Choose a Fortunate Name for Your Baby

One look at your high school yearbook and you can confirm the theory that children live up to the name they’re given at birth. Case in point -- no cheerleader with whom I ever attended school was named either “Ernestine” or “Agnes.” They were all “Tiffany’s” or “Heather’s.” By the same token, the head of the science club was never named “Dash” or “Trevor.” Their mommas yelled out “Millard” or “Eugene” when it was time to put the beaker down and come to dinner.

The theory is that if you give a baby an unlucky name – one that is somehow displeasing in sound or representative of something unpleasant, then misfortune will cling to that child throughout life like cat hair on black pants. One could argue that there are exceptions to this rule -- George Clooney, Lenny Kravitz, Gwyneth Paltrow -- but for the most part, the theory seems to hold water.

As such, if you hope to have good fortune smile down upon your baby, the first thing you need to do is determine your definition of “lucky.” Because, let’s face it, while the cheerleaders were pretty and popular, a lot of times they finished out their high school career being the other “p” word – pregnant. And while the good-looking brawny football players scored big time, it was more often the science geeks or the debate team captains who became the captains of industry.

For centuries, cultures and religions around the world have placed a strong emphasis on the luck that manifests itself by virtue of a child’s name, a practice that’s fallen by the wayside in western cultures where people seem to name their children almost haphazardly, foisting ridiculous monikers on their own child that will guarantee that child is going to be suffering a face plant or two on the playground in the years ahead. (For example, Barb Dwyer, Helen Back, Stan Still, Terry Bull, etc.)

To truly choose a fortunate name for your child, you can use numerology to determine whether or not a name is “lucky” or “unlucky,” depending upon the numbers assigned to the letters in the child’s name. In times of antiquity, this required a skilled practitioner who understood the complexity of the numerology system. Now all you need is a computer and an Internet connection.

In the end, if a child’s name truly foreshadows whether or not they’ll lead a life of luck or one that is horribly unlucky, then I believe I’ll name my next child Bill Gates. Either that, or Facebook.