Baby Names Based on Video Game Characters On The Rise

Baby Names Based on Video Games On The Rise

I don’t know if this counts as a news story, but this week Laura Wattenberg, author of a very popular set of baby naming guides (That’s a fun sub-genre), has revealed that she will be covering a growing trend in baby names that has arisen in recent years: Baby names named after video game characters.

WHAT WHY!?

As Wattenberg puts it:

These video games have become enough of a part of our culture that you start to see names coming out of these games. Which makes sense, because if you go and watch a movie, you watch a character for two hours. If you play a video game, you might embody this character for two years.

Oh ok. So, besides this meaning that we’ll steadily begin seeing a massive influx of children being named Pikachu and Master Chief, what does this mean? It means that video games are gradually embedding themselves into our society in ways that we hadn’t seen in the past! Video games have become such apart of our social world that they’re influencing the people we are, and the people we become. As Wattenberg eludes to, people are creating emotional bonds with these characters to such a degree that they want to memorialize these characters in their children Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Who knows. One could assume a child be given the name Waluigi will have  a hell of time in life, but there are plenty of less ridiculous video game character names that would be adequate children name. For example, Robin Williams named his daughter Zelda after, duh, The Legend of Zelda. It’s not that insane, really. If I was naming a child, some names I might consider would be Ash or Miles. Then again, both those names are can easily be the target of great  ridicule…

If you we’re naming a child after a video game character, what would your choice name be? If you have an interesting one, please feel free to comment.