Googly-eyed Parents

Way back when the Internet was just a gleam in Al Gore's eye, I wanted to name my first-born son, Hercules, because we would probably call him Herky for short and Herky rhymes with our last name. Needless to say, my wife didn't like the idea.

Now, because of Al Gore's glorious invention, people are purposely giving their kids unusual names so that they will be found in Google searches.

I was ahead of my time.

This article in the Wall Street Journal talks about the phenomenon where googly-eyed parents are selecting baby names based on their favorite search engines.

The article has the interesting story of what Abigail Garvey decided to name her baby when she was married and became Abigail Wilson. Ms. Wilson's research papers were suddenly very hard to find and she didn't want the same fate to befall her newborn.

They named him Kohler, which I thought was a type of toilet.

And my wife didn't like Hercules.