Reality TV parents Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar welcomed their 19th child Thursday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.  Although the baby arrived early and weighed in at only 1 lb., 6 oz., both mom and daughter Josie Brooklyn are doing well.

The Duggars continued their long standing tradition of naming children with “J” names.  Their brood includes Joshua, James, Jana, John-David, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jedidiah, Jeremiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, Jennifer, Jordyn-Grace and baby Josie.  Whew, that’s a lot of “J” names!

Congrats to the big, happy family!

Four years after marrying singer Seal, supermodel and Project Runway hostess Heidi Klum has decided to legally adopt his last name.  The couple has four children: Leni, 5; Henry, 3; Johan, 2; and Lou, 5 weeks.  No word yet as to whether Klum will adopt the surname Samuel professionally.

Congrats on the new name!

Rushing to the delivery room without a baby name?  Thanks to BabyNames.com, there’s now an app for that.  The Baby Name Finder sells through iTunes for $4.99 and allows users to find, sort and keep favorite baby names.  Also included is a name of the day display and a random baby name generator.

BabyNames.com founder Jennifer Moss explains:

Whether you want to save that great name you heard at the playground or need to take your list of front runners to the hospital, the application gives you access to BabyNames.com’s database of over 15,000 names anytime, anywhere.

Very cool!

Jaime Case and Chris Hodges knew they wanted a nontraditional last name when they married, which Jaime explains on their blog as being for the following reasons:

1) I didn’t want to take Chris’s name and he wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of there being two Mrs. Hodges (the first being his mother).

2) Chris didn’t want to take my name, which is fine, because Mr. Case is in fact, my father.

3) We didn’t want to hyphenate our names, thus creating a new disease, the Case (of the) Hodges.

4) We wanted to choose a name that would work for the whole family, which may or may not someday include children, dogs, and random goldfish.

The journey to becoming Mr. & Mrs. Ford began with a few rules:

1) The name had to be American, because neither of us thought it was appropriate to take on an ethnic last name just because it “sounded cool.”

2) It couldn’t be the maiden name stolen from a good friend.

3) It couldn’t be a first name, last name. (ie: Chris Ryan, Jaime Bruce)

4) It couldn’t hurt anyone (ie: taking my stepdad’s last name would hurt my father)

5) It had to be easy to say and spell so that we don’t torture our future kids.

After months of deliberation, Jaime says the name Ford was chosen because:

1) The word “Ford”, as defined by dictionary.com, means “to cross a river.” It implies strength and determination, two qualities Chris and I hope to embody in our marriage.

2) President Gerald Ford, an adopted member of the Ford family, was from Grand Rapids, Chris’s hometown. Chris holds Gerald Ford in high regard, as does the rest of his family.

3) Betty Ford helped raise awareness for breast cancer and was considered a leader in  the Women’s Movement. She is also the founder of the world-famous Betty Ford Clinic, which helps treat substance abuse and addiction.

4) Ford is the only American car company that didn’t take bailout money.

5) Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company with the idea that the common man should and would be able to afford his own car. The Ford Motor Company still works to achieve this goal today.

6) Roxy (the Ford Fusion the couple drove on a pre-wedding road trip) has been like a family member to us, and since her last name is Ford, we’re happy to share it with her. Even though we’re going to have to say goodbye to her this week, she’ll always live very large in our memories.

7) Driving around the country seeing the Ford sign everywhere made Chris and I feel like a part of a larger family- we loved that.

8 ) Chris’s mother has an extensive history with Ford.

9) My father, who was the student body president of Fresno State, was given a Mustang fastback during his presidency.

10) My first truck was a Ford Ranger- a vehicle that is infamous to anyone who ever drove with me in high school. My brother, who was one of my best friends growing up, always had Mustangs.

11) My grandfather Bud loves the entire country in his Ford truck.

The couple will keep their maiden and bachelor names as middle names so people will “know where they come from.”  Their entire journey is documented at WeddingRoadTrip.com.

