It's Official: Today's Parents Are Terrible

It’s hardly a surprise anymore that every year’s list of most popular names reflects heavily upon what’s hot in TV, film, and general pop culture. For instance, I can’t wait to see how many Bellas show up on Maury Jr. in 14 years to take blood tests to determine which Edward is the father of their daughter, Renesmee. And in another 16 years, they’ll be joined by this year’s crop of most popular baby names that are… just terrible, people.

Thankfully, Twilight is out of the picture now, but The Hunger Games and, surprisingly, Game of Thrones are the hot new name sources, which isn’t any better. Babies should not be named after medieval fantasy literature or apocalyptic science fiction. You will never see a president or quarterback named Peeta or Haymitch, dammit.

After the jump, check out this year’s hot names and their sources, and then call your parents and thank them for naming you Todd or Rebecca, instead of Galaxus or Spoogesock.

1) Senna (female) and Cinna (male) – From The Hunger Games. The bonus for either of these names is that they’re already halfway to stripper and porn names.

2) Niall (male) – From one of the dudes in that pop group One Direction. Attention American parents: You’re going to look like a total schmuck when you explain this name to your kid’s teachers in three years.

3) Arya (female) – From Game of Thrones. I guess it’s better than Daenerys. But either way, the chances that a couple that names their daughter anything after Game of Thrones having a nerdy guy friend who is a complete pervert are very high. Won’t end well.

4) Decimus (male) – From Gladiator and The Hunger Games, sort of (because they use the suffix -us, apparently). This is an awesome name if your son plans to fight lions.

5) Caia (female) – From the Lunarmorte novels. I don’t know or care what Lunarmorte is, but I’m sure I’ll end up writing about how the books have been optioned by October.

6) Gatsby (male) – This is awful. F*cking hipsters.

7) Blue (female) – From Jay-Z and Beyonce. There’s nothing worse than people who name their newborn child after what a celebrity couple just named their newborn child. I guarantee most of these people think, “Maybe I’ll run into Jay and Beyonce, and they’ll want to be friends because both of our daughters are named Blue!”

8) Zebulon (male) – From the Bible. “The Cardinals are making a call to the bullpen… yes, it’s the lefty, Zebulon Jones.”

9) Sybil (female) – From Downton Abbey. This isn’t bad, I guess.

10) Calix (male) – From Greek mythology. Another great name, if you plan for your child to lead a slave revolution in the name of the goddess of occupying.

11) Halcyon (female) – Another mythical name, also what former Daily Show correspondent Beth Littleford named her daughter. “What’s up, Hal?” said the girl’s father as he drank more.

12) Django (male) – From Django Unchained. The name means “I Awake” which is cool and all, but the movie’s not even out yet. How do we know the character doesn’t end up being the most evil movie villain in history? Chill, people.

13) Nova (female) – More mythology, based on the celestial sister of Aurora. I can see a father now, just days after agreeing to name his daughter Nova, reading that it’s the same as Aurora, and gently sobbing as he deletes The Violation of Aurora Snow from his hard drive.

14) Theon (male) – From Game of Thrones. “Stafford back to pass, he looks deep, he’s got a man wide open, IT’S THEON SMITH! And he drops it because he wanted to learn interpretive dance.”

UPDATE: For the people crying that I’m some sort of ill-mannered dick who is just being mean, I should point out that A) My parents named me after a movie character, B) That name is Ashley (from Gone with the Wind), and, therefore, C) I think I’ve earned the right to pass judgment on the idea of pre-determining your child’s level of agony as he or she is teased for decades because of your strange fascination with a literary character. But hey, it only took me 20+ years to get used to people calling my name at a restaurant and saying, “Oh sorry, I was expecting a girl”, which just happened three days ago. So yeah, I’m a dick, but at least I have a reason.

(H/T to the HuffPo)

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