Children increasingly named after Apple products Not only are the kids desperately keen to get Apple products, their parents are also naming them after Apple products - we learn from the latest yearly analysis of baby names. The moniker Apple, though still an unusual choice, rose 15 percent for girls, vaulting a whopping 585 spots. For boys, the name Mac jumped 12 percent. …
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.......(we are talking very late fifties, very early sixties here), one of my playmates was a young lad from a family whose surname was "Hood" - I do not think that you will have to strain yourself to guess what forename those idiots gave him. Imagine, growing up and attending school when every time you went out into the schoolyard there was a mass chorus of "Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen, Robin Hood, Robin Hood and his band of men."* Some people should be banned from reproducing themselves.
*For the (much) younger amongst us there was a very popular series about the famous outlaw on the telly in the early sixties starring an actor called Richard Greene. It was at that time compulsory viewing on a Saturday evening (God help us all). What you can see in quotation marks above is a quote from the series' theme tune.
Arctic Fox,
There was a story on the News Quiz many years ago, about a couple who decided to walk down the aisle at their wedding to the theme from 'Robin Hood Prince of Thieves'.
But as you can guess, this didn't quite work out. Instead of getting Brian Adams emoting, "Everything I do, I do it for you." They got the rather more thigh-slapping: Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen etc.
I'm pretty sure they had a better musical experience - even if a less earnest one...
> I went to school with a girl called Theresa Green.
Me too. The one I know always said that when she got married she'd take the surname 'Purple' just to mess with people.
I also know of a Mr. Hugh Cumber.
Very siri articrle indeed..
For Apple, you can also blame Gwynneth Paltrow, who gave her kid that name. Allegedly from "the apple of my eye", but it's tenuous.
Siri is a Norwegian given name (diminutive of Sigrid). One of the (Norwegian) developers of the Siri software registered the domain when he and his wife were expecting their first child; if it had been a girl, she was to be called Siri. As it happened, he had a son. It's not a common name, but not exactly rare either : http://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Siri says 0.5% of Norwegian baby girls were named Siri, with a peak in the early 1990s. Perhaps this was popularised by Apple, but given the proven effect of celebrity names on birth names, it could also be being used as a variation of Tom Cruise's sprog, Suri (of Hebrew origin, meaning Princess).
Mac means "Son" in Gaelic languages (Irish and Scots), pronounced somewhere between "mock" than "mack", but never as a given name. But.. if Japanese parents can name their first-born sons "Ichiro", I don't see why we can't extend that kind of literalism to other languages.
In the case of Americans, "Mac" or "Mack" was a common nickname for men of Irish or Scots descent, especially around the middle of the last century, so a baby boy called Mac might be due to parents remembering his grandfather or great-grandfather, rather than their first personal computing experience...
In other words, not everything is down to Apple, or even has anything to do with computers at all..
Mac is derived of course from original Apple Macintosh, itself named for the McIntosh Red, a variety of apple as originally cultivated by John McIntosh. The name McIntosh itself refers to 'son of the Chief'.
We have the further problem between Apple names in (well, once) common usage and their official usage. for example, if I name my child 'Blue & White G3', will Apple then tell me that the official name is actually 'Power Macintosh G3' and make me change it? There are 2 'Power Macintosh G3's and it will lead to confusion.
We need answers to these questions.
And what about version numbers? Just of the embarrassment poor iPhone 3GS has, now that the iPhones are at v5? The parents are clearly to blame here.
My cat is called Siri, but he's over 7 years old, so he's been using the name for far longer than Apple. Maybe he can sue them...? Can cats sue?
It's causing massive confusion at home, with the phone answering when I call the cat, and the cat answering when I use the phone: "Siri find me a decent Thai restaurant in North London", "Mwaiou"
Or is it a perfectly reasonable German variant of Susie/Suzy/Sue etc?"
Unlikely. IIRC, Germany is one of those places which has a list of "approved" names which you must use when naming your child. ISTR a news story about a German couple wanting to name a child Annikin and being refused permission when Star Wars - The One Where Darth Vader Was A Sickly Cute Kid, Episode 94 was a popular film.
Actually, there is (specifically: are, there are several regional ones). If you want a name outside the list, according to the apparent regulations you are of course free to prove that the name is a common name someplace in the world and is not denigrating/ridiculous/will harm the child in the future.
Thankfully you can change your christian names at will with no need for a deed poll or any legal framework at all. So just think of a name you want to use and start using it
That is of course how it stood the last time I checked, as deed poll explictly stated it was only needed to change a surname. It would not surprise me to learn this has changed in our 'identity' obsessed 'security' theatre of a world :( :(
Sticks out thumb & hails the nearest passing vogon construction fleet for one ticket off this rock even if it means dying a painful death from really bad poetry
... you don't need a deed poll to change even your surname. You just tell everybody what your new name is, and that's that. There are circumstances where you might need evidence of a change-of-name, and then a deed poll might be useful.
"You know who gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks" --- Stewart Francis
.. you don't need a deed poll to change even your surname.
Well you do if you want it to have any legal standing & to be used in reference to your legal entity.
