h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can I add that one should avoid names which appear in nursery rhymes, old pop songs, and children's books? My first name - Robin - seems harlmess enough, right? But I've had a lifetime of people calling me "Christopher Robin" and singing "Rockin' Robin" at me. One more "tweet-a-leet, leet, leet" and I'll open fire from a rooftop somewhere.

My middle name, Celeste, is a double-whammy. As a child, I was taunted for being the wife of Babar the Elephant. As an adult, I'm accused of having a porn-star middle name.

And going back to the common name thing, I'd suggest that people stop naming their children Dave. At one time in my life, I had nine friends named Dave, and there were occasions when all nine were together in one room. Big Dave, Lil' Dave, Lil' Big Dave, American Dave, Tattoo Dave, Piercer Dave, etc. While it made introductions extremely easy ("This is Connie, Julie, Zena, Myke, and Matt, and everyone else is Dave"), I think the Daves felt the sting a bit.

A good friend of mine grew up with the name of Stephen Taylor Eliot. He would occasionally go by ST Eliot, since people would try to joke about TS Eliot. ...Then one day somebody spelled his name backwards...

He still gets called "Toilets".

speaking of which, my uncle had somewhat lamentable taste in choosing names for his kids, and the names they wound up with violated rule #3 (names that sound innocuous until you initialise them). my cousin christopher found out the *hard* way when he was a kid. once when he was in a whimsical mood, he decided to play around with his brother and sister's initials. he began with 'jason lee... j. lee... jelly!' and laughed his head off. his sister's was next (karen), but it was nothing to laugh at.

so then he tried his own. he got as far as 'c...' and then it hit him, and he exclaimed, 'oh no!'

(it's bad enough that his dad named him after tv's most famous vampire and villain; it just had to break two rules at one go. he's in medical school now. i can only speculate on how his kid patients are going to react to his name)

come to think of it, when you reverse my initials, they become WC