Last night I had dinner with some friends who are about to have a baby. Congratulations on the miracle of life and so forth, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about the poor kid. Most of the big problems aren’t really problems here, so that’s good: the parents love each other, they work hard, they’ve got supportive families, they’re relatively stable, intelligent, all that is there. I’m worried about the biggest problem, the problem trumping all other problems: they’re going to give the baby a boring name.

The best part about having a kid is that you can name it whatever you want. There aren’t any rules. There should be a couple of rules, but there aren’t, at least not in America. In Iceland you’ve got to pick one of the traditional names off of a very traditional list, and the surname is one of your parents’ names with the suffix -son or -dottir. Isn’t that a shame? I would say we need to load up the bombers and deliver them some good old-fashioned American freedom, except the system does admittedly allow for awesome names. Ever heard of Bjork Gudmundsdottir? Girl who wears swans? If I had a name like that, I’d wear a swan every day.

I recommend looking to the music world for baby name suggestions. Right off the top of my head, there’s Rilo Kiley. Great name, and evidence suggests she was born with it. Cool parents, the Kileys. Being christened with a great name is somehow more legit than choosing one later in life. Which, if you’re creative enough, can still work out okay. Take the band Black Moth Super Rainbow. The singer goes by Tobacco. One synth player is Father Hummingbird, the other is The Seven Fields of Aphelion. For real. That’s awesome. It can get taken to extremes, though. It’s hard for me to wake up in the morning knowing that right now, in the United States, there is a man who walks around calling himself Waka Flocka Flame. That’s got to be the dumbest name I’ve ever heard. It’s even worse than Oj da Juiceman, or Kentuckyfriedcruelty Dotcom.

At any rate, make sure you don’t waste this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Why go with Benjamin David Johnson when you could choose Keirkegaard Catastrophe “The Little Emperor” Johnson? Or Batman bin Suparman? You think I would have chosen the name Paul A. Gibson? Hell no. Every day I wish my parents had named me Karate Muscles Gibson. Or maybe “Iron Ore” Armor Gibson? Forget the “Junior” suffix: go with “: The Reckoning.” Every day would be an adventure if my passport said “The Right Reverend Soren ‘Big Savings’ Slaughterhouse von Gibson: Third Time’s a Charm.”

So anyway. Put down the baby names book and pick up Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Put on a kung-fu movie and name that baby.

Rilo Kiley – “A Better Son/ Daughter”
Black Moth Super Rainbow – “Smile The Day After Today”
Waka Flocka Flame – “O Let’s Do it”

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