Think of the Children

Growing up in Utah has provided me with a unique perspective on child bearing and rearing. Basically, I don't know how babies are made, but I do know that if I don't start making them by age 21 my inside parts explode and God frowns upon me. Not really, but kind of. Anyway the point of this is not to frown upon Utah's lack of sex education program, which I do, or to comment on the Utah County Mormon ideology that women are baby factories. Instead I would like to judge another horrible Utah County-ism which is ridiculous baby names. I don't know who people think they are but during my 18 years there, and my mothers years of being a teacher I have heard of some pretty whacky and by whacky I mean horrible, names. So I've come up with some guidelines for naming your baby.

1. Do not name your child after your things found in nature. Examples: Rainy (her last name was Peirson pronounced person, poor child), Echo, River, Forest (all in the same family), ChiaDee( pronounced shady, last name Woods, middle name Lane), and Boulder, just to name a few. They started in nature and thats where they should stay.
2. Do not name your child after anything that is your favorite. For instance math function- Matrix, Movie title-Matrix(I don't know where it fits), car- Hummer, animal-Bronco, article of clothing- Fedora and Capri, both went to my high school, fabric pattern-Paisley. Put it on a bumper sticker and save your child the humiliation that comes from being named after something people wear on their heads.
3. If you think it sounds like something a movie star would name their child, just say no. The world only needs one Apple that's not edible.
4. City names are bad. They already have a whole city, they don't need your child too. Examples, Denver, Boston, Capri(a double whammy), London, Aspen. Also it will lead to awkward questions about conception later on in life that could and should be avoided.
5. Really weird spellings are just out. And I don't mean adding two e's where a y should be like Bailee or Courtnee, or flopping/deleting letters. I mean naming your kid Alison and spelling it Alycesun. Yeah, that really happened. Or Kwincy, Q's aren't well represented enough for you to replace it with a Kw.
6. Don't put punctuation in your child's name, just don't. Alex-andra is going to have to repeat kindergarten because she couldn't spell her name and her hatred of you, her parent, will grow after every state test.

So basically if you are thinking of a name for your child and it falls into one of these categories think again. I mean seriously, this kid is going to have this name for the rest of his or her life. Be kind, and never name your child rewind.