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What happened to the good old days of Peter, John, Mary And Jane? Sometimes it seems as if some parents are competing for a gold star on the World's Walk of Shameful Names.
The fact that they think their children are going to glamorously glide through life sporting a name like Random, Extra, Pandemica, Bimbo or Rope makes us feel like their baby-naming rights might need to be revoked.
Unconventional, unique and plain ridiculous names can set a child up for a lifetime of teasing, mockery and jokes. Not to mention the administrative chaos that could come from strange spellings or bizarre characters. Official legal documents, passports, birth certificates, and flight tickets can all get lost in translation, so to speak.
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Some parents go for offbeat names to ensure that their kids stand out and don't just blend into the crowd. Others, it seems, do it simply to be funny. Either way, they clearly don't realize how damaging a bizarre name can potentially be for their offspring.
In 2024, the BBC reported that studies had found that men with uncommon first names were more likely to drop out of school and be lonely later in life. "One study, found that psychiatric patients with more unusual names tended to be more disturbed," added the media outlet.
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But a bizarre name doesn't always have to spell disaster. One expert says that being bullied, teased or mocked because of your name can actually lead to better impulse control.
"They actually benefit from that experience by learning to control their emotions or their impulses, which is of course a great skill for success," argues Dalton Conley, a sociologist at New York University and the author of Parentology: Everything You Wanted to Know about the Science of Raising Children.
Conley himself has come under attack for naming his daughter E.... (yes, that's it. That's the full name).
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Rope.
Conley says he and his wife were in the process of choosing a name for their baby when she was born two months premature.
"We had narrowed down the selections to a bunch of E- names, but we couldn't ultimately decide," he explained. "Then we came up with the idea of, 'Let's just constrain the first degree of freedom. Let's just give her the first letter and then she can decide when she's old enough what it stands for.'"
E, now an adult, rolled with the punches. "I think once you're given a name, you get used to it - it's part of you," she told the BBC.
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If we've learned anything from the names Apple, X Æ A-12, Bimbo or Pandemica, it's that times have certainly changed.
“I think in past generations, parents were much more concerned about their kids’ names fitting in. But in the past 20 years, the focus has been 100% on standing out,” says Laura Wattenberg, founder of the baby-naming site Baby Name Wizard. “Parents are really, really worried about their kids being ordinary.”
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And yes, it’s true.
Wattenberg told Quartz that research has shown that people find familiar, easy-to-pronounce names to be likable and trustworthy. She said that when you hear from a person with a name like Dave or Jen or Mike, “you’re more likely to answer their email, more likely to swipe right on Tinder.”
Yet, more and more parents are throwing caution to the wind, and burning the box when it comes to naming their children. Some believe they're doing their offspring a favor.
“Parents are worried about their kids’ futures and want to carve out shelf space in the marketplace of life,” says Wattenberg. “Some think that standing out with a name will help their kids do that.”
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In 2023, the UK’s Office for National Statistics revealed that 64,560 unique names were being registered each year. That's twice as many as in 1999. And this year, the US parenting website and app BabyCenter announced that Juniper, Malachi and Emersyn had made it into the top 100 names for the first time ever.
Interestingly, some adults are opting to change their conventional names in order to be more unique.
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