Awesome. Righteousness. Victorious. Legend. Morningstar. Notorious-Link.
While a person could potentially understandably be led to believe that the above list of words was spoken by some hipster attempting to sound cool and set a new trend, these terms and expressions are actually ó believe it or not ó among the names given to Alberta babies born in 2016.
Aristotle was another of the "unique" names registered last year. Talk about putting a person in a position of having enormous shoes to fill ó I mean, might as well go with Einstein or Da Vinci while we're at it. No pressure, kid!
These parents were apparently so preoccupied with coming up with a one-of-a-kind moniker that they did not seem to give any forethought to the potential torment their children are likely to endure from their peers through grade school and even into the workplace.
Who ó once a grown, mature adult ó would be thankful to carry any of the following names: Joearth, Heavenjot, Pius, Promise, Comfort, Beautiful, Temperance, Treasure, Aphrodite or ScarLet ó note the capital "L" is not a typo but actually intentional. Some of those sound like stage names.
Trust me ó this is coming from someone with a name that might seem otherwise completely innocuous. But even "Simon" still got spun and teased into the likes of "Simon Says," "Simple Simon," "Simon and Garfunkel" and another choice term that is not particularly suitable to print in a family publication.
To this day, the odd person seems to think they're hilariously original by calling me Garfunkel, as though I have not heard that a million times since I was a schoolboy. And that's all fairly harmless, mind you. Yet I cannot help but wonder what kinds of experiences someone by the name of Zyron-Thunder ó yes, that's actually on the list ó will have.
It's a fairly safe bet that a significant percentage of these children will change their names as soon as they legally can. And who could possibly blame them!
Fortunately, the vast majority of Alberta parents went with choices such as Emma, Sophia and Ava for girls, while Liam, Benjamin and Lucas remained popular choices for boys.
According to a provincial press release, the baby names statistics are recorded by the Vital Statistics branch of Service Alberta and are based on the registration and notice of birth information. A complete list of names is available at Service Alberta.ca as well as on the Open Government Portal.
Who knows, at this rate, perhaps Phenomenal, Radical, Sunshine, Moonlight, Tubular, Far-Out, Amazing, Stupendous, or maybe even Captain America, Batman, and Wonder Woman will make the list next year!
"It's a fairly safe bet that a significant percentage of these children will change their names as soon as they legally can. And who could possibly blame them!"
