I never realized until recently just how much humor can be found in a name.

The other morning in the newsroom, the TV was on during the morning news. During their sports segment (or maybe it was a commercial), the person speaking referred to some athlete as the Michael Jordan of that particular sport. I wasn’t really paying attention, so I don’t recall which sport it was. All I remember is that it wasn’t basketball.

It wasn’t the first time I had heard that kind of a statement, but it made me realize just how ludicrous it is to say something like that. You would never hear anybody refer to The Oak Ridge Boys as &uot;the Motley Crue of country music&uot; (and with good reason). Likewise, nobody calls Gandalf &uot;the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Lord of the Rings.&uot;

If we must use these types of comparisons, let’s get really creative and compare names and fields that are completely unrelated &045; such as &uot;the Ronald McDonald of the White House,&uot; &uot;the Adolf Hitler of soccer,&uot; or &uot;the George Carlin of opera.&uot; Paints a pretty colorful mental image, doesn’t it?

This got me thinking about some of the trends in names. Have you ever noticed how names related to U.S. geography seem to be growing in popularity? Montana, Dakota, Dallas, Denver and Cheyenne are all legitimate first names. So far, though, the trend has for the most part stayed with a western theme, although on occasion you meet women named Georgia or Virginia. You certainly don’t run into very many people named Hoboken, Connecticut or Staten Island.

I wonder if they do the same thing in other countries. Are there parents out there naming their children Montreal, Cardiff, Cairo, Saigon, Bhutan and Cozumel? If so, I hope they’re using some discretion. It would be horrible to be cursed with a name like Wales, Greece or Turkey.

I would like to see parents start naming their children after their hobbies and interests, like a trucking enthusiast naming his children Mack and Kenworth. Or a gun collector naming his children Smith and Wesson. Or a musician naming his kids Roland, Peavey and Gibson. Or, for those who love to read, Faulkner, Hemmingway and Coleridge. Who knows? Maybe in 20 years we’ll see kids named Xbox and Gamecube.

Not all hobbies lend themselves to good first names, however. One example is fishing. I would feel really sorry for children named Muskie, Trout and Stinkbait.

Sometimes the entertainment industry makes certain names popular. I haven’t looked at the statistics to verify this, but I would guess that the names Dylan and Brandon enjoyed a slight rise in popularity when &uot;Beverly Hills 90210&uot; was still on the air. The name Dawson is probably growing in popularity right now, thanks to &uot;Dawson’s Creek.&uot; How many of today’s preschoolers will name their kids Elmo, Zoe and Dora?

Again, this doesn’t always catch on. I don’t imagine very many children born in the late ’70s and early ’80s were named Enos, Roscoe or Cooter. On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised to hear of babies being named Bo &045; especially in the South.

In the early ’90s, I had a co-worker who claimed to have named her daughter Metallica. Talk about originality So far, that is the only time I have ever heard of anyone naming a child after a band. I don’t remember everybody I went to school with, but I’m fairly sure I didn’t graduate with anybody named Steppenwolf, Led Zeppelin or Jethro Tull.

We have trademarks named after people. Why not start naming people after trademarks? Some trademarks already sound like names. Primatene, Yoplait, NyQuil, Velveeta, Colgate, Palmolive, Windex, Duplo, Wesson, Kaopectate, Pamida, Exxon, Starbuck and Advil come to mind.

Some people bypass the alphabet completely and name their children after numbers. What I’m waiting for, though, is children named after punctuation marks. Would they be unpronounceable, or would you actually say &uot;Semicolon,&uot; &uot;Asterisk,&uot; &uot;Hyphen&uot; and &uot;Tilde&uot; when addressing them?

It’s probably a good thing that I don’t know very many expectant couples right now. For some reason, I just don’t think anybody will be consulting me for baby name ideas anytime soon.

Dustin Petersen is an Albert Lea resident. His column appears Mondays.