Creativity, Laziness, or Another Texting Consequence?

I have no idea what “Shiny Shiny” is, but I stumbled upon (the original stumbled) their site when tooting around Technorati this morning. (Shameless plug: you can add me to your favorites if you haven’t already.) A post caught my attention, “Txt Spk baby names? Oh dear God in heaven…” The post brought up that some are suggesting people are now starting to name their children with crazy spellings, punctuations, and capitalizations after too much texting.

With a name like Michael, you’d think I’d be staunchly in favor of creative names dripping with individuality. But that’s not actually true. It turns out that people continually misspell and mispronounce Michael. There are also plenty of people that think because my name is Michael that they can automatically shorten it to any of the common shortened versions that other Michaels prefer to go by. People always butcher my last name, but Michael has been a common name for a long time. Not only was it in the Bible, meaning it’s been around for at least two millennia, Michael has been one of the two most popular boys’ names in the U.S. for each of the last 53 years (holding the number 1 spot from 1961-1998). So if people can’t get my name right, I have little hope anything a kid gets named will be spelled and pronounced correctly 80% of the time without making the name particularly unique in spelling or pronunciation.

I think this brings up the question, is it creativity, laziness, or another texting consequence? In my years as a teacher, I had a wide variety of student names (and Michael wasn’t the most common). Those kids were named a long time before texting, so apparently this isn’t a new problem. At best (worst?), it’s a growing problem. Of course, there’s one other option that could be the root of the problem: ignorance. It’s quite feasible that some kids get misspelled names because the parent doesn’t know how to spell the name they are giving to their child.

Even more interesting than “why” is what are the effects of misspelled, unique, creative, original, or uncommon names? All kids are made fun of and I suspect everyone has their name messed up at least once by a teacher. What are the effects on a child’s brand, their personal, corporate image, if you will? I actually read a study within the past year or so that claimed people with names that were hard to pronounce were less likely to be brought in for an interview when seeking employment. It was easier for the hiring manager to bring in someone whose name they could easily pronounce. Do you think a crazy name helps or hurts a person?

And for anyone still confused, it’s Michael just like Jordan and Lombardi just like the trophy. Say it with me, “My-cull Lum-bar-dee.” Once more, real fast, “Mycull Lumbardee.” Not as hard as it looks; now, how do you say yours?