My motives for writing this blog are purely selfish. I have spent the last six years of my life substituting for absent school secretaries and office managers in elementary schools. My first task each morning is to write tardy slips for latecomers. I ask each child to tell me their name, and I write the name on the tardy slip. They may say “Julie.” So I write “Julie.” “No,” they say. “Not like that. It’s J-E-W-E-L and then a ‘line’ and then E.” I write out “Jewel-e” – and I think, what were the parents thinking here? Don’t they realize that no one on the face of the planet is going to spell that correctly when they hear it? Doesn’t the thought enter their heads as they’re gazing on the face of that sweet infant in the hospital that every time that kid is late for school, some poor secretary is going to have to cross off “Julie” and write “Jewel-e,” wasting her precious time – which she will need to fill out Samyul’s, Kenidee’s, Leica’s, Zachgary’s, Maecin’s, and Eian’s tardy slips? Yes, not giving your child a stupid name will be of benefit to the child as well, but that doesn’t really matter to me. I would just really like to go to work someday and have the world make sense again. I want to say, “What’s your name?” and hear, “Michael” and be able to confidently write “Michael” and not hear, “No, not like that. It’s…” Is that so much to ask?

Enjoy my blog. Laugh at the strange names. Laugh at the idiot parents who gave these names to their kids. Whatever you do, just do NOT put any of these names on a birth certificate!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Article about baby name trends

This article was sent to me by Nate:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20101201/sc_livescience/babynamesrevealmoreaboutparentsthaneverbefore

Enjoy! And please remember: Friends don't let friends name their babies something unpronounceable or unspellable! The secretary you save may be ME!
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