Opinion: Do you, Tripp, take Britney in marriage?
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Pity Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, whose full name sounds like a law firm and whose first name sounds as if it were picked by his maternal grandmother, Sarah Palin. This love grandchild of the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee was a figure of fun even when he was in utero, so I’m reluctant to trash the little guy. But his parents and grandparents are another matter.
Where do the Palins get these names? Tripp can look forward to years of Christmas gifts from Uncles Trig and Track and Aunts Willow and Piper. In the unlikely event that he decides to call his mother by her first name, he will be saying: ‘More milk, Bristol.’
According to the New York Daily News, the senior Palins didn’t pick their kids’ names out of thin air. Track was born during track season, Trig’s name comes from the Norse word for ‘true’ or ‘strength’ and Bristol is named after a bay where the family fishes. Less clear are the origins of Willow and Piper, though the Daily News noted that there is a town in Alaska called Willow and that ‘Piper’ may have been inspired by the Piper Super Cub, a poular airplane in Alaska.
A couple of decades ago, you can bet that the Palin kids would have been mocked for their names, and not only by little Democrats. Today, not so much. I’m probably betraying my age when I admit that innovative and/or wacky names for children annoy me. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, when tradition trumped creativity in the naming of newborns. I attended Catholic school with a multitude of Johns, Michaels, Jameses and Peters. A lot of the girls’ names consisted of ‘Mary’ plus a second name. (One of my sisters was Mary Catherine.) No Trigs or Willows -- or, for that matter, Jareds, Jasons, Ryans, Caitlins or Ashleys.
Catholics in my youth had a special incentive to choose traditional names: the church’s preference that babies be named after saints. (The priest who baptized my sister Laurel Ann complained that laurel was a shrub, not a saint.) But conservatism in nomenclature was a general phenomenon. Parents who saddled their offspring with exotic or cutesey names were considered borderline abusive. I confess that I haven’t shaken off that prejudice. I wince when I hear a parent in a supermarket telling Trey or Trevor to behave. (If Donald Duck were created today, his nephews might be named Trey, Trevor and Trig instead of Huey, Dewey and Louie.)
Straining to rationalize my snobbery, I came up with a conservative cliche: ‘When it’s not necessary to change, it’s necessary not to change.’ That includes changing what children are called. Naming a baby after a parent, uncle or grandparent is a nod to the ties that unite generations. Naming a baby after a soap-opera character -- or an airplane -- connotes a contempt for continuity. That’s why the new Palin baby’s name is a bad Tripp.