The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1899-07-14
Naming the Baby.

III Kansas had been named FunstOnie
serves to call attention again to the cry
ing need there is in every community for
a christening committee with full pow
ers of law, to protect helpless infancy
from the gush of silly and ELUSIVE par
ents. In spite of the opinion of the love-
lorn Mr.. Montague, there is very much
in a name, and it makes the biggest sort
Of difference to us what we are called.
Theatrical managers declare that the
name Of the play is one of the most i'm
portant factors in its success; publishers
admit that an attractive title is half the
battle in Il books popularity, while mer-
chants cudgel their brains to get new
and striking brands for their goods. If
the mere name counts for so much in
the attractiveness of these things, surely
it must be Of equal importance to hui
man being.
Unhappily the Kansas baby is not
alone in her atiliction. The custom of
naming babies after the popular hero of
the hour is an offenseswith which we are
all only too familiar. Every presidential
campaign leaves in it's wake scores of
animated ballots, branded Grover Clcve-
land Smith or Chester Arthur Jones or
William Mckinley Perkins, according
as their father voted, while for the next
ten years after the Civil war it is safe
to say that 70 per cent. of all the boy
babies born in the South were named
Robert +. Lee.
Now, no one would say a word against
hero worship. 1t is one of the ennobling
passions, and probably humanity is never
so nearly ut its best as when it thrills
with generous enthusiasm over some
great achievement of another, and wor-
ships the doer and the deed, but what
could be more absurd than to attempt
to express ones admiration by bestowing
the name of /; hero upon IL child who
may be the very antithesis of his great
prototype? In addition to being ridicu-
lous, 1t is also unfair in the Involuntary
comparison it institutes. We all laugh
at the report we read so often in our
papers, that colored George Washington
has been arrested for chicken stealing,
but in effect we have the same anomalous
condition confronting us at every hand,
| when VIC see some silly, weak, hair
Drained youth staggering around under
the name of great man. People who
take the responsibility of naming children
after famous people ought, ut least. to
be able to furnish a guarantee that they
will live up to their blue china
Another frequent mistake in naming
children, and girls are the greatest suf
ferers in this respect, is in giving them
cute enough while she is years old, but
which simply makes her the target for
| laughter when she is grown old. With
the best of luck one can only look like Il
Violet or Lily, or a Birdie; such very
few years, and there is such long, long
time when the appcllation of Mary Ann
must seem to fit us like Il glove. All OF
| us can recall amusing instances of fat,
| middle-aged women who wobbled about
under the name of Baby; or sour-yisage,l
| old maids who were still called Miss
| Sweetie,' and Of coarse-fbred creatures
| who rejoiced in the appellation Of
| "Dovie.' OF course, all of these recalled
some vanished quality of their remote
| l;abyhood, and a fond mothers fancy,
and in way they were pathetic as we'll
as grOtesque.
With novel names there seems to be he
more choice. One must regard it as
| nothing short of the supreme example Of
| the contrariness of human nature that
| invariably makes girls grow up prosaic
and unromantic, who are named after a
| highfalutin heroine out of a novel. Just
to name one Inez, or Beulah, or Wanda,
| or Brenda seems enough to doom her for
| ever to the commonplace, and it must
have been this fatality that wrought the
final cure of the fad, for a woman who
would name a child out Of Ouida is far
and away beyond any reasoning to
reach her. In reality, it would seem that
other things of life, it is the part of wis.
dom to look into the future and try to
see how it will seem when your enthusi.
asm for some particular thing or person
| has died out and you must view name
| from the cold and dispassionate point of
view of common sense.-New Orleans
| Picayune.