What's in a name?

Today's news reports that Bernie Madoff is being sentenced for swindling folks out of billions of dollars. Ol' Bernie made off with quite a sum. There are many other apropos or perhaps ill-fitting names like the orthodontist whose last name was Smiley or the nurse named Hurt. Sometimes when I am sitting across from a patient talking, I think of their births and how much thought went into choosing their names based on the observation that some just seem to be a random combination drawn from a hat. Are they indicative of parental hopes? Presidents tend to have names that seem stately, even William Jefferson Clinton. (Of course not all. With initials like BO, what do we expect?) Jessica is trying to come up with a name for her baby boy who will arrive this month. What will the name say about him? When she chose the others, who knew they would end up on the top five most popular names for their birth years! But that's the way names go, up and down the scale. Some names like Emma have had resurgences in popularity but what happened to Ethel? Dropped off the chart I suppose. And was Made-off destined to be a thief?