This is an interesting article on how names affect a person's life. I read a long time ago that what you name your child determines, in some very small way, what their life will be like. And coming on the heels of Penn naming his daughter "Moxie CrimeFighter", the subject had been in my head. I think I need to go pick up a copy of Freakonomics. Come to think of it, Steven Levett was at Google the other day and I missed it. Nuts. Damn work always getting in the way...

And I've always wondered about this:

For the study on black names, he analyzed birth records of all children born in Florida between 1989 and 1996. Names with apostrophes and unusual letter combinations were more likely given by mothers who dropped out of school, he found.

He also applied what he calls the Scrabble test: Names that would earn high scores in Scrabble - with z's, x's and q's - were most likely given by poorer, uneducated mothers.

I could never figure out why someone would name their kid "Da'Quan" or "Shaquasia". I always thought it was something cultural that I wasn't privvy to, when in reality it's because the mothers are uneducated simpletons. Ockham wins another round.

And dig the sociology experiment that guy at the end of the article is running on his kids. That's cruel and unusual.