What's in a Name? or, Spellbound

My wife and I have four children, and I feel confident in saying that none of them have extraneous letters in their names. This makes us outcasts in a place like Mississippi, where being original in naming your children means shoving as many silent, useless letters as you can into each name. Or just making up a new spelling altogether. There's this one kid I know named Bayleigh. Seriously. I also know/have heard of Ashleigh, Braedan, Maxx and Madeleine.

And I have a friend named Geoff who doesn't understand why his folks didn't spell it Jeff. As he recently wrote on his Facebook page, "people from kindergarten to elderly routinely mangle my name, sometimes even asking me why I spell it that way, as if I popped out of the womb with a crumpet in one hand, quill in the other, and demanded, with an aristocratic air, that I be Jeff with a G."

I don't necessarily have a problem with how people spell their kids' names, but as Geoff can attest, they're setting them up for a lot of frustration down the road. And not just them, but the people who will unwittingly misspell these names on legal documents or in box scores. I mean, how else could you possibly spell Brittany? You'd be surprised: Brittni, Britni, Britney, Brittani … I've run across all of these spellings – and probably others – in my time as a journalist, because it seems a lot of girls with that name play high school sports.

I've never been crazy about androgynous names, either, but they're en vogue: Ashton, Carter, Madison, Peyton/Payton. I can't really talk, because my son's first name could also be used for a girl.

What happened to good old Southern names? Actually, they're still around, but they come in pairs. Sarah Beth, Anna Catherine, James Henry – and that's cool, but sometimes such a trend is annoying simply because it's a trend.

Maybe I'm this way about names because my sisters and I were given simple, easy-to-spell names. Just to screw with people, maybe I should start going by Bradleigh.

Today's Redneck Thought: "And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him … Bill or George, anything but Sue! I still hate that name!" – Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue"