Baby-naming hell

Further to my post about crackpot celebrity baby monikers, The Times looks at the trend for parents to “brand” babies via their names.

Professor Albert Mehrabian is pondering the name Princess Tiáamii over the phone from his office in California. “I don’t mean to be negative but this is a stupid name,” he says.

The article gets even better from there.

I pay attention to names. I keep a baby names book on my bookshelf, because I have to christen a whole batch of people every time I write a book. But I wouldn’t stick somebody with one of these newly popular names, even on the page:

Trinity, Musetta, Cecily, Eudora, Myrtle, Delaney, Romy or Lark – names of the medium, if not necessarily the long-term, future.

Oh, wait - I did! But only as a last name.

And here’s proof that clairvoyants, astrologers, and women who cast chicken bones to tell the future will never run out of suckers customers: parents can now hire a “professional nameologist” to label their offspring.

Abigail will not do what she is told without a good reason and she will not be the type to come home and settle to her homework. She will be fun, but she will also be inclined to perform her own domestic dramas.

Is she saying I shouldn’t have named my kids Lion, Iscariot and Rebellia Lilac?

Just kidding. I would never subject my own children to such bland choices.

And for anybody unfamiliar with Princess Tiáamii’s parents, here’s a photo. (Warning: before viewing, set aside pens, chopsticks, anything that you might use to stab out your eyes.)

UPDATE: Commenters turn this into the “androgynous names” game!

50 crazy celeb baby names

Topped by the newest, Princess Tiaamii.

Gushes her mom - topless glamour model Jordan: “We love it because it’s unique, plus it means something special to us. I’m going to get a tattoo on the back of my neck with a crown and ‘Princess’ underneath.”

Glad to hear about the tattoo. It means from now on, Jordan will be more heavily dressed than usual.

Some standouts from the list:

Diezel Ky: Toni Braxton and Keri Lewis (also parents to Denim Cole)

Kal-El Coppola: Nicholas Cage (Kal-El is Superman’s original birth name)

And, in keeping with the royal theme:

Jermajesty: Jermaine Jackson and Alejandra Genevieve Oaziaza (previously married to Jermaine’s brother Randy)

Though I like this rocker’s choice:

Calico: Alice and Sheryl Cooper (also parents to Sonora Rose)

But here’s the big question…are any of these celebrity picks verb names?

Word geekery

What do the words “facetious” and “abstemious” have in common?

(via Wordsmith)

The Bulwer-Lytton Contest

How could I have forgotten for so long to mention the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest? This competition, run by San Jose State University, challenges entrants to write the opening sentence to the worst possible imaginary novel. It’s named after Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Victorian-era author of The Last Days of Pompeii, who wrote the immortal opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night…”

The contest’s witty website lists the rules and has hilarious examples of winning entries from past years. And may the contest directors forgive me, but to entice you to waste the afternoon browsing a website that ends in .edu, here are a couple of winners from 2006:

Todd languished there, neck deep in the pumpkin-hued Amargosa Desert sand like a long forgotten cupcake in an Easy Bake Oven gone hellishly amok, and it finally made sense . . . “ooohhhh, DEATH Valley.”

Jeffrey Barnes
Atlanta, Georgia

(Dishonorable Mention, Adventure category)

And:

Despite the vast differences it their ages, ethnicity, and religious upbringing, the sexual chemistry between Roberto and Heather was the most amazing he had ever experienced; and for the entirety of the Labor Day weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their feces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, and access to an espresso machine.

Dennis Barry
Dothan, AL

(Winner, Romance category)

And while you’re laughing, groaning and cringeing at the deliberate horrors on display, analyze why the writing is so perfectly awful, and how we distinguish good prose from bad.

The contest’s official deadline is April 15 but the site notes, “the actual deadline may be as late as June 30.” Take your best shot!

Update: 100 word story competition

I’m a couple of weeks behind here. BBC Radio 4’s Front Row has announced the winners of its short story competition, which required entrants to submit a 100 word story that included the words bodies, experiments, organic, paper, bacon and fire. Winning stories are posted at the link; scroll down to March 28. Alexa Phillips won with her story “The World Origami Championships”.

Story contest: 100 words

BBC radio’s Front Row program is running a short story contest to celebrate World Book Day. One winner will receive £50 in book tokens, and the top three entries will be read on the show. I’m highlighting it because the details of the contest are wonderfully surreal. The story must run to 100 words exactly. And it must contain six words - chosen “unwittingly” - by film director David Lynch. Ready?

Bodies. Experiments. Organic. Paper. Bacon. Fire.

Well, it is David Lynch. Details on how to enter at the link.

UPDATE: Post your stories here!

Word Assassins

Ever since the Verb Names game drew responses such as “My brain is fried,” “I’m leaving for a 12-Step Recovery Program for Verb Name addicts,” and “This may only stop with pharmaceutical intervention or a large rubber mallet,” I’ve been searching for another game I can inflict entice folks to play.

Alas, I’m still searching for a game that will work online. But here’s a game to play in real life: Word Assassins.

Players are assigned a word and a target. They kill their targets by getting them to say the assigned word aloud. The kill-words should be slightly unusual (so you have to put in effort to make your kill), but not so far beyond the realm of normal conversation that it’s obvious what word you’re trying to get your target to say.

