triticale - the wheat / rye guy

Naming Rights

The oddly named Club For Growth (who ever heard of encouraging something to grow by clubbing it?) has a link to a news story out of Prague regarding the Czech government's reaction to parents daring to name their son Eliot. When I encounter online debates in which Europeans insist that they are more free than Americans, usually because the cost of their healthcare is hidden in the overall weakness of their economy instead of being visible and because they get to take the exact same long vacation as everyone else, I think of this kind of insidious oppression and shudder. I like living in a country where I can know people named Auntwanette and Penney. When I was growing up, I had a friend name Ethan and knew a couple of young women named Sidney. No government bureaucrat told their parents they were ahead of their time ind they would have to wait a generation.