Would it really smell as sweet?

So in the world of celebrity news, Melanie Chisholm (aka Sporty Spice) has had a baby girl, and she named her "Scarlett Starr." Yup, you heard me right. The whole thing just got me thinking. Now I'm all for unusual names...ish.

Okay, I'll be honest, I like traditional names, I can't help it. I toy with trendy, more unusual names, but then last minute I chicken out. For example, up until a week before I went into labor, Ben was going to be Jayden Alixander or Rhiannon Alana. I guess it's a good thing he was two weeks late, it gave us time to come up with Benjamin James instead. For Mackenzie, I really wanted her to be Isabelle Mackenzie, but at the last minute, my husband pulled out some sentimental fancy footwork, and she became Mackenzie Amanda (after my cousin who had passed away earlier that year). I swear he knew that if he gave me more then a week to think about it, I would have realized that we could have named her Isabelle Mackenzie Amanda, but he's tricky that way.

But for me, I had to deal with the name Kelsey when it was not at all popular. And to make things a bit worse for me growing up, it's a family name, so there were three of us, all named the same, which makes for a lot of confusion come Christmas time. Anytime that I wasn't around my family, I could fairly safely assume if I heard my name that someone was actually talking to me, but inside my home, there was an equal chance that they were talking to my grandfather or uncle. Yup, that's right, I was named after my grandfather. So I've carried a bit of a distaste for odd sounding names. As I grew up, I did start to appreciate the uniqueness of it, and then there was an explosion of cute little blond pigtailed Kelsey's everywhere!

But I digress, what I really wanted to talk about today was the huge drive that people seem to have today for their child to have a "different" name. There are some that I can understand, places where there is a family name and someone tweaks it so that it the child won't have to deal with the same thing I did of forever answering the wrong call. I can admire the innovation in that. For example, my cousin's child has the middle name Audrianna after my grandmother, to try and freshen up Audrey.

But when I was pregnant with my second, I couldn't think of a boy's name that I liked and we couldn't find out the sex of the baby, so some girls at my work started a list and they asked everyone to think of boys names to try and help me. The list was horrible! Some examples that I can remember were things like, (and please if I offend anyone, I'm sorry, I can't help it)

• Stone (was I having a soap opera character?)


• Trucker (okay, this one had to be a joke, right?)


• Augustian (umm...yeah, I've already saddled the kid with an unpronounceable last name, let's make him the most likely to be mistaken for a foreign exchange student)


• Octavian (okay, someone was watching too much Rome)


• Balthazar (seriously, I'm going to look at my precious little bundle of joy and give him THAT for a name!?!?)

But the naming trend that I see most often is naming your kids after something you like. Now if this is done right, it's fine. You might have a little explaining to do when your child asks you how you came up with their name but usually, your child will share at least some of your interests. The couple that I know that did this best named their daughter Diana, after Wonder Woman. They love comics and hey, at the end of the day, she can still introduce herself using her first name because it's not like they named her Wonder Woman or anything like that. Which brings me to the worst example that I've seen of this.

I think it all started by accident. Rather, I hope it all started by accident. A couple I knew married and Kurt became the stepfather of Xavier. Kurt (if you're not a bit of a geek like me) is the 'real' name of "Nightcrawler" from the X-men and Xavier is the leader of the X-men "Professor X." Okay, so weird coincidence, then it started snowballing. The first baby was a boy, who was named Logan. Logan is the 'real' name for "Wolverine." Now she's pregnant again. This child has the wonderful distinction of being named Madrox Hunter Achilles if it's a boy. Madrox is the last name of "Multiple Man" in X-men (yes, I did need to look it up but come on!). The naming after technically didn't end there, the child would have the middle names Hunter from Triple H of wrestling fame and Achilles because "we really liked the movie Troy". But if this baby is a girl, the real fun starts (and they will eventually have a girl or have 18 million kids trying). If this child is a girl, she gets to be named either "Phoenix" or "Rogue" or "Storm". Yeah....now I will admit, as things stand with the boys, you have to have a bit of knowledge about the X-men to get the connection and end of the day with the exception of "Madrox" everyone can easily use their first name in whatever endeavors they chose without having people raise eyebrows or pester them how to spell it. But seriously, those girls names are horrible! Older people may miss the connection but now that there are movies out, it will be obvious to so many people! The whole thing just makes me want to shake my head. If you want a team of X-men so badly, adopt pets.

(P.S. I'm really, Really, REALLY sorry if I have offended anyone, I'm not meaning to pick on anyone or make them feel bad but I just felt the need to vent about the seeming over the top silliness of it sometimes. But seriously, again sorry! I think it's just that I feel the name you give your little one, the name that they have to bear for the rest of their life, is just something that should be approached with thought and not just because you liked a movie and thought it would be cute, I mean really, Rogue ___, Attorney ?!?)