Have never got the "Mainstream" hype. I live here, mainstream or backstream, doesn't really matter. But maybe my life has been too comfortable. :)
Got a kick out of the names of the boys who came to my son's birthday. If there is a funny name, you know it belongs to either an Indian or "regular" American boy; all Chinese boys have strictly popular and common English names, mostly Anglo-saxon. Of the 6 Chinese boys who came to the party, 5 of them were named Kevin, 'cos then they can conveniently have the Chinese name 凯文 as well. ;)
I've always noticed how celebrities gave weird names to their children. Somebody actually did their homework and put them all together. Haha it's hilarious. We are always too far behind - we thought we were catching the trend, but we don't know we are only chasing the end of the trend ... which is inevitable really, because if you come to stand in line, you've got to go to the end of the line, unless you start a new line of course. :))
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From Apple to Zolten: Offbeat Celeb Baby Names
By Kati Johnston
Special to MSN Entertainment
It's not enough to grow up in the spotlight; now Hollywood kids are doomed to have to spell out their names on every first day of school ("No, not S-U-R-R-E-Y, S-U-R-I!"). Well, what's a little more attention when mom and dad are among the most famous folks on earth? Here's a little guide to our favorite offbeat celeb baby names. But please, don't try this at home.
Gwyneth Paltrow: Oh, it's all so teddibly British -- naming your cherub-cheeked daughter Apple (the Brits also love names like Plum, Strawberry and Cherry; haven't heard of any Cantaloupes yet). Then Gwynnie and her husband, Coldplay's Chris Martin, named little Apple's baby brother Moses, thus accustoming him to feeling like a senior citizen at a very young age. Thoughtful, that.
The multicultural naming award goes to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, whose offspring's names are diverse and lovely, even if rather foreign to English ears. Oldest son Maddox was born in Cambodia; middle child Zahara Marley, adopted from Ethiopia, has a first name that reportedly means either "flower" in Swahili or "luminous" in Arabic, and a middle name that reflect's Mom's grooving on reggae. Baby Shiloh Nouvel was born in 2006 in Namibia with the perfect features of both parents. Now if we could just get that Neil Diamond song out of our head ...
David and Victoria Beckham named their sons Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz, perhaps hedging Becks's chances of playing soccer in America, Italy or Spain. Score!
Does Nicolas Cage have a Superman complex? He and wife Alice named their son Kal-el Coppola Cage; Kal-el happens to be the birth name of the comic-book hero. (Big brother Weston doesn't have quite as much to live up to.)
Julia Roberts and Danny Moder: How adorable that America's sweetheart gave birth ... to two members of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Um, we love old-fashioned names, but Phinnaeus and Hazel might be more at home on, say, "Antiques Roadshow."
Bruce Willis and Demi Moore: Oh, sure, they said they had all these literary and cultural antecedents, but still, their daughters -- Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle -- have pretty interesting names to live up to. Think they'll be stars like mom, dad and stepdad Ashton Kutcher?
Aussie actor Russell Crowe's gotten all domesticated since the birth of his son, Tennyson, with wife Danielle. (Hey, they could have named him for the wharf they live on in Sydney: Woolloomooloo.)
I got you, babe -- and you got kind of a weirdo name. Sonny Bono and Cher named their sole offspring Chastity, despite her having been born at the height of the sexual revolution, in 1969. Any surprise that she's always gone by Chaz?
When great crackpot names go terribly wrong: David Bowie and his first wife, Angie, named their son Zowie. Quite a ring to it, right? Except when Zowie grew up, he'd had enough, and promptly changed his name from Zowie Bowie to ... Duncan Jones. With second wife Iman, David seems to have come around; their daughter's named Alexandra. Pass the stardust.
Everybody off the couch! Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes named their famously reclusive daughter Suri, which is either a lovely ancient Persian or Hebrew name, or something her parents just made up. What we do know is she'd better like the soundtrack to "Oklahoma," 'cause she's gonna be hearing that a lot.
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2 comments:
Interesting!
Whenever I heard the Chinese people here talking about "mainstream", I said "mainstream my b--t!":)))
If Juzi is still writing for a Chinese audience, nobody here is in the mainstream yet.:)))
sce
SCE: I could be writing for an American audience but still not in the mainstream - but then what the big deal? :) I live as an invididual. The more I can be spared of the details, the better. A lot of the bindings are simply shackles.
81Zi: Why Paris Hilton? It sounds pretty "normal" to me. I think the weirdest names came after her generation.
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Right now I have no time nor interest to elaborate; but I'll save this here in case this topic strikes my fancy at some odd hour. :)
By Any Other Name
What’s in a name? Only my whole life.
