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In This Issue

• Scandal Pol Denies It All
• Hipster Ironic Since Age 14
• Baby Names May Be Lame
• AIDS Continues Dance Marathon Win Streak
• Jeff Sachs, Meet Anna Nicole
• Tales of the Inexpressible: Plumbing
• Iraq Gets Improbably Pale Spring Break Vacationers
• Compare, Contrast.
• Pics Worth 978 Words
• A Primer for the Primaries
• SEXILED: The Board Game
• Online Dating Adventures
• Well Bread
• Men Secretly Letting Their Hair Down and Asses Up
• Anthropomorphism
• Lerner Hall: Time to Take Out The Trash
• Fed Bash, Fed Bash, Fed Bash

Kids today have awful, awful names. Just look at babynames.com’s list of their 20 favorite baby names for 2007. The list is shameful. For boys, Ayden (#1), Brayden (#2), Cayden (#3), and Jayden (#4) nabbed the top four spots. The popularity of the name/suffix “Ayden” stems from the fact that, in addition to being the name of the Yemeni port city in which Al Qaeda attacked the U.S.S. Cole, “Ayden” is the Gaelic word for “little fiery one” which was heretofore only used to describe the symptoms of gonorrhea in Gaelic. Other stellar performances include Caleb (#9)—which is both ancient Hebrew for “dog” and modern Hebrew for “mentally challenged bounty hunter”—and Avery (#14), because apparently “Schermerhorn” is too long for a birth certificate. As for the girls, the highlights include Ava (#1), Hitler’s mistress; Madison (#4), as opposed to naming your daughter “Park” or “5th”; Bailey (#7), who undoubtedly likes her Irish Cream; and Cadence (#15), because names like “Syntax” and “Fluency” don’t sound hip enough. What these thirty-somethings don’t realize is that names matter: your child’s destiny lies in their name. Don’t believe it? How many Supreme Court Justices are named Jayden?

All of this points to one solution. We need to go back to a time when names meant something. We need to go back to a time when names had value and virtue. That time was the late 17th century, when names like Constance and Temperance steered our children towards lives of righteousness and the world was at peace.

Seventeenth century Englishmen enjoyed giving their children names that extolled the virtues that they held in such great esteem. It was the era when great men like Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, and Frugal Early gave their children names like  Grace, Chastity, Hope, Virginity, and Prudence. But somewhere along the way these inspirational names became corrupted. Just look at their sad state now. Today, when a girl is sexually reluctant or disdains vulgarity, we insult her by calling her “prude.” But the English of the 17th century would have never used the term “prude” as an insult; in fact, they understood “prude” as the virtuous tendency to evaluate situations carefully so as to avoid risk and manage resources well. So the insult “God, that girl is such a prude that I bet if you put a lump of coal in her vagina you’d get a diamond” really means “God, that girl’s judgments are so sound and she has such few problems managing her resources that I bet if you put a lump of coal in her vagina you’d get a diamond.” Prudence isn’t the only name that has suffered. “Chastity” is now more commonly associated with big, fat lesbians with famous mothers than it is with simplicity and abstaining from sex on good, moral grounds. “Hope” and “Faith” are now more commonly associated with Faith Ford and Kelly Ripa than they are with inspiration and perseverance. The reason for the misuse and unpopularity of these names is simple; in this modern, globalized, post-colonial, Jew-controlled, James Brown–free world of ours, values like constancy and prudence are no longer central to our lives. A lot has changed since the 17th century, but that doesn’t mean that the value-driven naming system in place then is wholly obsolete.

We here at The Fed have come up with a series of 21st century values that can be easily turned into names in the style of 17th century English names for all you expectant parents and negligent sluts out there:

    Skinny: a girl’s name

    Pretty: for vain girls and gay boys

    Merit–Scholar: for the private school crowd

    Big–Breasted: for dumb girls and fat little boys

    Body–Hair–Free: for people who live near beaches

    White: pretty self-explanatory

Any of these names would be perfect for your future child and they promote the values that we as a society hold so high. But you can also be creative. If you have recently come here illegally from Mexico (si usted ha venido ilegalmente al EE.UU. de Mexico) you could name your son or daughter “Legal–citizen.” If you are a pushy Upper West Side liberal, you could name your son or daughter “Moveon.org.” Or if you are a fundamentalist theocon from the deepest South you could name your son or daughter “Christ-is-God- the-Constitution- says-you-can’t- take- my-gun- I-condemn- alternative-lifestyles.” Of course, that last one might be hard to find on a miniature license plate at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. This is not a trend that has to limit itself to countries of English colonial heritage; any parent from any nation on Earth can give their children names that extol virtues they hold high. Iranians might appreciate names like “Uranium–Powered” and “Holocaust–Denier”. Indians might appreciate names like “Compact” and “Thank-you-for-calling-AOL-customer-service -my-name-is-Rajeesh-how- may-I-help-you.” North Koreans might appreciate names like “Kim-Jong-Il” and “Kim-Jong-Il.” And Somalians might appreciate names like “Stable-Government” and “Food.”

It is our duty to reinstate a values-driven naming system in our lives to prevent names like “Cayden” and “Madison” from taking over and devaluing the concept of names in general. For this value-driven naming system to survive, it must stay hip, timely, and relevant. That is why, if current technological and demographic trends persist, names like “Robotic,” “Laser–powered,” “Time–travel–licious,” and “Jose” will almost certainly dominate the babynames.com list of the most popular names for 2107.