This story may sound plum crazy, but I’ve known and helped real Name Counsel clients who choose completely new last names.  I’ve seen “Meadows” for a love of open spaces, “Carolina” because the couple met and married there, and “Bell” for Buddhist inspired mindfulness.  Most often the new names come from a distant family member– a grandmother’s maiden name, perhaps– but more and more couples are opting for a choose your own approach.  Wonderful that we live in a place and age where we have these options.

Best wishes to Mr. & Mrs. Ford!

An Arkansas mother recently tried to sell naming rights of her unborn son on eBay. For reals.

FoxNews.com reports:

An Arkansas woman is offering the opportunity to name her seventh child to the highest bidder, starting at $150. The unemployed mother of six has posted an auction on eBay in hopes that she will receive enough money to buy a “trustworthy” car and to relieve her sister’s burden of supporting her cash-strapped family.

“It sounds really crazy but I thought maybe there’s someone out there who could help me out with a good name,” Drummond told FOXNews.com. “I’m running out of names.”

Drummond — whose six children are 19, 16, 14, 3, 2 and 1 — said the proposal hasn’t exactly struck friends and relatives as a savvy financial move. And her husband, Richard, a Navy sailor stationed in Virginia, doesn’t even know about it yet.

Not a savvy financial move.. um, is that really the biggest issue here?

The baby boy, who is due September 16th, would have likely ended up with the auctioned name– Drummond promised to honor the agreement and even let the highest bidder visit with the child– but the auction listing has now been removed.

If the intention was simply to have fun with suggestions because she had run out of names after six children, then fine.  There are a multitude of free ways to get feedback on baby names such as BabyZone’s Baby Name Polls, BabyNames.com‘s Vote on NameLists feature, or good old fashioned phone calls to friends and relatives.  But if it was all about earning a few extra dollars, that just doesn’t sit well with me.  Names are SO personal and SO closely tied to identity.  Maybe I’m biased because I spend my time helping people decide on names, but it seems like a big deal.

Would you sell naming rights to your baby?  Even if you really needed the money?

Since I don’t log into my MySpace account very often, I only recently got around to reading their maiden name message sent earlier this year.  The message reads:

Dear MySpace User,

MySpace has just launched support for maiden names where you can enter your maiden name, keep your new married name and still have all of your friends find you.

All you have to do is fill in your maiden name here.

Thanks!

Tom

PS – While you’re filling in your maiden name, you can also add alternative email addresses and Instant Messaging handles that people can use to find you as well.

Nice they’re making it easier for old friends to connect, but good ole Tom really ought to change the terminology so it includes more than just maiden names.

My husband hyphenated his “maiden” name with mine when we got married, and he didn’t get a nifty message like this.  What if old classmates want to find him?

What about divorced men and women whose former co-workers or classmates might be searching for them under a previous name?

I’m sure anyone who has used more than one last name in their lifetime would probably find this feature helpful.  A “former name” or “previous name” option for all users would do the trick.

Rumors are swirling that Demi Moore has decided to take husband Ashton Kutcher’s last name in honor of their fourth wedding anniversary.  An unnamed source recently told British tabloid The People, “Demi didn’t want to change her name at first because it didn’t seem right but now she finally feels ready.”  That was Sunday and none of the major U.S. outlets have reported the news, so it’s hard to know whether or not to believe it.

However, Demi’s twitter username is mrskutcher and she did tweet the following statement earlier today:

I am officially married so thereby I am Mrs Kutcher !! RT @_Mrs_Malfoy is it tru that demi will officially change her name in2 kutcher? about 3 hours ago from TweetDeck

Plenty of real life married women wait awhile before deciding on a permanent married name.  My cousin kept her maiden name for about a year before hyphenating, and I’ve worked with many Name Counsel clients who have done the same.  If you aren’t completely sure about modifying your name, it’s nice to plan a wedding and adjust to married life without a name change deadline looming.  Who needs the stress?!  On the flip side, there are many women who– like me– initially take their husband’s name but later change it to something different.  Luckily, you can ALWAYS change your mind.  The only real deadlines are self imposed.

