Kalifornya is a tremendous name.

Good post.

James

Peaches? Don't you people have child abuse laws over there?

Hey, they're bloody stupid names, sure, but let's not have any stones cast our way from the land of Beyonce and Charlize.

Charlize is a South African. As for Beyonce, there's a grand tradition among some groups for giving children bizarre names (if that's her name -- it may just be a stage name). But parents over here give their kids ridiculous, infantalizing (or sexualizing) names, too. I had a student named, and I'm not making this up, Cherry Poppin, and in another class, Desire Fuchs. What were their parents thinking?

As I never tire of reporting, I knew a girl at university called Jeanette Hulls. Her parents weren't cruel, though; just insufficiently dirty-minded to have spotted it. And, to be fair, so were all the kids at Jeanette's school: no-one had noticed the innuendo until she got to university. That's luck.

When Vic and I were looking through baby names, I luckily realised that, with our surname being Kynaston Reeves, we had to veto anything begiining with F. Just as well I noticed, 'cause there was a real chance of our picking Freya.

Fricka would have been worse.