Fashion In Given Names

One of my duties as the announcer for the Magazine Rattler basketball games is to try to make sure that I pronounce the names of the players correctly. Thankfully, nothing that I do as announcer is official, but part of the enjoyment of the game for the players is getting to hear their names over the loudspeaker; and I want to pronounce them right when I do it. 

Back in the Good Ol’ Days, that job would not have been very difficult. Bobby and Betty and Billy were pretty hard to mess up. But today the process is much more complex. In the first place, many parents customize names, invent names, in order to make their child unique. And, they accomplish their purpose. Of course, they also accomplish making sure that no one ever pronounces their child’s name correctly. 

Another factor that has complicated the process somewhat is the large number of ethnic names that are now common in our communities that were not there a couple of generations ago. Especially when the names were transliterated from a language that does not even use the same alphabet that English does, making the names sound like they are supposed to sound can be a little tricky.  

I do my best to get all the names right because I figure the youngsters deserve that. One of my main pre-game activities is getting the rosters from the opposing coaches and checking to make sure that I pronounce all the names correctly. (Do you have any vague idea how many different ways there are to spell Katelynn, or Caitlin, or Kaitlinn, etc.?) 

Given names go in cycles. Each generation wants to make its own mark, and do something different than what their parents did. Some names that were extremely common fifty years ago are almost never used today. My mother told me that one of the reasons that my parents named me Mark was because she wanted a name that was a little bit unique, but by the time I got school age, there were Marks on every street corner. 

I would suggest that if young parents want to have really unique and yet entirely classy names, use some of the names from Great Britain. For example, if you want your son to have the same given name as the 4^th Marquess of Buckingham, then name him Plantagenet. Or, if you want him to share a monicker with the 12^th Viscount Bourke of Clanmories, then name him Ulick. And then, since the prefix “Fitz” means “son of,” you can tack that on in front of your given name and make your son’s name sound really high-class: FitzWalter, FitzAlan, FitzPatrick, FitzBillyBob – whatever works for you.