I got my name not for its sound, not for its spelling, but for its meaning.  My mom woke up the morning I was due to a bright red sunrise, and decided to call me, or at least make my middle name, the Sanskrit word for red.

Those were the good old days, when parents picked their childrens’ names based on personal preference.  In those days, it didn’t really matter what someone was called.  A “James Smith” (the most common male name in the U.S. in 1990) was equal to an “Amal Nanavati.”  No one (except racists) judged people by their names, and there was no significant advantage to one name over another.

However, in today’s rapidly globalizing world, there is.  A “James Smith” (no offense intended to any of the James Smith’s out there) will have a much harder time achieving online visibility than an “Amal Nanavati,” merely because there are a lot more “James Smith’s” in the world.  In fact, all the domain names from jamessmith.com to james-smith.com to jamesdsmith.com to jamesesmith.com are taken, and a Google search for “James Smith” yields over 100 times the results of one for “Amal Nanavati.”  It is much harder for an individual “James Smith” to create an online presence for himself, and it is consequently harder for potential clients and employers to find him.

We are already seeing an influx of tiger parents, strict parents that micromanage every aspect of their childrens’ lives to prepare them for the competitiveness of today’s world.  I wonder if someday tiger parenting will reach such an extreme that parents will even choose their childrens’ names to give them a competitive edge.  Already, I hear people bragging about the number of Facebook friends they have.  I wonder if someday they will start bragging about the number of hits on Google that refer to them…

I am not sure of my stance on this.  On one level, I feel that picking a name solely based on its uniqueness is superficial, but on the other hand I can see how it helps in the competitive workforce.  While I am not a proponent of tiger parenting, I do understand the value of having a name that is uncommon in the World Wide Web, and am grateful to my parents for giving me the name that they did.