Saturday, April 25, 2009

Any Town, USA

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. If you live in Pleasantville perhaps.

But what if you lived in say Ubly, Michigan or Kickapoo, Texas

I once met someone from the town of Willacoochee, GA and I remember driving through death valley past a town in California called Zyxzz (don't ask me how to pronounce that...lol). Apparently babies aren't the only ones subjected to odd names...so make sure to stop and take a picture the next time you happen to be driving through...

Ah Gwah Ching, MN
Bitahochee, AZ
Bo Bo, IN
Cartoogechaye, NC
Chillicothe, OH (this is where my family is from...lol)
Choccolocco, AL
Ho Ho Kus, NJ
Spreckles, CA
Tonganoxie, KS
Sautee Nacoochee, GA
Zelienople, PA
Pejepscot, ME
Kwigillingok, AK

Monday, April 20, 2009

And what do YOU do for a living?

My name is Danielle Reed and I'm a writer...ironic isn't it...maybe funnier or a shade more fitting if I'd have become a librarian perhaps? D. Reed--Librarian. LOL. I mean I do look the part, with the glasses and all...

What if your name were Hertz or Payne...would it then be fitting to become say accident lawyers or chiropractors perhaps?

I came across an artcle today in the New York Daily News concerning people who have names befittting their professions. For instance Summer Rayne Oakes who happens to be...an environmentalist or Zoe Hamburger who is an account manager for...McDonald's. Click the link to see the entire article.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Facebook vs Batman

Yet another reason why you should watch what you name your kids...

Most of us who are tech savvy use some sort of social networking site to keep up with people. Well if you have an, ahem, unusual name you can forget being "social" at least on Facebook, without a fight.

According to a recent article in the Washington Post people who are stuck with funky first and/or last names such as Batman or Yoda have had their accounts rejected by Facebook. Apparently certain names are flagged so that spammers can't make up FB pages.

Facebook is not intuitive? Go figure!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

How a Techno-Geek Names a Baby

For all you technology geeks/parents to be...


As if the slog of baby name blogs (WNTNYB not withstanding), mommy message boards, twitter, facebook and ubiquitous baby namer sites were not bad enough, back in February a new iPhone application was developed called "Name Shake"

I watched the demo video (available on the link above). Apparently, how Name Shake works is, a screen which resembles a casino slot machine randomly spins and comes up with a name by sex, country of origin and letter of the alphabet. You can lock any or all of these categories so that for instance you only see French girls' names that start with the letter Q. There are something like 19,000 names in the database that powers the app. It allows you to save your favorites, gives you the meaning of the name and a pronounciation key and you can email your list of favs to your friends and family.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't know how much I want to leave the naming of my children to an iPhone. Um...yeah, call me old fashioned. Especially when I was watching the demo and saw names like:

Badru
Sobeslava
Beitiris

Yeah well it was a good idea... in theory. Where does it end people? Where does it end? Oh the humanity! Smh

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

March Madness


In my best Dick Vital--It's March Madness BABY!
Ok so I know it is officially April, but here are today's hot picks...

The Sweet 16--- WNTNYB edition. All of the children listed below were born in March.

Sjalesia
Geonnuh
A'son ( lemme guess he was a BOY)
Na'King
Banayeasha (officially confuzzled)
Empuris
Kidus
Cleveland (who was born in Cincinnati)
Aries (surprisingly enough he actually IS an Aries)
Zeon
To'Liek
Laronjae
Praysia
Zoiarn
Raekwon (Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!)
Devaneer

And my official March Madness bad baby name championship pick...

So'Fine