It’s not to late for this advice, Doyce and Jackie …

3 thoughts on “It’s not to late for this advice, Doyce and Jackie …”

1. That’s funny. I was visiting your friend’s website, that’s fun that he kept writing all those posts while waiting. Kaylee is a cute name.

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2. Unfortunately naming your child seems to have become a kind of sport instead of a somber (or at least sober) attempt to bestow identity on a person just entering our world…

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3. There’s an interesting tension between the social aspects of names and the personal aspects of them. Parents name their children for a variety of reasons, but of late the “make the kid someone *special*” instinct seems to have gone beyond the “tie the kid to society” instinct.

   To some degree, a name will influence self-identity, but more importantly, it’s the label by which *others* will know the kid (and the adult). What that name will do and represent is not simply how the individual (or the parents) feel about it, but how strangers, employers, peers, etc. feel about it. And I think that social aspect of naming is more important — or has greater impact — than the individual aspect of naming. After all, I am myself. But what I am to others, initially, is my name. Or my face. Or both.

   In other words, the parents of “J’Coby D’Markus” ought to have been considering not just whether *they* like the name, or whether their kid will think they are unique and special because of it, but how others will react. The response that “Well, if you don’t like my name, that’s your problem” is foolishly short-sighted, a matter of “I can do whatever I want” principle that flies in the face of the fact that we are individuals within a society.

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