Baby Names Ruined by Pop Culture Moments
PSA: Consider Pop Culture Moments Before Naming Your Baby Something Like Alexa or Zelda
What piece of pop culture has ruined your first name?
— Jesse McLaren (@McJesse) September 25, 2019
Even when choosing a trendy or popular name for your baby, it's impossible to fully predict how that name will serve them through life, especially where pop culture is concerned. For me, pop culture — well, a celebrity music artist — has actually helped me to love my name, Alessia, more (thank you, Alessia Cara!). For some, pop culture — from songs and memes to TV commercials and movie characters — has definitely made it easy for their name to be the butt of the joke or subject to annoying references. Take every single person named Alexa, for example. Since the birth of the Amazon Echo, the name Alexa has become synonymous with asking what the weather will be.
Writer Jesse McLaren has his own gripes with his name, which he feels is tainted by the Rick Springfield song "Jessie's Girl." Whether or not he was born before or after that song was released in 1981, as a popular song, it's not hard to make the jump from "Hi, I'm Jesse" to scream-singing, "You know I wish that I had Jessie's girl!"
Interested in finding allies, Jesse asked his Twitter followers, "What piece of pop culture has ruined your first name?," and some of the responses are too good not to share (even Zelda Williams responded to the thread!). Scroll through for some of our favourites.
