The Name Game.....

Y'all remember that song, "The Name Game," from the 1960s, that went something like this: Shirley, Shirley, bo-birley, banana fanna fo-firley, me mi mo-mmirley.. Shirley! Y'all remember that, right? Back then, we had simple fun with names. We had simple names then. And simple songs. Names like, well, Shirley, for example. Or the ubiquitous John. Or Howard. Or Glen. Or Moe. Or Larry. Or... well, you get the picture. And songs like "The Name Game." Or "Yesterday." Or "Strangers In The Night." You know, simple. And nice. And uncomplicated. Ones that actually made sense, were properly spelled, and were appropriate and, well, nice, and non-embarrassing, and were simple and uncomplicated, in the scheme of things.

Let's turn the clock ahead, shall we? Now, we have names like, well....Jenrry. Which, of course, is pronounced as if it were spelled "Henry." So my question is, why ya spellin' it that way? Why can't you just.spell.it.right????? Why is it that today, everybody's gotta have a cutesy original spelling distortion for a downright ordinary name. Like Jenrry. For Henry. I gotta tell ya, much like Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, this is the kind of stuff that's bugged me for a long time.

And I have no answer for it.

Let's take other names. Like "Anfernee." Tell me, what the hell is "Anfernee" all about, huh? Sounds to me like the person doing the naming couldn't speak properly, and the person writing it down for all posterity couldn't spell properly. The net result of these two faux-pas being "Anfernee." Ugh...it's funny, and sad, and dumb, and ignorant, all at the same time.

So you can imagine that if this is what I'm blogging about today, I'd really rather not discuss last night's game. My friend Thomas did a good enough job of that in his comments to Monday's post.