Try reading this out at a graduation ceremony
The other day Hannah (my new fun colleague) and I were getting thoroughly brassed off at the stupid things people call their children. After a day of plowing through proofs filled with Barnabys, Texases and Cocos, and energised further by a newspaper article about someone calling their child 4Real (with 4Eva and 4Sure to follow) we started to think of names for my future children. She’s a few years off motherhood herself, so I’m most likely to use the names we came up with.
“You know what’s a really nice name?” she said, head intelligently to the side.
“No, what?”
“Xerox,” she said.
“Oh that is nice!” I exclaimed.
“Problem is,” she said, “It doesn’t sound right without a code. So it would really have to be Xerox HV#4.0.”
“That’s lovely,” I agreed, “but I’ve always been partial to Shane’ne’ myself.”
“Yeah, nice,” she said. “How is that spelled?”
“We’ll it’s important to have lots of superfluous consonants and punctuation, so… S-H-Y-A-Y-N-'-Y-E-Y-’-N-'-Y-E-Y.”
“Beautiful.” she said.
A moment later, a high-pitched car alarm went off in the street below us.
“You know what would really classy,” she said meditatively. “For a name to be just a pitch. Like, EEEEEEEEEEEEE.”
When I was able to speak after the laughing fit, I choked, “But it’d be really important for the name to include an exclamation mark. I mean, so many people have apostrophes or hyphens or even numbers, but no-one has exclamation marks.”
“Yeah, no, absolutely,” she said.
So to recap, my future child’s name is:
EEEEEEEEE! Xerox HV#4.0 Shyayn'yay’n'yay. Steve’s totally thrilled. (That's just if it's a girl, naturally.)
“You know what’s a really nice name?” she said, head intelligently to the side.
“No, what?”
“Xerox,” she said.
“Oh that is nice!” I exclaimed.
“Problem is,” she said, “It doesn’t sound right without a code. So it would really have to be Xerox HV#4.0.”
“That’s lovely,” I agreed, “but I’ve always been partial to Shane’ne’ myself.”
“Yeah, nice,” she said. “How is that spelled?”
“We’ll it’s important to have lots of superfluous consonants and punctuation, so… S-H-Y-A-Y-N-'-Y-E-Y-’-N-'-Y-E-Y.”
“Beautiful.” she said.
A moment later, a high-pitched car alarm went off in the street below us.
“You know what would really classy,” she said meditatively. “For a name to be just a pitch. Like, EEEEEEEEEEEEE.”
When I was able to speak after the laughing fit, I choked, “But it’d be really important for the name to include an exclamation mark. I mean, so many people have apostrophes or hyphens or even numbers, but no-one has exclamation marks.”
“Yeah, no, absolutely,” she said.
So to recap, my future child’s name is:
EEEEEEEEE! Xerox HV#4.0 Shyayn'yay’n'yay. Steve’s totally thrilled. (That's just if it's a girl, naturally.)