Web of Language: What to name the baby? Forget grandma, hire a consultant

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the

Web of Language:

What to name the baby?  Forget grandma, hire a consultant

Today’s hi-tech parents can now do what corporations have done for  
years: hire a consultant to devise a name to capture the essence of  
their latest product.  There’s a growing number of “nameologists” –  
on line and in print – intent on selling prospective parents the  
perfect baby name. ...

Until recently, parents looking for baby-naming help had few  
resources: family and friends, ethnic or religious traditions, or  
books like the 1930s classic, What shall we name the baby?, resources  
which list names for boys and girls, and sometimes suggest what the  
names might mean....

But now that the name consultants are on the case, promising to  
reduce the stress of baby naming and turn a process fraught with  
tension into a rational, easy-to-follow recipe, finding the perfect  
baby name is as easy as microwaving dinner. Because consultants earn  
their fee by telling other people what to do, parents who can’t make  
up their minds about names will no longer have to take their baby  
home from the hospital with a birth certificate reading “Baby.” ...

.  A pair of California writers, Whitney Walker and Eric Reyes have  
gone into business as baby name-brokers, using scientific rigor – or  
what passes for it – to come up with the perfect naming formula ...

Find out more -- read the rest -- on the
Web of Language

www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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