I keep thinking about this Dear Prudence:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/07/when-you-share-a-name-with-a-famous-or-infamous-person-and-more-advice-from-dear-prudence.htmlBasically, the letter-writer and his wife are having a baby soon and his wife wants to name the baby after her dying grandfather, to whom she is very close. The husband balks because the name is also that of "a very well-known male
**** star" who has apparently also crossed over into mainstream films. The wife is completely unaware of this. The husband is worried that his son's future employers will google his name and come across the
**** connection--apparently this guy was popular in the 1980s.
I find this so ridiculous and bizarre. Well, first of all I can't think what the name would be, not that I'm a great authority on the subject. The only thing that comes to mind is Ron Jeremy. That's two names, Ron and Jeremy, and you can't possibly object to either one alone on these grounds. Now if she wants to name the baby Ronald Jeremy Smith, surely it would be easy to convince the wife to just give one slot to honor her grandfather, and maybe another grandfather's name in the other slot. (Maybe their last name is Jeremy, and the grandfather's name is Ronald, which would make things more difficult; but the letter-writer doesn't say or imply this. And anyway, just put Ronald in the middle.)
I just keep thinking, is her grandfather named Alotta Fagina or something? I mean if it's been good enough for an elderly man his whole life--if he doesn't get hung up on when he tries to order a pizza, for example--then it's probably okay for a kid. By the time he's applying for jobs this celebrity's heyday will be about 50 years past! Maybe run the idea past Grandma, or Parent/aunts/uncles, to see if they discourage it on the basis of it being a difficult name to live with. My dad shares his extremely common name with a celebrity, and people still occasionally make comments about it, so I find it unlikely that people so close to Grandfather wouldn't realize his name was a problem, if it was.
Another thing is, normally when you know someone with a certain name, you think of them first, and only later any famous people with the same name. So when I hear the name Jane, I think of a friend and some relatives with that name, and only later people like Jane Austen or Jane Seymour. So I find it kind of weird that the husband goes immediately to a
**** star name, and not his wife's grandfather, to whom she is so close.
It just reminds me of the time I told a friend that my cousin had named her new baby Michael Scott Smith, and the friend's immediate response was to snicker and go, "Oh no! Poor kid!" I ran through the initials, the possible nicknames, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. Finally my friend said, "Michael Scott is the bad boss on
The Office!" I rolled my eyes
so hard. Michael and Scott are both extremely common names, family names for my cousin. Most likely neither she nor her friends watch
The Office, and I doubt little Michael's peers will either! Give me a break.