GoldenPalaceDotCom Silverman, 2005
Robert Griffin Vega, 2013
When Marissa Pena and Emanuel Vega got together, they found they had everything in common—except football teams. Pena was a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan, while Vega was equally passionate about the Washington Redskins. When the two teams faced off on Thanksgiving Day of 2012, the couple made it exciting with a little wager: if the Cowboys won, the baby in Marissa’s belly would be named after a Cowboys player, and vice versa for the Redskins. Needless to say, Washington took the game and the little one was dubbed Robert Griffin Vega after the team’s quarterback.
Like Adler, 2011
Here’s another high-tech baby name that probably should have been left in the alternates pile. When Israeli couple Lior and Vardit Adler discovered that they were expecting a baby girl, they explored a wide selection of names from all the world’s languages before settling on “Like.” Yes … she was named after that ubiquitous interaction on Facebook that has become a daily ritual. There was a baby born in Egypt earlier in 2011 named “Facebook” in honor of the site’s vital help in organizing the January revolutions.
Photo via Facebook
Hashtag Jameson, 2012
The Internet has changed the way we live and communicate, for better and for worse. And it’s also introduced a bunch of new words into our lexicon. One can only assume that the parents of the lovely little Hashtag Jameson wanted to celebrate Twitter, the 140-character microblogging platform that was launched in 2006 and swiftly grew to over 500 million active users. A “hashtag” is the neologism created to describe starting a word with the hash mark (#) to aggregate similar messages. As of press time, little Hashtag doesn’t yet have her own Twitter account.
Photo via Facebook
ABS-CBN Macawili, 2006
Let’s head down to the sunny island nation of the Philippines for our next bad baby name reason. In the town of Zamboanga del Norte, a man was so fond of TV network ABS-CBN that he chose it for the name of his baby. The network, which is the most popular in the nation, produces and broadcasts a variety of programs from variety shows to comedies. The proud parents were quoted as saying “Like the network, baby ABS-CBN brings joy to our lives.” Don’t think this is an isolated incident, though—multiple babies in the good old U.S. have been named ESPN.
Dovahkiin Kellermeyer, 2011
The power of video games to captivate—and some might say obsess—players is well known. But how into a game do you have to be to name your kid after the main character? For the Kellermeyer family, not very. When Bethesda Softworks, maker of the hit role-playing title Skyrim, offered free copies of their games for life to the first family to name their newborn “Dovahkiin” (after that game’s hero) on Nov. 11, 2011, the Kellermeyers jumped at the chance. Luckily, little Dovah has a normal middle name of “Tom” to fall back on. This wouldn’t be the first time that a video game company would try to influence a child’s name—in 2002, Acclaim offered $10,000 to the first couple to name their kid Turok, but there were no takers.
Photo via Gaming Bolt
George Foreman Jr., George Foreman III, George Foreman IV, George Foreman V, George Foreman VI, Georgetta Foreman
Boxing legend George Foreman has a host of virtues, but originality isn’t one of them. All six of his male children bear the same name as their father, with just a number distinguishing one from the others. Thankfully, they have nicknames that they can use if things get too confusing. I can’t imagine how they handle it when a girl calls the house for one of them. To really put a cherry on the bad name sundae, he also named one of his daughters Georgetta. Foreman defended his decision by saying he wanted to give all of his kids something to share “in case they got separated.”
