what's in a name?

louise and i were talking to our new and awesome roomie nicki yesterday. (is it spelled nicki? i keep getting different spellings...and i remember her telling me her name was spelled nikkie or some crazy spelling when i put her number in my phone.) anyways, we were talking about her also awesome sister renee who is currently with child and i asked if they had decided on a name...they haven't and i realized how huge of a decision that is. that's the kid's name forever. i was always ok with my name, but i know there are plenty of people that hate their name. sure you can change it later in life, but that's only for people that aren't lazy.

well this got me thinking about names. like how i am glad that somebody else named jessie. i wasn't so hot on it initially...but now the name is perfect for her and i couldn't imagine it being anything else...no matter how many times dave tries to change it to laser or cocoa or something else silly. i wonder what her name used to be when she was with her previous owner?

seeing that i don't have any kids, i haven't had to make many big name decisions in my life. but even the little name decisions make me kind of neurotic. when i first got my ipod, i discovered i had to give it a name. "that's cute." i though at the time. i brainstormed for a while. i wanted it to be something kind of funny to me and sort of unique and possibly witty...which is often a problem for me, where i forgo more obvious and possibly fitting names to reach for something that i think is "cool" or "witty" or "unique" or "faux-intellectual". well i ended up going with el chupacabra which has always fascinated me somewhat and it sounds kinda cool i guess. well after not very long, i started to hate it. some woman claimed to have the head of a chupacabra that she killed on her farm. people were talking about it a little and it became less of a unique thing. recently i have reset my ipod and realized i had a chance to rename it. sweet! i decided to not put as much thought into it and i stared at my ipod for about 5 seconds and blurted out "kpod!" it's much simpler, not as unique i guess, but that wasn't the goal this time. i am much happier with this name.






hey kpod...i thought i had my bono blocker setting on...oh you rascally kpod! you got me again!









i have had to choose names for stuff like e-mail. i stopped caring about that naming and have forgone the clever to me at the time names like "sogreat". i am now old and dull and go with some variation of my full name and numbers like my birth year or date.

choosing a gamertag for xbox live was also kind of a tough task for me. i had initially gone with jessiethejerk in honor of my dog. well everyone thought my name was jessie and it was a name that never really clicked for me. luckily it was a trial membership and when i signed up, i just went with a new membership and username. i went with diaps, which i have been ok with, but not always completely satisfied with. it is a reference to one of my favorite shows from the 90's, austin stories. i guess it is kind of a cult show that was on mtv one year. they never officially put the show out on dvd, but i ended up buying a self-produced version of the dvd from one of the stars of the show over ebay. in case you are wondering, diaps (rhymes with pipes) is a name one character was called because he smelled like clean diapers. almost everyone i meet over xbox live is confused by my name and i hear a lot of "heh, you sure do suck at halo die-aps..."






"is it because of the di-polarity of the sun?












i even get a little antsy choosing the name for my fantasy football teams. sometimes i went with a general message about how i felt at the time (fuckbush, eat your veggies) and sometimes it was in reference to something i enjoyed at the time (the cogs, avagodro). i also have the habbit of changing my team names to either refelct something in my current opponent and why they are inferior or else to just piss off dan who seems to strongly dislike this practice of mine.

i obviously have problems choosing names and often times overthink them. if i ever have kids, this will become a major issue for me. i will probably think too much about what potential names mean or how they would be interpreted. i'll be like...can't name my future son "dave", people will automatically assume he is a big jerk....i can't name my future daughter "laura", people will automatically know that she is awful at fantasy football....i can't name my kid "phil", he's gonna automatically hate on everything....i can't name my kid "kevin" that's kind of an unrealistic amount of cool to live up to...i could go on.

anybody have any good methods for naming kids, pets, cars, whatever?