Task 1. Comment on this newsclip in a few sentences.
This Is My Son Superman
Thursday, August 09, 2007
A
"It doesn't make a lot of sense: I can call him Superman but I can't call him 4Real," Pat told The New Zealand Herald newspaper.
http://www.simpleenglishnews.com/19188superman.shtml
Task 2. Read this recent article, and find what drawbacks and advantages odd names may have. Look up words you don't know in a dictionary.
Odd celebrity baby names
August 12, 2008
If you've glanced at an entertainment magazine in the last couple of weeks, you can't miss that "wacky celeb baby names" are becoming ever more popular.
To name but a few of the latest: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's daughter Sunday, Matthew McConaughey and Camilla Alvirez's son Levi, Jessica Alba and Cash Warren's daughter Honor.
Odd monikers is nothing new for
And, if you really stop to think about it, lots of today's biggest stars were bestowed "special" names by their parents. Magician Penn Jillette conjured "Moxie CrimeFighter" for his daughter, while Jason Lee's picked "Pilot Inspektor" for his boy.
As The New York Times pointed out a few years back, "psychologists say that the naming of children can function as a window into a psyche. Perhaps subconsciously, they say, stars seize the opportunity of parenthood to express their obsessions, ambitions, and inner quirks in a way that is, for a change, unscripted and not stage-managed by publicists."
"There's a sense of 'I'm special, I'm different, and therefore my child is special and different,'" Jenn Berman, a clinical psychologist in
It's not just the rich and famous who have a penchant for the less-than-ordinary naming -- it's just that we don't know every time someone in a little town christens their little one "Thunderbird License Plate" or some such thing.
Stories from "real life" do come out every now and then, though. In
"The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child's parents have shown in choosing this name," said the judge, "It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily.
Not so says Coldplay's front man, Chris Martin. The 31-year-old father of Apple and Moses says: "People make a big fuss over names. There's nothing weird about calling your baby Chewbacca if that's what you want to call your baby. It's no stranger than Sarah."
Hollywood moguls also tend to prefer not quite ordinary names. 'If anything, Hollywood would prefer a Winona to a Wendy today,'' said Pamela Redmond Satran, co-author of ''Beyond Jennifer and Jason'' and other baby-naming guides. ''It's considered cool to have a name that's unique.''
As for how the kids themselves feel about it, opinions vary. Nineteen-year-old Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof, daughter of ever-altruistic Live Aid mastermind, Sir Bob Geldof has said, "I hate ridiculous names, my weird name has haunted me all my life." Peaches sisters' names are Fifi Trixibelle and Little Pixie; her half sister is Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily.
Similarly, in 2005 Shia LaBeouf told the AP that, "after 19 years of getting into fights over my name and hearing it mispronounced, I can't believe celebrities are still coming up with weird names for their kids! Name your kid Billy and Timmy! What is the problem with that?" he wondered."
http://family.go.com/blog/celebrity_moms/odd-celebrity-baby-names--not-a-new-game-650134/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9505E7D81E39F93BA25756C0A961958260
