If I can remember, I plan to rant about names in this blog

I don't know why this popped into my head... things are ALWAYS popping into my head, which makes it very noisy in there, and distracts me from sensible thought. But I digress.

As I do. I digress. All the time. I think it may be related to the things constantly popping into my head. I am easily distractable, and what with one thing and another popping into my head, it only stands to reason that other things pop out. Like why I came into this room. Wait a minute, I'm typing, so this must be my blog, in which case, I wanted to write about the most recent in-popping. Which was....????

Okay, I just looked at the title of this blog, and remember that I had been ruminating about names. It started when someone in this strange movie my husband is watching on the other side of the room said " They cremated her. Your Uncle Dick took her ashes back to....." and it suddenly popped into my head that every Dick I have ever known was one. Do NOT name your son Dick.

Or Les. I've only known a couple of guys named Les, but they most definitely were.

Another name to avoid is Peter, which in the long form (Peter) is the name of the male member (and why males feel compelled to name their members is beyond me) and in the short form is a smelly way to heat a cottage.

Willie ain't much of a name for a boy, since it, too, is an anatomical moniker.

I'm not fond of unisex names, like Chris or Pat, for example. There is this person who works in a store here whose gender was a mystery to me for a long time. There are no overt signs of female development, but neither are there any overtly masculine traits. There are no reliable clues to gender. This person has a short hair-cut (that could be worn by either sex), pierced ears (which used to be a female indicator and isn't anymore) and wears the uniform of youth- trainers, jeans, and shirt (in this case, a golf shirt with the workplace logo on it). I kept trying to get a glimpse of the name on the name-tag, and when I finally did, it was CHRIS! Do not give your children unisex names. Give them a gender-specific name so that even if nothing about their gender is immediately specific, folks having to deal with them will know what they are dealing with. This Chris, by the way, is female. I asked one of the people she works with.

I just ended that sentence with a preposition. I know better, but c'mon already, who really says "one of the people with whom she works". It may be grammatically correct but it is like writing a sentence from the middle toward both ends.

But I digress.

Never give your daughter a boy's name. It may seem cute to name them Michael but it is mean spirited and insensitive, and sets them up for a lifetime of explaining themselves to other people, most of whom will continue to think they are weird even after the explanation. GIVEN NAMES SHOULD BE GENDER SPECIFIC. If you really can't live without giving your daughter a boy's name, make it her middle name. Now THAT'S cool- I know, because I have a boy's middle name and I love it. And none of this changing the spelling to indicate girliness. A Sidney by any other spelling (Sydney) sounds the same.

Come to think of it, don't name your son Sidney, either. Or Walter. Or Alfred. But these are just personal prejudices on my part, and need not be considered one of the cardinal naming rules.

If you love funky names, own multitudes of pets and give them all funky names. Unless you are Frank Zappa, who is dead, so you probably aren't him, never name your child Moon Unit or Dweezil. Or Roxie Crimefighter. (That's the name with which Penn Gillette, of Penn and Teller infamy, saddled his baby daughter. As if it isn't awful enough having Penn Gillette for a father!)