Shelley Bridgeman writes about Silly First name Syndrome:
It’s official. A study has discovered that the name you bestow on your newborn can affect its future. Who would have thought? You mean to say twins called Benson and Hedges might stand out from their peers – and not in a good way? So inventing names, mangling spellings and inserting random apostrophes are inadvisable? Gosh, we learn something new every day.
Most new parents appear to fall into one of two camps. There are the traditionalists who want a nice, normal name that no one will bat an eyelid at. Hello Sarah, Elizabeth, William and Jack. Then there are the people determined to be original and stand out from the crowd. Like television characters Kath and Kim, they consider “unusual” to be a desirable attribute.
“Oh, yes, that’s noice, different, unusual,” they say about Sativa-Rochee, KleeShay and Qba (names I encountered on Trade Me’s Parenting message-board).
I must belong to the first group because the simplicity of a regular name appeals to me. I’m not inclined to inflict a child with a lifelong need to clarify the spelling – or worse, the pronunciation – of their name. Don’t think I’m deriding cultural names or prized family names here; it’s the creation of one-of-a-kind, plucked-out-of-thin-air names to which I am drawing attention.
