Bad Things That Ruin Good Names

Have you met a child named Katrinia in the last ten years? I can’t think of one. After the devastation that Hurricane Katrinia caused who would want to be associated with a disaster?

Somehow the name karen has been co-opted to mean something awful or at least terribly annoying. I have so many friends named Karen and I love them all. Would I name a child Karen now? Probably not. Why saddle a child with a name that has come to mean something so negative.

Now we have Hurricane Melissa. The full extent of this high powered storm is yet to be known, but it was measured at the highest wind speed of any measured hurricane in history. Will it have lasting effects on our feeling for the name Melissa? The jury is still out on that. Maybe Melissa in the US can withstand the connection with a life altering storm, but I will bet no Jamaican is going to name a Baby girl Melissa this year..

This connection between bad things and their name seem to mainly effect females. Although Hurricane Andrew was fairly awful, and then so was Prince Andrew so perhaps a one-two punch with a boys name takes it down in popularity. But so often a boys name can weather the storm of bad publicity.

I hope they never use Dana for a hurricane name, but if they do it would be an early in the season storm and they tend to not be the worst storms. I can do my own damage and don’t need a storm to help me.