Sunday, November 18, 2007

Fruit Salad Anyone?

No, this is not actually a post on food...Go here for that. What I really wanted to say is that a few weeks back, in the midst of my novel-reading and paper-writing, I was distracted by a conversation I overheard my roommates having in the next room.

“Hmm…what about “Ava” ?
“ No, I still like Marlana – oh…and Victoria, so I can call her V”
“ Whatever, I’m naming mine Lemon and Lime”

Quickly I gathered that my “busy-with-school-university-student” friends were discussing potential names to call their children. Ha. It got me laughing at how ridiculous some of these names were, and reminded me of current celebrity children’s names like “Co-Co” and “Apple”.

Honestly, I don’t know if this even pertains to the 90’s, or just passed times in general, but I’d still like to discuss. I got thinking back to my grade school days and tried to recall any absurd names of my classmates. The most original I think I could think of was “Holly”, and that name is completely normal in comparison to… “Orange” (errr….Apple, sorry Gwenyth)

Whatever happened to plain old calling your child ..John…or Susan? I did some quick internet research on baby names from the 90’s vs. now, and found it to be what I expected. Though I was born in 1986 and still grew up in the 90’s, I decided, for the sake of this blog, to only examine names given during the 90’s (those kids count for something too).

Popular, recurrent girls names from ‘90-‘99 were – Jessica, Ashley, Brittany, Samantha, Taylor, Sarah, Nicole, and Elizabeth, to name a few. The most popular boys names were Michael, Matthew, Christopher, Nicholas, and Joseph. Ahhhh, I liked the sound of these 90’s names – traditional, “regular”, plain old names.

Has naming children turned into a creativity competition? I argue that, for some, it definitely has. And seriously, if my friend actually names her children “Lemon” and “Lime”, what’s gonna happen when they run into “Apple” at recess? Uh-oh, Food fight?? On a brighter note, maybe fruit salad instead!

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