So, D-Train, Rick Webb and I were talking about namin’ babies this weekend at a bar, whilst wearing fake moustaches (don’t ask). Well, there’s were fake, anyways. And D was saying how she is almost impossible to Google, because her name is unique (i.e. kinda made up – love you!). But this leads to unique problems: we discovered a few months ago that if you simply Googled her first name, the third link was to her secret blog – not great for a public school teacher.

So Rick was saying how he used to think it would be awesome to name his child something unique so they were eminently searchable in the future, but now thinks it’s better to be stealthy: Name your child something so common that it’s nearly impossible to separate the signal from the noise. You simply vanish into a sea of digital homogeny. This is something I ran into when an ex-girlfriend started dating some guy who shared a name with an NFL quarterback (luckily he was NOT the quarterback) and it’s also something our own Reneé Zellweger can attest to.