Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Apparently, the U. S. doesn't...

...have a corner on bad names, either. President Hamid Karzai's main challenger in the recent election was a guy named Abdullah Abdullah. I guess that's kind of like Pete Peterson or Billy Williams, only worse. (Incidentally, I once knew an Irish-American family with a John and a Sean.) But come on, Abdullah Abdullah? You're telling me that his parents couldn't think of one other first name? How about Muhammad? That seems popular in that part of the world. Or Khalid? Khalid Abdullah. That has a nice ring to it. Who knows, maybe he was the fifth or sixth child in his family and his parents just ran out of ideas.

I can practically hear his mom yelling at his dad, "Well if you don't like any of the names I've picked out, why don't you come up with one yourself!"

"Okay, I will. How about we just call him Abdullah?"

"Great! Abdullah Abdullah. Is that the best you can come up with? What if he wants to run for president some day, genius? (My father was right about you.)"

"What's a president?"

It reminds me a little of the family in my neighborhood with two boys. The first is named Evan. When it was time to name the second they got the old baby-name book out again. When the mother started reading the names (in alphabetical order), the father stopped her at "Adam." And that's how they named their second son. (At least they went further than "Abdullah.")

No comments: