At long last, we can probably all agree that the government has made itself useful by ruling in Tennessee that a new mother cannot name her baby boy “Messiah.”
What I mean here is that with such an obtuse court ruling, the government has finally shown that it should be replaced with something better. Replacing it with nothing comes to mind at this point. Now I’m not one of those tea-partying, stained-T-shirt, gun-toting, Bud-drinking anarchists. I just happen to be one of a gazillion Americans exasperated over the fact that just about every corner of American government seems to work harder at proving its worthlessness rather than its value. Drones, airport security molestations, bridges to nowhere, almost all of Texas, and now this.
The Nashville ruling by Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew is my case in point. Ballew told a local Nashville TV reporter that, “The word messiah is a title, and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person, and that one person is Jesus Christ.” She gave the interview from her office, which had a ceramic figurine of Joseph and Mary with baby Jesus on her desk. A copy of the Ten Commandments hung on the wall, according to an Associated Press story.
Does she not know how many Jesus Martinez, Gonzales y Chavez there are in the phone book? This is hardly Messiah No. 2 anyway. The Social Security Administration reports that name as the fourth fastest-rising baby boy name this year.
Set aside the fact that Ballew must be chewing more than tobbacky by insisting that naming a kid after, oh, I don’t, someone like Mohammed, Noah, Jesus, Yahweh, Buddah and demigods like Elvis and Madonna is seen as degrading instead of glorifying religious icons.
Ballew said that allowing the baby to be named Messiah would also cause the kid problems later in life. Sheesh. Look at the fact that “Messiah” isn’t nearly as weird as the monikers some parents do get onto a birth certificate.
Let’s start with 2012 U.S. choices for baby names. California? Oh yeah. That’s a popular one. How about Jagger? Yup. Shoog, Yoga, Jury and Couture are right there, too, according to a poll of parents taken by babycenter.com. My favorite name for daddy’s little girl? Excel. Clearly those parents were able to pull themselves away from work for a least a short time.
And boys? It gets better. Alpha, Burger, Casanova, Cobain, Exodus (Exodus?) Google and Tron are standouts among a list of names that really do stand out. My favorites for boys for 2012? Goodluck (one word — fail) and Espn, although Rogue has a nice ring as well.
Among those names that appeared on more than one American birth certificate recently is “Savior.” Great minds think alike.
And “Messiah” tripped this lady’s trigger? What would she do on any American reservation? Ballew (and you’ve got to love that spelling) would have a seizure over birth certificates bearing names like “Red Sun Rising” or “Wind in Trees.”
I just don’t see how anyone could care so much about what others name their tykes that they would do something about it. If you care about kids, care enough to make sure we have decent schools and a social services departments able to get kids out of places where little Bail or baby Bond is living in a clothes closet or a dog pen.
Maybe we should do what the Icelanders do and have a cooling off period before you clad your offspring. There, babies aren’t usually named until about a month after they’re born. The thrill of tabbing your kid, “Villain” or “ Starlit” would likely grow dim before you inked it onto a certificate. Of course that is a country famous for naming children “Snorri” and “Játvarðar.”
And even if the likes of Ballew and the rest of the government were successful in vetting baby names and everything else that Big Sister doesn’t like, you can call your kid anything you want no matter what’s on the birth certificate. Ask my uncle, who went by Choker Pee Taylor as a child, me, who grew up as Runion The Onion, or my own daughter, who often goes by The Creature. Clearly, there’s no accounting for taste, and I would hate to see the government program that tries to do that. Just naming it would be too hard.
Reach Editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com