By Sarah Schmelling
Special to Newsweek
Updated: 7:57 p.m. ET Aug 24, 2006
Aug. 24, 2006 - I was never one of those girls who plan their weddings in junior high, before they’ve ever been kissed. Even after years of dating a guy, I wouldn’t let myself fantasize about the Big Day. Yet, I’ve always been sure of one thing: if I got married, I’d take the guy’s name.
It’s not that I have anything against women keeping their names. It’s just my name, Schmelling. Look at it. It contains 10 letters, 8 of them consonants. It has ready-made playground insults an average third grader could decipher in two seconds, it makes telemarketers gasp and, for reasons I’ve never been able to fathom, as it’s really just “smelling” with a “shh” at the start, there’s still a 90 percent likelihood it won’t be pronounced correctly outside of the Midwest or Northern Europe.
But ever since I got engaged last year to a guy who happens to have the unique yet pronounceable name Yessis (which could still lead to puns, but none of them embarrassing), I’ve started to waver. Somehow, beyond all things rational, I’m having trouble letting Schmelling go.
OK, there are more awful names. People share monikers with serial killers and dictators, body parts and swear words, or have parents who’ve saddled them with puns like Tom Morrow. For me, it’s just been this day-to-day hassle that always had an easy out. Unless I fell in love with someone with a worse name, I would escape the Schmelling situation. See what I mean? The words “Schmelling situation” are funny, right? Try listening to grown men stifle giggles when they hear it in business meetings. Watching heads turn when you have to respond to someone shouting “SMELLING” into a microphone at jury duty. I’ve had to spell it four times for a dinner reservation or to pick up a prescription; I’ve seen cashiers, required by their stores to say “Thank you, Miss Schmelling,” get genuinely perturbed.
There’s only one famous person with a similar name, the German boxer Max Schmeling, who, no matter what he did the rest of life, was still known for representing the wrong side in the war. When the rare person asks me if I’m related to him, I do get to tell my grandfather’s old joke: “No, Joe Louis knocked the ‘L’ out of him.” (Get it? He only had one L!) But this hardly gives the name much improvement.
Plus, I’m a writer. And when it comes to the dream of having my book on the (of course) center table of the store, I’ve had trouble seeing it. SCHMELLING. Taking up most of the cover. Wouldn’t it have the potential of turning readers, let alone editors or agents, away? Look at any best-seller list and tell me there isn’t something unifying in the ease of articulation among the Browns and Kings, the Higgins Clarks and the McCall Smiths. My spell-checker doesn’t even flutter for these names, but for mine, I’ll always have a red line and the question, “Did you mean ‘scheming’?”
For all of these reasons, this was the one major adult decision I wouldn’t have to ponder. Then, there my boyfriend was with his question and his ring. Schmelling! The mutilated phonetics! The potential bias against it by the entire literary world! Finally, after dealing with it every day for 35 years, I had a new chance. But did I want to take it?
Maybe if I was 22, I could let it go. At 35, I’ve been a Schmelling for a long time. I’ve built a career with this name. There’s a good chance I’m the only one in the world with this exact spelling, this combination. Why would I change something that’s so completely my own? I think about my family: I have female relatives in Denmark who passed Schmelling, and not their husbands’ names, on to their children precisely because of its uniqueness. My own mother went from the infinitely easier Cohen to become a Schmelling, and since she’s had it her entire adult life, it’s the only way she thinks of herself. But I’ve gone through all of my 20s and half of my 30s with this moniker. I’ve dated and traveled with it, taken it with me on job interviews, signed leases, opened bank accounts, placed (poorly) with it in a marathon. Now, I think about the family reunions where we’ve actually donned baseball caps that say PROUD TO BE A SCHMELLING. Maybe, after such a good, long run with this name, I finally am.
As for that book dream, there are name-challenged literary pioneers to take heart in. Annie Proulx and Jhumpa Lahiri. Janet Evanovich, Audrey Niffenegger, and Jennifer Weiner, who pronounces it “wine-er” but darned if TV interviewers don’t call her “weener” in front of the whole country. Oh, how my spell-checker shivers in panic at these names! But oh, the Pulitzers, the skyrocketing sales, the movie rights between them. They’ve forced a pronunciation-lethargic nation to reconsider all vowel and consonant placement. They’ve paved the way for all the Anita Baths and Bill Boards, for the Bastardo and the Butz, for the Strange.
So, as much as I love my fiancée, I don’t think I’ll be taking his name the day we say, “I do.” Who knows, maybe down the road, when I get hand cramps from writing both of our full names on things, and quite possibly if I ever have to hear a child teasing my own son or daughter about their mother’s name, I may reconsider. For now, I’m Sarah Schmelling. It’s long and, as I’ve been told sometimes angrily, it’s “a real mouthful.” But in the end, for better and worse, it’s me.
Schmelling lives in Washington, D.C.
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
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