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Baby
name books aren't only for expecting parents. For writers,
they are a surprisingly good tool for finding character names,
usually providing valuable background information on the name,
including proper pronunciation, definitions, and origins.
Lately, though, baby naming has turned into something of a
sport, with celebrities paving the way for the unique, the
unusual, and the downright frightening.
Perhaps
hoping to deter people from taking the same "creative" path
as Jason Lee and Gwyneth Paltrow, author Lorilee Craker's
A Is for Attitcus suggests that would-be parents look
to their bookshelves for inspiration, lifting names not only
from book characters but also from the authors themselves.
It's not an original idea by any means, but it's a good one
nonetheless. The problem with the book, however, lies in the
execution.
Given
the short length of A Is for Attitcus, Craker's book
is obviously not thorough, and she leaves out a great number
of worthy suggestions and literary references (see the HBC
article on literary
names for some of our own suggestions). This is fairly
understandable, but given that the book is about literary
names, there is surprisingly little focus on literature. Instead,
Craker is annoyingly obsessed with celebrity, detailing the
literary connections to certain celebrities' baby names: Bruce
Willis and Demi Moore named one daughter Scout, while Heath
Ledger was named after Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.
She also fawns over "turbo baby namer" Angelina Jolie as often
as humanly possible.
The celebrity
focus often causes Craker to begin (not merely stray) off
topic. For the name Kingsley, Craker spends the majority of
the paragraph discussing the name's similarity to Kingston
Rossdale, the son of musicians Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani.
The name Kingsley itself seems unimportant, as Craker flippantly
tacks a literary association (author Sir Kingsley William
Amis) onto the paragraph's end. Apparently, Kingsley Shacklebolt,
a key member of Harry Potter's Order of the Phoenix,
is less important than the son of two rock stars who were
influenced by a city in Jamaica.
Certain
names such as James and Sarah are also so common that the
literary connections seem more coincidental than special,
while other names are just a bad idea. Regardless of what
country singer Brad Paisley names his kid, Huckleberry is
a name that only works for Mark Twain characters, blue anthropomorphic
dogs, and anyone wanting to be nicknamed Dingleberry for the
rest of his life. And while the name Ethan is just fine, Craker's
suggestion that one might want to name a child after a sad,
desperate character such as Ethan Frome shows a lack of research.
To her
credit, though, Craker does suggest a few lovely, unusual
names such as Auden for a girl (after poet W.H. Auden) and
Lucan for a boy (after the Arthurian knight). For writers,
she even offers some good antagonistic names (Tarquin is the
bad guy in The Rape of Lucrece). And she does recognize
and support the resurging popularity of seemingly old fashioned
(or "vintage") names such as Phineas and Dorothy—a rather
nice trend that offers the world respite from yet another
Michael, Madison, or Caitlin. But overall, the gems are too
few and far between.
While
A is for Atticus has an intriguing premise, Craker
doesn't have her heart in the subject matter. Literature is
little more than an afterthought in this book, and there is
little indication that Craker is a true lover of books. Considering
that she is a freelance entertainment journalist who coauthored
a book with Lynn Spears (mother of Britney and Jamie Lynn),
it's hard to take her literary suggestions seriously anyway;
she simply doesn't have enough authority. Had she written
a book about celebrity baby naming, perhaps readers could
trust her to deliver the goods, but that book wouldn't be
reviewed here.
(September,
2008)
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