Of all the decisions you’ll need to make before your child’s arrival, choosing a name will be the most important.
Will you co-sleep? Will you breastfeed? Will co-sleeping and breastfeeding make your child a narcissistic sociopath? Will you let them cry it out? Will letting them cry it out give your baby a lifelong gaming addiction?
Forget it all. None of it’s important. Your kid’ll be fine. Probably.
But giving your child the wrong name could be a devastating mistake. Of course, it is absolutely your choice. This is your child; you can name it whatever you like. It won’t affect you in the least. Your little Mg’winni Bear, however, will crawl through her childhood in shame and embarrassment until she turns eighteen and changes her name to Jane.
It’s not an easy task either. You never realise how many people you hate until you try and find a name for your baby.
Here are some foolproof ways to help you choose a name that won’t make your offspring a social pariah:
You’ll never see the headline ‘Wizdom has been elected prime minister’. You need to be able to take your PM (semi-) seriously. Give your child a fighting chance.
Even if you don’t have aspirations for your child to run the country, I’m assuming you want them to be employed at some point in their life.
Imagine a recruiter flicking through job applications. Do they stop at the application of Glittyr Faery or do they keep going? And what do you think the job opportunities for Sparrkyl Dusst are? Where’s ol’ Sparrkyl D headed in life?
You’re going to need to say this name a lot. How does it sound when you scream it across the playground in your best bogan?
‘FERRARI-LEEEEE! Get here NOW!’
Seriously, get your list of baby names and start screaming them out. You’ll cull that list quick smart.
Does the name command respect? Would you be able to take direction from a person called Peace Pear Moonharvest? Can you imagine someone saying, ‘Oh bloody hell, Miaow Boo wants me to stay back tonight to finish that report’?
When you’re feeling creative and decide to throw a bunch of letters together to invent that unique one-of-a-kind name for your little darling, just try and give some thought to that poor child once they hit school.
Try to imagine those pudgy little fingers wrapped around the HB pencil, trying their damnedest to spell out Zynfendanee. It’s just mean.
You might like to give your child that extra edge by giving them a normal name with ‘innovative’ spelling. For the love of all that’s good and holy, please spell your child’s name correctly.
Don’t condemn your child to a life of saying, ‘No, it’s Catherine with an X’ or ‘That’s Jayden with an H’ or ‘It’s Tiffany with three I’s’.
I mean, my name is Lauren, which is probably one of the most common names in the history of the world, and I still need to spell my name for some people. So spare a thought for Whendhi and Djohnn.
Same goes for kids with names that are spelled correctly but pronounced creatively. If you spell your child’s name ‘Steven’, I will call him Steven, and you can’t get angry because I haven’t guessed it’s pronounced Steffahn.
As your final step, ask a teenage boy for his opinion. Challenge him to do his worst with the name, as if he’d just encountered little Quinoa in the playground. (If only the parents of Drew Peacock had done this.)