Something different - names of the children of well-known people
The current crisis makes us realise that children are our future and that there may be a way for them to breathe later, so that they can at least pronounce their names.
And what sonorous names they are! Whereas in the past there were rules that made registry offices refuse to give their consent to the ideas of the registering parent, today there are hardly any limits to the imagination. One reason in fact used to be compulsory military service, that the gender had to be recognisable from the name if the child was to be conscripted 18 years later, but since today there is neither compulsory military service nor gender distinctions - well, actually there are, but they are no longer distinguished in that sense, only in salaries, athletic performance and susceptibility to illness - these barriers have fallen.
The son born last month to the industrialist Elon Musk, who likes to be represented in the media in various ways, whose company SpaceX, for example, just a few days ago had an orbiter docked with the ISS, hopefully returning in one piece, or is building an e-car plant in a forest in Brandenburg (we reported), was originally to be called X Æ A-12, but will be called X Æ A-XII due to the fact that even in California (USA) Arabic numerals are not permitted for names. The mother remarked that this also looks much better. As if anyone had thought that there was a difference between names and designations.
That was when Matti Della and John Lewis Nelson had something quite different. When their son Prince Rogers was born in 1958, they certainly didn't think about how to pronounce a symbol that their son freely renamed himself in 1992. The need to be able to address someone by name was rebuffed by 'the artist formally known as Prince' with the words, 'just call me friend'. And TAFKAP (the artist formerly known as Prince) didn't spark the discussion for the last time, what is the meaning between writing and language. If the Venus mirror-like structure with a bent horn, later called 'Love Symbol #2', was not yet a reason to change laws, today the question is: what harms newborns more: their name or that you can't pronounce it?
Androids like Data still had an almost decent name, while droids (not the mystical Celts from Asterix, but the slightly shorter cose form of androids) like R2-D2, C3-PO or BB-8 came off worse. But as mentioned, these are designations, not names; but at least they could be pronounced, even if they are only invented in the distant future.
So how do the Musks/Bouchers at home hold back little X Æ A-XII when it wants to climb a shelf, with squeaky whistles? One theory is that the first letter could be the Greek 'chi', i.e. not pronounced 'X' but 'K'; the 'Æ' could be pronounced 'ai' (for artificial intelligence or elvish for love) and A-12 as the 'favourite plane' of the happy parents could be pronounced 'L' for short - making: Kail, or Kyle in English ... how good that there is a solution for everything. It's just a pity that the billionaire and the singer certainly didn't think about it beforehand.
Now that the sound has returned to the names, let's turn to the considerations of other parents. No one has yet come up with the idea of naming their child 'Bielefeld', mainly because fantasy names are forbidden in Germany; only when a hotel owner has fathered his daughter in Paris are people without 10 digits before the decimal point in their bank account allowed to name their offspring that way; like Brooklyn (daughter of Victoria and David Beckham), Egypt (Egypt, son of Alicia Keys) Lourdes (in France, daughter of Madonna) or Bronx of Ashlee Simpson; Verona and Franjo Pooth remember San Diego with their son, a bit more rural is Reese Witherspoon with her son Tennessee, whereas Irina Shayk and Bradley Cooper flow with Lea de Seine.
Apple Blythe Alison of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin or Ace Knute of Jessica Simpson and Eric Johnson seem somewhat unimaginative. How Satchel Ronan Farrow (son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen) is doing with the name 'Satchel' falls, like late film works by his father, rather into the category of mental cruelty. In any case, Zowie Bowie didn't fare any better when he called himself Joey; the director had his famous father David's stage name dropped and Zowie Haywood removed from his passport, leaving Duncan Jones.
From this, the gender is also recognisable again, and not something like Sam as a short form of Samantha. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds got it right and named their daughter James, as did Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, whose daughter is called Wyatt in the Western tradition. Now we're just waiting for the warm summer rain ... Summer Rain is the name of Christina Aguilera and Matthew Rutler's daughter.