Names: the one possession that everyone has had in common for the last several thousand years. While they do not come to mind when contemplating interesting things, names were at one point much more creative and meaningful than they are now. Many names have become overused throughout the centuries due to history, which has slowly narrowed the naming pool for many people due to the human desire for uniqueness. Names are amazing, beautiful things used to address people, or at least they were for a while before they instead became assortments of letters that almost seem like they could be pronounced.

Little English Miracles

If you look hard enough, location-based names seem to be more common than name-based locations. For example, Cillian is a somewhat popular name among the Irish, especially in religious families, as the name can be translated into English as “Little Church.” This is a simple meaning and is relatively easy to pronounce, with the only struggle being with the pronunciation of the C: being pronounced like a K and not an S. This astonishing efficiency of the English language has been used to derive names out of names, such as Alan, Allan, Alen, Allen, Alin, Allin, Alyn, Allyn, and surprisingly, Alun. The meaning of names vary between “nourishing” or “noble”, which are at least simple meanings for the many names it inspired. While it would be easy to critique the spelling convention of the English language, it would take too long to dissect its many exceptions to its own rules properly, so instead, it’ll be easier to talk about the worst thing regarding names: pronunciation.

Inspired 

Uniqueness is the bane of meaning; thus, unique names are the disgraceful child of functional names. While names definitely do not require religious significance, they should, at the very least, have some historical or cultural significance, even if niche. Ideally, no one would name their children after pop culture characters, but that is a simple inevitability that comes with free will. So, the scourge of media references by way of children became a trend. For example, names such as brand-based names have become too common, the most used being Dior and Armani, which have spiked in popularity in the U.S. in recent years and are being used by the hundreds. Luckily, the names also have isolated meanings outside of the context of the brands they are attached to and are simple to pronounce considering their origin, making them, at worst, only ill-intentioned names by way of reference. 

Borrowing & Consequences 

Many of the words used today are pronounced completely differently than they are spelled or originally intended to be pronounced. For example, the title and name Colonel are objectively spelled incorrectly; this is due to the fact that the word for it was originally coronelle, which was a French word we completely mutilated. Most of the words ‘inspired’ by other languages are unfortunate contributors to horrible names, such as cafe, allowing people to think ‘fe’ was an acceptable replacement for ‘fay,’ or genre being responsible for the name Gene occasionally being pronounced as John. Luckily, these names are better than words spelled correctly but used incorrectly, such as verbs being used as names. The worst possible name considering these two negatives is Blu, which follows the three horrible archetypes for bad names of being a color, shortened from a real word, and having no meaning. 

Commonality 

While the answer to the problem of uniqueness is not to give every newborn the same name, ideally, there should be some limits on naming a child—no unique spellings of previously established words or simply using verbs as names, absolutely zero media references. Ideally, there’d also be some approving process along with the restrictions, but how that would be enforced seems to be rather inefficient no matter the hypothetical method. Unfortunately, parents granting names to their children is effectively the only remaining human right they have post-birth, so it’s unlikely that more restrictions will ever be placed on their naming decisions. 

Works Cited

The meaning of the name Cillian: www.ancestry.com/first-name-meaning/cillian#:~:text=*Some%20content%20has%20been%20 generated,an%20application%20for%20 Irish%20 heritage, Date Unknown

Alan and his clones: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_(given_name), January 31st, 2025

Chanel & Armani’s popularity: https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/background.html, ~ June, 1998