Naming Names

Not long ago at my son's t-ball game, my wife met two little kids, siblings, named Clark and Addison. Their father, a Chicago Cubs fan, had named them for the intersection that is famous as the location of Wrigley Field.

I'm a White Sox fan and I have to admit to being a little envious of that dad. If Sox fans tried a similar approach they'd end up with kids called 35th and Shields.

When it came to our kid, my wife and I went traditional. We named A.J. for his two grandfathers, Andrew and John. But according to Alexandra Alter's article in the Wall Street Journal, it's not done that way much anymore. Alter writes about couples consulting databases and websites and hiring "naming consultants" to help come up with a perfectly distinctive name for their kids. She offers us this quote from an author of eight books about baby names: "People who understand branding know that when you pick the right name, you're giving your child a head start."