考研阅读精选：名字的含义谷歌告诉你
What’s in a Name? Ask Googleministration’s list of most popular baby names. Neither wasin the top 100.
“I did not want them to have names where therewere 15 in their class like I was,” Ms. Goldstein said. “There were alot of Debbies back then”
But shortly after the couple moved toSouth Orange, N.J., in 2006, they had a rude awakening. While waiting atan ice cream parlor, they heard a woman shout “Asher!” at a differentboy.
“It was two other Jewish lesbian moms with a child of thesame name,” Ms. Goldstein said. Google had let her down. “It didn’t tellus it’s a unique name unless you move to a neighborhood outside NewYork City where other trendy Jews are moving, too.”
More common,it seems, are parents who strive for a middle ground. “You want yourkid to be unique enough so there aren’t 80 of them, but not so uniquethat they seem weird,” said Doug Moe, a comedian in Brooklyn whose show,“Doug Moe Is a Bad Dad,” is playing at the Upright Citizens BrigadeTheater. His 5-year-old daughter, Phoebe, he points out, shares a firstand last name with at least two other Phoebe Moes online.
It’sthe rare parent, it seems, who wants a common name for a child. Newparents, after all, envision future presidents, Super Bowl winners andcancer curers, not Vatican streakers or college beer-bong guzzlers.
But maybe common names are more prudent. A recent study by the onlinesecurity firm AVG found that 92 percent of children under 2 in theUnited States have some kind of online presence, whether a tagged photo,sonogram image or Facebook page. Life, it seems, begins not at birthbut with online conception. And a child’s name is the link to thatpermanent record.
“When you name your baby, it’s a time ofdreaming,” Ms. Wattenberg said. “No one stops and thinks, ‘What ifone day my child does something embarrassing and wants to hide from it?’”
Maybe the wisest approach in our searchable new world is to let computers do the naming.
Lindsey Pollak, a writer on the Upper West Side of Manhattan whospecializes in career advice, fancied the name Chloe when she waspregnant with her daughter. Her husband, Evan Gotlib, wanted Zoe.
To settle the feud, they downloaded a 99-cent iPhone app called Kick toPick. After typing in the two names, they held the phone to Ms.Pollak’s stomach, as the phone alternated between the two. When thefetus kicked, the phone froze on one name, like a coin toss. It came upChloe for each of the four tries.
The next thing Ms. Pollak did,of course, was to Google it. “One of the Web sites said Chloe meanslittle green shoots, and we liked that,” Ms. Pollak said. Chloe it was.They even registered their unborn child’s first and last name as adomain name and signed her up on Tumblr, Twitter and G-mail.
TheKaslofskys wish they had had that foresight. When they Googled Kaleyain 2009, there were only a few relevant results. But since then, theparents of another child named Kaleya have started posting videos ofthat little girl’s adventures on YouTube, with titles like “Kaleya Makesa Snow Angel” and “Kaleya Runs From a Wave.”
Ms. Kaslofsky is miffed. “Things have changed in the last three years,” she said.
Luckily, she’ll get a second chance: Ms. Kaslofsky is pregnant with hersecond child, a boy. “We are probably going to name him Lucian, whichis related to a family name of Thor’s, and call him Luke.” she said.
Why? “We like the name.”
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