Everywhere a Name! Everyone a Name!

"You (he/she/they) stole my baby name" is one of the most profound entitlements seen or heard every day. Titles -- another word for names -- are not subject to copyright for a reason. (They should also not be subject to trademark, especially now that some institutions are claiming possession of single letters, but that's another story.)

In most cases, the person making this claim heard, read, or otherwise saw the name somewhere else and really, really liked it. You'd think that this would make it self evident that the name had a previous owner, but it doesn't seem to be working that way.

The only excuse I can think of is that these name-owning people are all the poor children named Amber Nicole, or perhaps Tiffany, if female, and some variation of --aden or --axson if male. I do feel a great sympathy for those like-named persons.

But still, it is most likely that someone else had it first, and that you are the thing you are raging about.

Names for All

 I read a lot of advice columns -- or I did before the internet decided everybody needed to pay everyone every day for the privilege. I miss them, and no one is eating in restaurants and leaving their papers for the next guy. 

Anyway, people can write to advice columns about some pretty silly things. Which way to hang your toilet paper roll comes up semi-regularly. 

Lately, a popular topic has been names.

Did you know people are stealing names? If you've been named after someone, your parents were unoriginal name thieves. If you've been named a common name, your parents are name thieves and unoriginal.

Did these people really never go to school with classmates bearing the same name? No reason to know Chris C is not Chris S. That Jennifer H is not Jennifer G?

How did that not happen?

Someone wrote in crying that his sibling stole the name Nola from him. He thought it would be cute to name her after the Big Easy, when he saw it written that way, once upon a time. 

Sorry, bud, it's not a new name, nor a newly invented one. It's been around a few hundred years in one language or another. Probably several. 

I do have more respect for those trying for something original. (As long as it isn't bulky, awkward, or too weird.) Jayken and a middle name, for grandpas James and Kenny and Uncle Mark (middle name). Little girl's names can be pretty if one wants to go for the feminine or the flowing. (Sometimes dangerous in today's belligerent society.)

Nobody owns a name. Even if you put together a unique portmanteau name, someone will see it on a birth announcement, or on social media, or hear you say it in a store, and think, oh that sounds so (adjective they like) and will remember it, and within a few weeks everyone will be naming their child your unique name. 

They may be the first with it (unlikely, but possible) but tell that to a high school sophomore with a lot of freshmen with the same name. 

Even copyright laws acknowledge that names are void from being owned. The main we reason we all can't write Gone With the Wind is because one novel with that title so impressed itself upon the public that any others will look like pale copies, even if it's a completely different subject matter.

It's not illegal.

Names cannot be owned. 

I have to admit, though, I did feel a pang of ~ something ~ with/for the woman who wrote in that her aunt stole her planned baby name and gave it to her dog. I don't have a lot of patience for dogs with kids' names, although 1) it's none of my business and 2) it's okay in honor of someone or 3) named after the giver or other VIP. 

And imagine if it's a kid with a dog's name? Rover Fido Smith, you come back here right now. 

And that is why I don't know if I feel sympathy or mockery for that woman. Because I don't know if she was giving her child a dog name, or if the dog was getting a human name.

I just wish she had used an example in her letter!