This works well in schools and other environments where somebody can run the game. That’s what my daughter is currently doing - she has assigned players their targets and kill-words, which include impetuous, broadsword and defenestrate. She’s the M of Word Assassins on campus.

Here are her rules:

• You must get your target to say the word exactly as it appears on your assignment sheet. No variations accepted.
• You must be directly responsible for getting your target to say your word. If the target says the word in the course of conversation, it does not count unless it was directly in response to a question you asked.
• Your target must say the word aloud. No email, IM, or writing. Singing does count as saying the word aloud.
• When you make a kill, you must do two things:
• 1) Report the kill and the time it occurred to the gamerunner via email as soon as possible. This way she can keep track of who’s still in the game.
• 2) Get from your (now deceased) target their target and word. This is your new assignment. for example, if I killed Annie by getting her to say “disestablishmentarianism” and she had been trying to get Max to say “fuzzy”, I would then try to get Max to say “fuzzy”.
• You have 48 hours to make each kill. If the allotted time expires before you kill your target, you will be up for termination. At that point terminators will come after you with a dictionary (no, seriously) and your only hope of staying in the game is to kill your target before the terminators find you. (Remember that a kill is not certified until you have emailed the time that it happened, so you want to make sure you’re on top of that.)
• You want to keep your target and word secret. The game is much better if paranoia reigns.

Thus far, players have killed their targets with guile and surprise. One girl wrote out fake vocabulary flashcards and asked her target to help her pronounce them. Another had a friend set up his target with a YouTube video that had the word “defenestrate” in the title, then walked in and asked what he was watching. A third mock-vandalized a bathroom with red paint, a la The Shining, and waited for his target to rush out yelling that the Word Assassin version of “Redrum” was dripping down the wall.

My daughter is a veteran player of Assassins, where targets are terminated with water pistols. Word Assassins, she insists, is as much fun but with “less violence and screaming.”

And if you’re wondering - yes, as a thriller writer, I’m pleased that she tells players “the game is much better if paranoia reigns.” Real agent provocateur potential, my kid. If you need proof, the photo is the one she keeps on her desk, of her with her father.

One more thing…

Yes, my buddy Snart is also the person who invented the verb names word game. Thank or curse her as you wish.

Verb Names - I can’t resist

Your tremendous contributions to the Verb Names game added up to 239 submissions. (Thanks to commenter - and mad verb namer - Patti for doing the addition.) But this is a game that doesn’t ever quite end. So, simply to torture tantalize you, here are a few from my list that nobody caught:

Blaise

Serge

Bede

Seth (”Thus Seth the Lord”)

Chloe

Have a great weekend. At that New Year’s Eve party, be sure to ask everybody to wear a nametag.

(Previous Verb Names entries can be found under the Word Games category.)

Verb Names - don’t go away

Though Susan Daly has won the contest to guess my favorite verb name, that doesn’t mean that everybody has to pack up the phonebooks/baby name books. If you want to keep sending in your verb names, please do. I’ll round up the best and put ‘em up here soon.

UPDATE: Here’s the entire series of Verb Names posts, for anybody who wants to see the whole list. I’ve also added a new tag, Word Games, to all the entries. With luck I’ll have some more games to take a whack at in the future.

Verb Names

Verb Names - more

We have a winner!

We have a winner!

Posted by Susan at 1105 GMT… DeForest.

Yep, that’s my favorite verb name. As in DeForest Kelly, Doctor McCoy on Star Trek. It’s a real name, it’s both an obscure and environmentally cool verb, and for some reason it has always struck me as my favorite in this game. What can I say? I’m a kook.

Susan, you’ll be a character in my next book.

Verb Names - more

Excellent work with the verb names. You all are submitting terrific entries, including such favorites of mine as Claude and Mame (hey, I’m a crime writer). We’re up to well over 100. You’ve also come up with a bunch I hadn’t thought of. Favorite new submissions:

Piers

Niels

Rex

Iz

Gussy

Rowan

Roger (in UK usage this is pretty saucy!)

Ang

Ade

And my favorite so far… Jocelyn!

But there are still more out there, and nobody has yet hit on my all-time favorite. If anyone does, I will use his or her name (the winner, not the verb) as a character in my next book or story. Come on, do it!

UPDATE: So you’ll know I’m serious, I have told my editor my favorite verb name. If anybody gets it, she’ll verify!

Verb Names

Since we’re heading into the festive season, and since I’m slowly emerging from my fever fog, let’s celebrate with a silly word game.

Think of a name that doubles as a verb.

That’s it, basically. The verb name can be a full name, nickname, or homophone; the verb can be present tense, past tense, slang, a gerund, whatever. As long as the name can plausibly be used as a verb in a sentence, and at least one other person has heard the name, it counts. Names that work when pronounced with thick regional accents may be acceptable if they make us laugh.

I’ll start with a few easy ones:

1. Bob

2. Rob

3. Will

4. Sue

5. Mary

Just so you know, I have 220 more. I’ll post some of them over the holidays.

And no, I’m not obsessive-compulsive. I just have a friend named Snart, who knows I’m a grammar geek and helpless to resist semantic revelry. Blame, or credit, her for this game.