Re: “Child should come first in the naming game,” April 11.
Columnist David Bly writes that to follow the crowd in naming your child is “unlikely to cause the kids any grief as they grow older, because they will probably be surrounded by plenty of friends and classmates with the same or similar names. There’s a certain safety in numbers.”
True, but there can also be perils as fashions change. Nowadays, names such as Gladys, Winifred, Harriet, Edna, Mildred or Ethel make us think of women in their senior years, women of our parents’ or grandparents’ generations, perhaps. A century ago, though, they were lovely names for baby girls.
In the 1980s, when Dallas, Dynasty and other such primetime TV soap operas were in their heyday, comedian Johnny Carson observed that they had become so popular, parents were naming their children after characters in those shows. Eighty years later, he joked, nursing homes would be full of elderly women named Krystle and Tiffany.
His Tonight Show audience laughed. It was probably an accurate forecast, though.
Daryl Collard
Victoria
