 Republican vice presidential nominee.
Three years after Brown, President Eisenhower won passage of his landmark Civil Rights Act of 1957. Republican Senator Everett Dirksen authored and introduced the 1960 Civil Rights Act, and saw it through to passage. Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act overwhelmingly, and by much higher percentages in both House and Senate than the Democrats. Indeed, the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law only after overcoming a Democrat filibuster.