Saturday, October 20, 2007

Name Checks In the Future

When I hear new parents talk about baby names they sometimes ask a few things that I had not formerly thought of as important in a name.


They ask:
1. What is the arrangement of the initials? Are there other meanings that come out from the initials, both in first, middle, last order and first, last, middle order (the later sometimes used on monograms)?
2. Who do they want to celebrate? Family and cultural names and words are here mentioned.


How will this change in the future? Will naming a baby (already difficult) become even more so? Will it become closer to choosing a company's new brand name?


I ask for a number of reasons. Imagine what technological changes have done for the generation being born today. They are different in that most of them will likely not have the chance to register their name or initials as a domain name; those domains will all have been taken by the time this new generation learns to use a computer. Also, given the greater level of international focus today, will names that are difficult to pronounce in popular languages suffer? Will names that have other connotations in other languages suffer?

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