Feather, Freedom, Gage, Amethyst, and so on

What do these random words strung together have to do with each other or anything at all?

http://www3.gov.ab.ca/gs/information/vs/top10_names.cfm

Oh, they are connected all right...these are some of the names people gave to their newborn daughters in Alberta in 2004. On the 2003 list, there were 2 Fancys. And Peter Jackson alone is responsible for the revival of a generation of far too many children named after characters from the Lord of the Rings series. There are other odditities on the list...the way some people chose to spell their infant's names...Gracii (Gray-see) for instance, makes me think back to mispronouncing everything in Latin and Greek in junior high for laughs, and I can't stop myself from reading it Grah-kI.

There are 3 boys named Cage, and I sure hope they grow up to be scruffy loner-hero types who drive around on motorcycles begrudgingly doing good deeds for people while trying to find themselves after tragic losses, because that's the vibe one gets from a name like Cage. You don't think he'll be a straightlaced accountant behind a desk somewhere. And please don't let the little girl Gage end up with a little boy Cage. There is a little boy in Alberta named Fawn. 9 little boys named Justice (I hope some of them don't end up in the same classes in school, otherwise I could go on about forming a "Justice" league, though I feel for the one boy who ends up taking the Wonder Woman role).

I know, I'm being awfully judgemental and harsh on some parents for their choices in names, but I want to sit parents down and tell them to carefully consider their choices. Even now when uncommon names are becoming more of a norm, there are still some that cross the boundary between uncommon and strange. I can tell everyone from experience that different names are a blessing and a curse...no one ever forgets my name (though they are pretty good at forgetting the person), but on the other hand, *you* trying acting cool in junior high with "Fancy Pants" and worse trailing you everywhere.

And for the daughters...gee, you know Fancy sounded like a good idea, but it obviously never entered my Dad's mind that when I grew up, I'd end up with a man who's last name is Chudyk (phonetically that's Chew-dick). You know those goofy little emails going around, figuring out your children's book character name or Pornstar name? Yeah, I ignore the pornstar ones...it appears that with the possibility of "Fancy Chudyk" hanging over my head, I already got one. So consider that your daughters could end up with just about any guy or girl and have problems taking on the new last names.

So the point to this long and harsh rant is this: THINK before you name your children! Because 15 years from now, the little girl named Feather or the little boy named Fawn could be battling their own existential teen-angst crises over their names being part of their identities, and they could end up blaming their parents.