What's in a name?

I'm sure many of you have read Freakonomics. If you haven't, it's worth a look and shouldn't take you less than a few days to get through. Unless you're my dad in which case you're still only 1/3 of the way through the second easiest and most readable book of the past few years: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

To be fair, he devours magazines.

Freakonomics has a chapter about names and about how first names can be correlated with the education level of the parents. Also some interesting notes about how names cycle through generations and social classes. And some funny stories about twins named Winner and Loser, and children named Oranjello and Lemonjello.

More recently there was a NYTimes article about the most common names in the U.S. and how for the first time two Hispanic names are in the top 10. My last name isn't in the top 5,000 list, which means I'm probably more interesting than you.

Now there's this thing about how parents are naming their kids bizarre things so that they're more Google-able. It's true, it is tough to look up the girls I meet when they have really simple names. I never even called Mandy Smith back.

I've been inspired by some of the European names I've come across. I'm going to name my sons Indy, Menno and Oskar. And my daughter Stella.

Now about finding that wife*.

*But then again there was an interesting article in last week's Daily Telegraph about how men who are at least 15 years the senior of their wives have bigger families. And since I'm looking to build a dynasty, that suits me. And since that means that my future bride may be celebrating her 12th birthday, I've got plenty of time.