Black Fridays

An architectural historian and critic writes that something took over in the 1970's " with so much hoopla" as a "blip in the process, but an absolutely essential blip as a generation rebelled against the faith of its fathers - although rarely, if ever, have so many stand-up one-liners, inside jokes, and ill-digested knockoffs of history produced so many really bad buildings." Transfer this thought to the architecture of children’s names.

A local dance team celebrated its first place finish with a picture of participants: Jessalyn, Erin, Brooke, Jennica, Jessica, Kayla, Lydia, Karriane, Chelsea, Hannah, Tori, Jessica, Cameron (male), Cindy, Breanne, Sydney, Haley, Kimmberly and Taylor (could be female). Where have the powerful, royal or religious names gone? Remember Charles, Peter, Patrick, Nicholas, James, John, Jacob, Alexander, Philip, Richard, Henry or Winston for males and Mary, Elizabeth or Margaret for feminine attributions?

Black Friday can symbolize a shopping frenzy, a terrorist attack in Mumbai or the mental condition of this country in which naming babies which abandons enlightenment and enters a dark, secular, metro-sexual zone. Any immigrant child knows better than an elite, liberal adult, that in a poor country, poor people are "skinny," but here in America "they are fat." Any immigrant child, unfamiliar with traditional name callings, will be able to accept, assimilate, pronounce and spell what now pass for choices of family appellations. Black Friday indeed.