Whatever Demi does, I wish her all the best.  Congrats to the happy couple!

Image from The New York Times

Jang Do emigrated with his family from Korea when he was just a kid, so it’s understandable he wanted to fit in by Americanizing his name.  The only trouble is that at 11 years-old, he didn’t get why John Doe might not be the best choice.  Alison Leigh Cowan of  The New York Times explains:

First he turned “Jang” into “John.” Then, he talked his family into adding an “e” to their last name. He was concerned, he said, about razzing and wanted to make sure it would be pronounced like the “do” in “tae kwon do” and not the “do” in “hairdo.”

He has been John Doe ever since.

Airport security grills him every time he flies. “I have to sit in the office,” he said. “Every time.” Landlords and election inspectors view him quizzically, and prospective dates need more than a little assurance that he’s not hiding a dark past.

“I say my name is John Doe and they say, ‘No, what’s your real name?’ and I pull out my ID,” he said.

Doe is 40 years-old now and works as a software programmer in New York City.  He insists he has no regrets about changing his name to John Doe, although he admits to sometimes using his middle initial– H. for Hyun– to spice things up a bit.

Doe is still single, but hopes to marry someday.   Preferably not a Jane.

Great story!  I love it!

You read that correctly.  Hard to believe it was ONLY 30 years ago that married women in Rhode Island won the right to decide what name to use in registering a car once they were married.  In July 1979, volunteer lawyer Sheila Cabral-Sousa successfully litigated the case for the Rhode Island affiliate of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).

The Providence Journal describes objections from the state registrar of motor vehicles at the time:

Requiring married women to use their husbands’ names, said the state registrar of motor vehicles, Eugene Petit, “is in the best interest of the safety of the community. It will keep bad drivers off the road and give us better control of the registry.”

Petit, whose comments were including in the landmark state Supreme Court case Traugott v. Petit, called the requirement “patriotic.”

“Listen,” Petit is quoted as saying, “I respect gals in every phase. I hope they just respect society in this.”

Amazing to think about things our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers had to deal with that we take for granted today.

The ACLU issued a press release Monday in honor of the anniversary:

It is true that the past thirty years have seen many victories for women’s rights. … However, the struggle against gender-based discrimination continues to this day in the fight for equal pay for equal work and similar issues. A look at some of the comments made by public officials only 30 years ago in this case serves as a stark reminder that gains for women’s rights remain of recent vintage and, therefore, remain far from complete.

I recently mentioned how female Kelly Hildebrandt is marrying male Kelly Hildebrandt, and how cute the whole story is.  But having the same name doesn’t always have a happy ending. A name mix-up at a Salt Lake City hospital last week left one family thinking their loved one was dead.

Fox13Now reports:

On Friday, the hospital received a patient that later died from an electrocution accident. The hospital called who they thought was the man’s employer who then immediately called his wife. The person they contacted, however, a woman named Claudia, was the wrong person.

When Claudia was told her husband was dead she went hysterical and called family members and also sent text messages to friends. She even called her children to tell them their father was gone.

“It’s the worst phone call you could ever imagine receiving,” she said.

The man that was electrocuted on Friday had the same first and last name as Claudia’s husband, but he was nearly 20 years younger. As Claudia was about to arrive at the hospital, her cell phone rang and it was her husband Doug.

Yikes!  That must have been horrible for the poor family.  The hospital claims the mix-up was due to a communications error and is now investigating how it happened.  They released the following statement when a Fox13 reporter contacted them:

The staff of Jordan Valley Medical Center would like to express their condolences to all those affected by this tragic incident. In situations where we need to notify the family of a patient being treated in our facility, we utilize established protocols. However, in this instance we had a breakdown in our communications that is being thoroughly investigated. Again, we are very sorry for any distress or concern we may have caused.

The hospital has not yet contacted the family personally to apologize for their mistake.