A school teacher friend of mine had a student named Kylie. In an effort to be original, the parents had spelt it Kyleigh.
In an act of defiance, my friend made a point of spelling her name Kylie on the young girl's report card.
At the parent-teacher evening, the girl's parents walked up to my friend, shoved the report card in his face and said, "Look here! It says Kylie. That's not how you spell our daughter's name."
He stared back at them and said, "I think you'll find that it is."
Misspelling your child's name does not make them original, special or destined for greatness. All they become destined for is a life full of correcting people who try to spell their name the accepted way.
A person's name is an arbitrary tag attached to them before anyone knows anything about them.
Perhaps in order to pick more appropriate names, a person's 21st birthday should be celebrated with a "name day", where a name is bestowed based on what sort of person they are.
It'd force people to lead a more productive childhood, for fear of ending up with a name like Idiot, Moron or Fabian.
A "different" name does not make a person special or different. Those are qualities earned through hard work and dedication, and it makes no difference if that person is named Mary, Seven or Rysk.
If you wish to invent a new name, there should be a board that adjudicates whether or not to put that name into the name dictionary.
If it's a "no" then you need to pick another name. If you refuse, one will be chosen for you.
In Texas, a child was called "Messiah". This went to court and the judge said "No. Your child is now called Martin. (Slams down gavel.) Done. Next."
There should definitely be a lot more of this.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where these are all the official names of actual humans: Lucifer, Anal, V8, #16 Bus Shelter, Chardonnay, Audio Science, Pilot Inspektor, Ahmiracle, Shady, Younique, Burger, Thin & Taco BM Monster.
More popular than ever seem to be the names that are just regular words.
Celebrities seem to be mad for this. Recently we've had Apple, North West, Blue Ivy and Brooklyn.
That last one apparently came about because that's where Posh and Becks conceived the kid. Even if that's true, well that's information you shouldn't share with anyone ever.
It's also horrifying to contemplate what would happen if that trend caught on. The world would be flooded with names such as Back Alley, Spare Bedroom and Disabled Toilet.
Apparently, Brisbane came close to being called Edinglassie. There's speculation that came from an old Scots word or it was a combination of the Scottish cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Either way people thought it was a shocker, which forced the authorities to pick another name and so it was named after the then governor of Sydney, Thomas Brisbane.
That's a cracking idea. If someone chooses to give their child an awful name, we as a society could just decide we're not using it.
"Sorry mate, that's not a people name. Try again."
Xavier Toby is a writer and comedian.
http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/books-and-authors/book/mining-my-own-business/