Suri, Moses and Moxie: What's In a Name?

Posted on April 24, 2006

The New York Times has an interesting piece about why celebrities name their children such unusual names.

Skeptics scoff at the mad rush by stars to come up with exotic baby names as another means for the attention-hungry to grab headlines. But psychologists and others who have worked with high-profile performers say that the naming of children can function as a window into a psyche. Perhaps subconsciously, they say, stars seize the opportunity of parenthood to express their obsessions, ambitions and inner quirks in a way that is, for a change, unscripted and not stage-managed by publicists.
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But while middle-class parents increasingly trade in standard names like Karen and Joseph for fancier ones like Madison and Caleb, movie stars seem compelled to push the baby naming further. The names may be merely distinctive (say, Maddox, Angelina Jolie's Cambodian-born adopted son) or bizarre, like Makena'lei Gordon, Helen Hunt's daughter, inspired by a place name in Hawaii. Celebrities may not so subtly be saying that for them ordinary rules need not apply.
If celebrities are the new American aristocracy, the exotic baby name can sometimes function as the equivalent of a royal title, a way for a privileged caste to bestow the power of its legacy on future generations. "There's a sense of 'I'm special, I'm different, and therefore my child is special and different,' " said Jenn Berman, a clinical psychologist in Beverly Hills, who has worked with actors. "It's unconscious, but they think, 'We're a creative family, you have the potential to be creative, so here, I bestow you with the name 'Joaquin,' " Dr. Berman said.
As artists, actors often consider it their duty to shake up assumptions, defy conventions and push the frontiers of the possible. To settle for a tedious name for the child would almost be a form of spiritual surrender, said Stuart Fischoff, a psychologist, who has also worked with Hollywood clients. "They're expressing their creativity, and they're also expressing their fear," Dr. Fischoff said. "It would be very embarrassing for people to think of them as normal."
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Some therapists said the celebrity impulse to foist odd names on their children amounts to simple narcissism by the parents, and the resulting status comes at the child's expense. The children, after all, are the ones who will have to raise their hands every time a teacher calls out "Coco" or "Eulala." "It's like having a mini me," said Robert R. Butterworth, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, who has had actors on his patient roster. "The child is a part of them, not an individual. It's an appendage."

Writers who are in the process of naming their characters will find the rather lengthy analysis of how people choose names to be quite interesting. And on the subject of celebrity names, we think the winners of the Worst Celebrity Baby Names Recently Chosen are 1) Kal-el Coppola Cage (named by father Nicholas Cage) and 2) Pilot Inspektor Lee (named by father Jason Lee, star of My Name is Earl).