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

[sagehen]

>There's a new post on the
>
>Web of Language:
>
>What to name the baby?  Forget grandma, hire a consultant
>
>Todayís 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.  Thereís a growing number of ìnameologistsî ñ
>on line and in print ñ 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 canít make
>up their minds about names will no longer have to take their baby
>home from the hospital with a birth certificate reading ìBaby.î ...
>
>.  A pair of California writers, Whitney Walker and Eric Reyes have
>gone into business as baby name-brokers, using scientific rigor ñ or
>what passes for it ñ 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
 ~~~~~~~~~~~
And will these name consultants have their brands attached to the names
(as, perhaps, middle initials)   so that the world may know which rung of
the social ladder the family claims?
 AM

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