Eel has a pet peeve: Yuppy names.

It struck me as an odd pet peeve at first. Why would anyone pick that, of all things, to have a pet peeve about? But since she's been delivering babies and assisting the deliverance of babies, it makes more sense than, for instance, my catastrophic loss vulnerability to finger-nail polish. She gets a lot of weird names day in and day out. Since getting up here I am in complete agreement with her. You would not believe the names that people up here have. One of my trainer's names at OmniStar was actually named Laetwynn (not a psuedonym!) and when they were talking about their families up there, I'd say the name Kaden was far more prevalent than the name Chris. Part of the rationale for this is for originality. But an article from Health & Medical News says that they might should hold their horses in that regard:

Some parents today who invent some original name for their baby, like 'Grast', could - through simple random chance - unwittingly be determining the names of thousands of children 10 years from now," said Bentley, of the college's Centre for the Evolutionary Analysis of Cultural Behaviour, which uses biological ideas to understand cultural change.

Using British and U.S. government data, Bentley and Hahn tracked the popularity of the top 1,000 first names for baby girls and boys in the U.S. for every decade in the 20th century.

They found that a few names were thousands of times more popular than the majority with many uncommon names. They said the distribution followed an "elegant mathematical function," called a power law, that is maintained over 100 years, even though the population is growing.

Hahn and Bentley developed a model which closely predicts the distribution of name popularity over the last century. The model is based on the population genetics concept of 'random genetic drift', in which the frequency of genes in a population fluctuates according to chance, and where there is only a small population of breeding parents.

The most yuppy name that I ever considered was Bailey, if Anna and I had a boy. It would actually be Rayford Baylor Whitlock with Bailey shorthand (yes, I'm aware that Bailey and Baylor are both 6 letters, but Charles and Charlie are both seven with the shorthand name having more syllables than the formal one). That would have been allowed because Baylor is a family name (I'm somehow actually related to the University's founder on my mother's side of the family). The chosen girl's name was Jodine Clair Whitlock, Jodie for short, named after grandrelatives. Eel will have to tell me whether that's yuppy of not :).

One name that hadn't been born yet and that I doubt I will consider in the future is ESPN. But apparently I'm behind the curve on that:

His parents said ESPN loves baseball, basketball and football, and Rebecca said she's hoping to have his room done in sports theme before the TV ESPN comes.

And, of course, ESPN enjoys watching SportsCenter every night with his father.

However, Michael and Rebecca said they don't think the name will put pressure on him to become a superstar athlete; they're just catering to his interests at the moment.

All in all, Rebecca said, she likes unique names. She wanted to name her two younger daughters "Disney" but was shot down both times by Michael. They compromised on Sterling, now 21 months, and Kendall, now 11 months.

If the McCalls have another son, would he be "The Deuce?"

Well, if ESPN had a twin, his name would be "EXPN." However, the McCalls don't watch solely ESPN for their sports. They planned "Fox Sports McCall" for a second son.

Espen (the way it's supposed to be pronounced) would be a yuppy name. I think it would be a disservice to yuppy names to call ESPN a yuppy name.