'What's in a name?'

"Madonna and Jesus to Wed"

Last week, I caught a glimpse of the headline above on the cover of…I dunno, Hiya!! Magazine or some other glossy bog roll. Two things struck me straight away. Firstly, did the magazine editors realise just how funny and ridiculous a headline it is; specifically the fact that the name ‘Madonna’ is a reference to the Virgin Mary, so it might as well have said ‘Holy Incest Wedding Shocker!’ ‘Mrs Mary Christ!’ Of course that wouldn’t be too out of place as a headline nowadays. Look over the covers of That’s Life or Take A Break or any other rubber-necker’s weekly and any Jerry Springer show ends up looking like an early edition of Rainbow. (‘I ate my lover on our wedding night!’, ‘Man who raped me is dating my sister and she’s OK with it!’, ‘Abandoned in a shoebox outside Dixons; I confront my birth mother!’)**

Anyway, it’s an absurd headline about an absurd couple.

The other thing that struck me was the names themselves. Whether given by their parents or chosen by them, Madonna and Jesus are quite revealing names. Madonna’s was chosen of course, which is to do with her pop career; turning herself into more than a person and into a brand / symbol. Same goes for Prince, Bono or any other fuckwit who’s above mere surnames.

Pah! Family name? Legacy? I spit gold on them from a great height! I piss champagne over their hair! MuahahahahaaaanewalbumoutMondaychaching.

Then there are the celebrity’s kids. Fruit, colours, references to celestial bodies; nothing seems off limits or too daft for the jet-setting celebrity classes. It used to be that both for the celebites and us lowly muck-chuckers, the Bible or other ancient texts were the biggest reference for common names. Mark, John, Matthew, Luke…and the occasional Moses or Jesus, and the Muslims have Mohammeds to spare.

Now the new ‘Bible’ for the shit-kickers is the celebrity world. The darlings of daytime chat and maggot eating are the new apostles (Preston, Robbie, Jordan, Chantelle, Britney blah blah blah). And the celebs can take any word from the English language, make the first letter a capital and presto! we have a newly christened heir to the Coldplay millions.

But in the end, what really is in a name? Of course you can’t call your child ‘Piss Flap’ or ‘Doggy Whiff Bum’, because kids are cruel little bastards who fear and attack anything unusual (just having the name ‘Nick’ got me hundreds of references to ‘dick’ ‘prick’ ‘stick’ ‘thick’ and so on. Incidentally, don’t call your kid ‘Lunt’ or ‘Bunty’). But maybe we should take a leaf out of the unafraid celeb book and just go with whatever we like; after all, if the kid is unhappy with it, they can just get it changed. It’s only a label to print on a badge that they’ll wear on a crappy uniform in a shit job they’ll be in til they die or get lucky, so who cares??

So for my kids; the name ‘Optimus’ for my son and for my daughter the name ‘Syphilis’ (a bid to keep her away from stupid, rutting boys for a while and at the very least, it may help remind any dumb boyfriends she does get to ‘suit up’ before the main event).

** Saw a genuine story on cover of just such a magazine in the office today. ‘Mum sentenced to death has 8 kids – “How will I tell them all I’m going to die?” ’. My first thought was ‘If you haven’t got much time, just e-mail the oldest and CC the other 7’.