The final straw

After reading this report on odd baby names the Board of Dictators has decided that we must act now to stem the tide of odd baby names. Last year we mentioned in a post about liberty and limits that when fully in power we would require first-time parents (or previous offenders) to run their babies' names by us before they can be officially registered. Of course, as parents show an aptitude for naming their own children we will step aside and let them do what they want. While we still are aiming for this goal, we believe that the time is now to do something about this trend.

If you look at this website, which tracks the popularity of names since the 1880's, you will notice that the overall trend of the graph shows that the most common names are being used less and less frequently. Specifically, in the 1950's about 900,000 of every 1,000,000 babies were being named with names that this site tracks, but by the 2000's this number is down to about 750,000 of every 1,000,000 babies. If this trend continues for much longer, just about every person you meet will have a unique name. Proponents of the one-name-per-person initiative argue that this will aid in the unique identification of individuals, but we don't believe that the benefits will be realized due to extra confusion caused by inadvertent misspelling of the names.

Consequently we are launching a new program at all of our local GNU Public Dictatorship offices. If you need a baby name you can come let us help you decide, and if you suspect that someone has engaged in improper baby naming you may report them and let our operatives take appropriate action. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to you!