A Baby Named Chlamydia

"What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." In a literal sense, considering a rose, it would be difficult to debate Juliet's point. (It was Juliet's line in Shakespeare's epic Romeo and Juliet.) How would calling a rose, say, a pemscrote,  in any way change its scent?  A rose's scent, in addition to its physical beauty, is the essence of the rose. Furthermore, despite the penchant of some for talking to their plants on a regular basis, there's no significant evidence that a rose grows any differently because of the way any human feels about it.  As far as we know, roses bloom and fade in spite of anything any one of us thinks, does, or says about the rose as long as we do nothing physically to impact the rose.

Humans,  or even dogs, on the other hand, are more impressionable than are roses.  If a person is perceived differently because of his or her name,  others could treat that person differently than the person would otherwise be treated. This is particularly true in formative years. What cause me to think of this is a story I heard recently from my aunt. According to my aunt's nurse friend, who heard it from another nurse who was supposedly present when the exchange took place (I'm always just a smidgen skeptical when the story comes from a friend of a friend, versus a person actually known to the  teller of the story and from whom the person relating it to me heard the story, which still doesn't guarantee its veracity, but at least improves the chances that it's not one of snopes.com's latest debunked rumors), a new mother, when asked by the hospital birth registrar what she chose to name  her newborn baby, answered, "Chlamydia."

The register responded, somewhat incredulously, "You know that's a sexually transmitted disease, right?"

The new mother sighed. "Yes, I know, but I don't think that very many other people know that, and it's such a pretty name." As the story goes, the infant girl was given the name "Chlamydia."   Despite anyone;s feelings about personal freedoms and the governmental interference  into our rights as outlined by the Declaration of Independence, dictated by the Constitution of the United States, and clarified and expanded by the amendments to the U. S. Constitution, there really should be a law against such an atrocity. No child should have to go through childhood (and the rest of her life if she lacks the financial means to have the name legally changed once she reaches adulthood) with a sexually transmitted disease as a name because her mother wanted to be different. If her mother really wants so greatly to be different, perhaps she should get a unique tattoo or even change her own name, but leave the poor baby out of the mother's identity crisis. The child is handicapped enough as it is simply by having either a profoundly stupid mother or one who is bat-shit crazy, or perhaps both. At least give the poor baby a name like  Emily or Jessica as her chance at a decent start in life.

I've previously expounded my theory about requiring  parents who wish to give their children highly unusual names having to appear before multi-faceted panels and listen what the individuals have to say about the off-the wall names being proposed for the unfortunate infants, so I will not recount my proposal in its entirety at this time. I will, however, bring up something my dad said. He mentioned some Scandinavian country -- perhaps Norway, but I'm not certain -- that has a list of one thousand names for each gender that are considered acceptable. If a woman has a baby in that country, she may choose any one of the thousand (my dad thinks it's one thousand, but it may be two thousand) names for the child.  It would seem that even with one thousand names from which to choose, if  parents chose carefully, a child would not run the risk of having four children in his or her class every year with the same name as he or she.   A thousand options per gender allows for considerable variety.

This Scandinavian nation that uses the name-limited system, whatever it is, most likely is more efficient than is The U. S. Can you just imagine the politicization involved in even gaining a membership on to the name selection committee, much less what might happen once the committee started selecting names. Committee members would collude and broker deals with one another to have bizarre names included that their respective relatives wanted to use. The list would end up with so many winners such as Gilmore, Halo, Vinique,  Samanda, Zorro, Exodus, Turbo, Vice, and Zaniel that there wouldn't be room for some of the standards such as Kristin, Elizabeth, Julie, Catherine, David, Michael, Joseph, and Paul.  A committee is not the answer, at least not here in the U. S.

I would propose that if we absolutely had to have some sort of a name-selection panel, it could be made up of presidents and their wives, present and past, with the caveat that the presidents and/or their wives be living and that the position not be something that could be passed on like some sort of a legacy to a descendant of a president. (God only knows what names Amy Carter could come up with  on a really creative day.)  Looking at the names of presidential children, the Carters named their offspring John, James, Jeff, and Amy. President Reagan's children,with his two wives, were Maureen, Michael, Patricia, and Ronald. President Bush #1 and his wife named their kids George, John, Pauline, Marvin,  Neil, and Dorothy. While some of those names may now be considered a bit dated, nothing about them would have been considered odd at the time they were given. The Clintons' only child is Chelsea, which was modern but very top-twenty for its time. President Bush and his wife named their daughters Jenna and Barbara --both perfectly respectable names. The Obama children are named Malia and Natasha, who is called Sasha. While the name Malia is perhaps even ethnically influenced (I really don't know), neither name is out of the mainstream. Modern presidents have done well in naming their children. If we have to have a name-selection panel, somehow force them to comprise it. Tie it to their pensions, maybe.

A name does influence the person a child will become. Not every child needs to be named Sophia or Aiden. Having a name that it is too popular carries its own baggage. Still, can't a happy medium  be achieved?   Isn't there some territory midway between the extremes of  the likes of Liam and Olivia and something that has to be so very different that parents must resort to consulting a list of sexually transmitted diseases in order to find a name sufficiently unique to suit  their tastes and to attract the attention they so obviously crave?

If she's for real, God bless Chlamydia, because she's going to need all the help she can get.