What's in a name? Potentially, a lifetime of humiliation and scorn.
There were two birth notices to go in the next edition of the Times, which didn't help keep William's mind off his own impending fatherhood.
Not that he was trying. If he had been trying, the book on baby names he was reading probably would have been a strange way to go about it. It was, however, further serving to convince him that maybe he should be trying, because he obviously had no hope of succeeding at anything involving the child.
How hard could picking out a name be? You found one that sounded good, didn't abbreviate to a slang term for genitalia, and was not in fact the name of a deadly disease.1
William had heard a lot of unfortunate names in his time, and on top of that he'd seen a lot of decent names spelled with a y, which is a horrible thing to do to an innocent name, so that he'd never considered how many acceptable names there were in the world. Even 'Note Spelling' wasn't that bad; at least it contained an admirable message.
He had it in the maybe list in his notebook. He also had a provisional maybe list, in the form of bookmarks littered throughout Gonyrhea L' Smith's Big Book of Not Being As Awful At Names As My Parents.3
He shifted some in the sand and flipped a page, frowning at the new host of options.
1Many of the less educated citizens of the Disc, which was most of them, tended to pick names based on what sounded good. And then, of course, poor baby Iniquity Jones had no choice but to grow up to be a bounty hunter with an afro,2 all because of parents determined to be untraditional.
2All the more unfortunate given that she was a troll.
3"L'" pronounced "Lapostrophe."
Not that he was trying. If he had been trying, the book on baby names he was reading probably would have been a strange way to go about it. It was, however, further serving to convince him that maybe he should be trying, because he obviously had no hope of succeeding at anything involving the child.
How hard could picking out a name be? You found one that sounded good, didn't abbreviate to a slang term for genitalia, and was not in fact the name of a deadly disease.1
William had heard a lot of unfortunate names in his time, and on top of that he'd seen a lot of decent names spelled with a y, which is a horrible thing to do to an innocent name, so that he'd never considered how many acceptable names there were in the world. Even 'Note Spelling' wasn't that bad; at least it contained an admirable message.
He had it in the maybe list in his notebook. He also had a provisional maybe list, in the form of bookmarks littered throughout Gonyrhea L' Smith's Big Book of Not Being As Awful At Names As My Parents.3
He shifted some in the sand and flipped a page, frowning at the new host of options.
1Many of the less educated citizens of the Disc, which was most of them, tended to pick names based on what sounded good. And then, of course, poor baby Iniquity Jones had no choice but to grow up to be a bounty hunter with an afro,2 all because of parents determined to be untraditional.
2All the more unfortunate given that she was a troll.
3"L'" pronounced "Lapostrophe."