Naming children is a serious matter.

I had an aunt named Hazel. Another named Connie (short for Constance). My mother was named Helen. I grew up with girls named Linda and Carol and Mary and Patty (short for Patricia). Our mothers had names like Mildred and Dorothy and Louise and Edith and Edna. Their mothers were named Bernice and Hattie and Violet and Agnes.

Where did all those names go?

It's easy to say that they disappeared, but they're still in our collective consciousness, stored on the hard drive of our national memory. Some come back; others never do. Emma and Emily are popular again, but I don't hold out much hope for Doris and Dorothy.

The naming of children is a never-ending peek into our popular culture. I remember when Heather became the nom-de-jour (pardon my bad French, but you get the point). Then came Misty and -- in the hippie years -- Sunshine and Rainbow (I'm not kidding). Drugs brought on a serious weirdness in naming children: Frank Zappa, as we all know, named one kid Moon Unit and the other one Dweezil. What's-her-name of Jefferson Airplane named her kid God (though I think she may have later come to her senses and changed that). Cher named her daughter Chastity, and I have no idea how that worked out.

More recently, a movie star named her daughter Apple, but I don't see any residual effect from that. Another one named her daughter Mabel; I predict that one may be in for a ressurection.

Note that I'm mainly considering girls' names, because -- as with fashion -- women in our society often control the trends in popular culture, including the naming of children (unless some guy has a family name he insists on passing down). If I'm mistaken about this, I apologize in advance, but my impression is that it's true.

[Note, too, that I'm not considering the names of people of color or various ethnicities: the names they come up with are so striking and original -- just look at the first names of pro football players, not to mention recording artists -- that I can't begin to understand how they choose them and so won't even attempt to decipher their reasoning, but the rules I spell out later on apply to them, too.]

There are plenty of mens' names that are also disappearing: Herb and George and Roy and Willard and Virgil and Chester and Lester and Hubert and Francis and Gilbert and Vern, and on and on. But there are so many enduring mens' names -- James and Robert and David et al -- that the newer ones, like Jason and Kyle and Aaron and Seamus, seem new to us even though they often hark back to older times. Men's names, like men's fashions, just get re-treaded, from time to time to time. What's the last absolutely new man's name you can recall? The equivalent of Heather or Misty or Apple? Josh? That's short for Joshua, from the Bible. Liam? I suspect it has its roots in Irish or Scottish ancestry. Adam? Oh please. Men don't like to stand out from the crowd, whether it's their clothes or their names. Just name us and get on with it and don't be weird, okay? Jeez!

I went to high school with a girl named Edwina. I assume that's short for a man's name: Edwin (another disappearing name, along with Ed and Eddie). She was beautiful but always had to contend with guys making fun of her name, something usually involving "weiner," as in "Ed's weiner." Gotta love those guys, no?

Be careful what you name your children. They have to live with the results: you don't.

I think it's fine to go back in (family) history and dig out a great name, but be sure it's something your daughter or son can live with. Horace used to be a polular name for guys, as did Nathan. One has survived; the other hasn't. Why? The way it sounds? The way it rolls off the tongue? I don't have a clue. Do you? I'm not saying you shouldn't name your child anything you want. I'm just saying be careful.

Who would have thought that Emma would become fashionable again? Oh wait, wasn't that the name of a Jane Austen novel? (And my grandmother's name.) But who would have guessed that Jane Austen would become the rage again in the 20th/21st century? And what about Jane? I think that's becoming popular again. In my youth, it symbolized near-nothingness: Plain Jane.

Okay, so here are my rules for naming children, and they apply to whites and non-whites alike:

1) Don't name your child something he or she is going to have to spell, to everyone, for the rest of his or her life.

2) Don't name your child something you think is cute because it's in fashion, because fashions change pretty fast.

3) Don't name your child something that's a common name but that you've given a weird spelling. (see #1).

4) Don't name your child something you can't explain later, when he or she asks about it.

5) Don't name your child something YOU wanted to be named: he or she isn't you and is going to grow up in a totally different version of society, where that name may be considered odd.

When we name our kids, we saddle them with our own predilictions, our own eccentricities, at a particular time in our lives: namely, when we're young and rebellious and inventive, not giving a thought to what our kids are going to have to deal with later, in school and looking for jobs, when they will to explain and spell those odd names we gave them over and over, ad nauseum.

On one end of the spectrum are all these disappearing names. Should Irma be saved? How about Earlene? (I had a girlfriend named that in junior high.) What about Irene? Or Sharon? Harriet?
Minnie? Pearl? I'm betting on Martha and Faye making comebacks. Maybe Pearl. (Hey, wasn't that Janis Joplin's chosen nickname for herself?)

On the other end are the names and spellings we make up because we think they're unique, and because we think our kids are unique. But you know what? Our kids don't want to be thought of as unique (i.e., different). They want to fit in. It's not about you, okay? Or me. It's about them. Giving them the best chance to succeed starts with annointing them with names they can spell and pronounce and be proud of, not ones they have to spell and explain and defend.

As Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Your child, by any other name, would, too. But why complicate things?

In the world we live in, a name, like a face, means more than it should. But that's the way it is.