there i was thinking it was awful having the same name as the greatest-selling laundry detergent in europe and south america. and it was a boy's name when i was a girl. at least my parents weren't bob geldof & paula yates (r.i.p.). from the times today:
"What did you call your children?
By Alan Hamilton
AS IF Peaches Honeyblossom, Pixie Frou-Frou and Fifi Trixibelle were not enough of a cross to bear, Britain now numbers among its youth 6 Gandalfs, 39 Gazzas, 2 Supermen and 36 Arsenals of both sexes. Children, it appears, are in growing danger from their parents of name abuse. Among the worst reported cases are Dre, Tupac, Jay-Z and Snoop. These unfortunates, when they grow up, may well wonder why they were named after a variety of transient rap stars.
A survey of British birth certificates over the past 22 years by findmypast.com, a family history website, indicates that the practice of naming children after pop, sporting or film stars, or even fictional characters, is alive and well. It is merely an updating of all those women who, having wept over Gone with the Wind in 1939, christened their sons Ashley and their daughters Scarlett.
One American golfer is such a hero that there are now 1,191 British boys named Tiger, and at least three boys have the first names David and Beckham.
Hero worship is perfectly understandable; what is less easy to fathom are the 29 sets of parents who named a child Gazza after Paul Gascoigne, the former football genius with an alcohol problem. Even stranger, if such a thing is possible, are those who named their offspring not after sporting stars but after the clothes they wear; there are two such children at large, one called Reebok and the other Adidas.
It was all so much simpler in Elizabethan times, when three quarters of all Englishmen were named John, Thomas, William, Richard or Robert, and three quarters of all women were Elizabeth, Joan, Margaret, Anne, Alice, Agnes, Mary, Jane or Katherine."
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