Without a deed poll notice clearly & legally marking out the change the state can simply continue to use whatever name is on your birth certificate & there is nothing you can do about it
Changing names at school (where the kids are most likely to want to lose the dump handle their parents have dumped them with) teachers will insist on using the name on the register and that will be the official name needed to register the little darling in the first place.
I know a couple who had to deed poll their 5 year old because he hated the name his parents gave him on his birth certificate (a normal name) and wanted to be called by the name his brothers and sisters had always used for him.
I didn't seem to matter how many times the parents wrote to the teacher and the school they insisted on using his official name, or a normal shortened form. It was only when they officially changed his name would the school take notice.
Talulah does the Hula from Hawaii - check it out, some sods in New Zealand did this.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/24/familyandrelationships.newzealand
The child got made a ward of court.
In France, the registrar has to approve the name of the child to prevent this, which goes to show that there are things we can learn from the French.
Bit dated that...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_name
"First names are chosen by the child's parents. There are no legal a priori constraints on the choice of names nowadays, but this has not always been the case.
The choice of given names, originally limited only by the tradition of naming children after a small number of popular saints, was restricted by law at the end of the 18th century. Officially, only names figuring on a calendar, or names of illustrious Frenchmen/women of the past, could be accepted.[3] Much later, actually in 1966, a new law permitted a limited number of mythological, regional or foreign names, substantives (Olive, Violette), diminutives, and alternative spellings. Only in 1993 were French parents given the freedom to name their child without any constraint whatsoever.[4]
However, if the birth registrar thinks that the chosen names (alone or in association with the last name) may be detrimental to the child's interests, or to the right of other families to protect their own family name, the registrar may refer the matter to the local prosecutor, who may choose to refer the matter to the local court. The court may then refuse the chosen names. Such refusals are rare and mostly concern given names that may expose the child to mockery."
There has always been a section of society who refuse to conform when it comes to the naming of their children.
I can remember when one Liverpool fan named his son after all the team that had just won the League Title.
Then there are 'celebs' who IMHO do it just to get in the press.
Of course there are those who do it for good reasons but honestly 'Peaches?'
My now deceased Father in law was called 'Mac'. His real name was Macintosh Mackay so everyone called him Mac.
I honestly wish that the Fandroids (And other apple Haters) would take a break from this endless slagging off of Apple. In terms of business, I actually think that SamSung is a bigger danger. They are trying to monopolise far more areas of tech than Apple ever could. If Apple go under (As every Fandroid desires) then who is going to compete against SamSung? There really isn't another company with anywhere near the strenght to challenge SS.
Then where will the joys of competition be?
Rant over so let the downvoting begin.
Reminiscent of Golden Gordon who named his son Barnstonworth United.
And my mate Phil (a long time Man City fanatic) who named his son Asa. Not so controversial, except Philip lives in Denmark and in Denmark, Asa is a girls name - OMG. It required legal appeals to the "names commission" and a shit load of paperwork to get the name accepted as a legal name (it's not just the French who have a "names commission". This, despite the fact that Asa is not all that uncommon a name in the Spanish/Portuguese world.
This list looks like it's compiled by an American website and is based "on the names of 450,000 babies born in 2012 to moms registered on the BabyCenter website".
The official UK list takes a while for the ONS to compile and the latest one is here:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/baby-names--england-and-wales/2011/index.html
Given how litigious Apple are, "sue" would be a good choice. Although it's not a product, it can't be long before Apple patents a method for extracting obscene amounts of money from unsuspecting competitors for very little effort and zero original work.
Shortly after, they'll be sending nasty letters to Johnny Cash's executors asking for retrospective everything.
Amelia top but no Rory, does this mean DW fans have more daughters?
Definately a few F1 fans with Lewis and Jenson.
Kyle above Reece was funny, I was going to joke about Terminator fans until I saw a nearly surname there.
Bobby WTF!
Lola, have they heard the song?
As to TV fans I have found Isaac, Dexter, Blake.
A lot of us must have children found half of the Tweenies, no Fizz or Milo
"What if little Mac grows up and just wants to run Linux? Or Siri wants to become an Android Developer? They'll both be mocked relentlessly and have whole areas of the world shut off to them."
Doesn't take much. Apparently.
AC to avoid inviting the eternal ire of the open sores types incessantly beating their heads against the garden wall.
How accurate are the babycenter statistics - comparing their 2011 list ( http://www.babycenter.com/top-baby-names-2011 ) with the official one ( http://www.babynamestats.com/top100.html ) they're somewhat different.
Possibly that's partly down to slightly different timespans, but when I picked half a dozen names I'd have thought of as traditional-but-not-overtly-biblical English name, they were all significantly further down the babycenter list than the official one.
Some kind of reporting bias might be at work, and possibly that might particularly apply to the less common names.
Three pages of comments and nobody's considered the new ipad mini and the possibility of a new wave of kids named... "Mini Me"? It works for boys and for girls!
This line of thought does sort of assume that parents want to name their kids after the iMini (ok, let's not go there: Apple didn't, and I don't think parents would either) so as to conjure up positive connotations, though... I can see why nobody pounced on it sooner.
we allow these product brand-obsessed morons to vote. making long term decisions that affect other people based on how successful short term marketing has influenced their impulses. From Black Friday violence to self-inflicted corporate worship forced onto the helpless.
Explains a lot, doesn't it?
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