Don’t make your child’s name into a millstone

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It’s easy to go mad when you have a baby – not because the sleepless nights of the croop, but just right at the very beginning when you’ve experienced the greatest feeling known to man.

It’s even better if you’re a father, of course, because the only pain you’ll have to cope with is a hangover after buying pints for all of your mates.

You can see them a mile away in the vicinity of any maternity hospital – the grinning fool with the big bouquet of flowers and an amateur’s approach to buying nappies for new-borns.

They firmly believe no one has ever felt like this before and in one way they’re right, but in another it’s a feeling shared by millions the world over every week.

But even allowing for the light-headedness or craziness than new parenthood may bring, there is no excuse for calling your little bundle of joy by a name that will scar them for life.

The actress Rosamund Pike – former Bond girls and current star of Gone Girl – was photographed in some paper recently with her two month old son, Atom; she also has a two year old son called Solo.

Atom and Solo? If she had fifteen kids and had run out of names, you might excuse her, but these are her only two children.

As someone saddled with a surname bound to cause problems in the playground, surely she should have known better – or maybe she could have gone the whole hog and called them Salmon and Trout Pike.

And, yes, at least they can take their father’s surname which is Uniake – but that doesn’t make it right to called them after a particle and a loner.

Then again, celebrities do this sort of thing all of the time; perhaps they are so bored with their lives that they think inflicting name pain on their loved ones is some form of unusual entertainment.

Think of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Apple Martin; or Posh and Becks’ quartet Brooklyn, Cruz, Harper and Romeo Beckham.

David Bowie (real name David Jones) and his then-wife Angie called their lad Zowie Bowie; it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he changed to a more normal Duncan Jones when he was old enough to see more sense than his parents, and now he’s an acclaimed film maker in his own right.

Woody Allen and Mia Farrow called their son Satchel Seamus Allen – although if truth be told, giving dodgy names to your adopted children may not be Woody’s worst indulgence.

Angelina and Brad have Knox, Maddox, Pax Thien and Shiloh among their big brood – but at least they do have the excuse of adopting half of Africa, so the names were bound to move into new territory at some stage.

Thankfully us mere mortals seem to show a degree more pragmatism and humanity when it comes to naming our own offspring.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.