The importance of names

While watching the movie "Freakonomics", the section about the wide range of baby names between races, social groups, and religions was the most interesting to me. However I disagree with the narrators that a baby's name is not highly important in the later success or failure of that child. I agree that there is a correlation between a child's future and their upbringing, but a child's name is their identity and a label to how they will be seen in society. In earlier centuries, names were chosen because of ancestors or people from the Bible or other religious texts. Today, celebrities are naming their kids after months, fruit, and colors; musicians change their names to something more prominent, and there is a large stigma with black names in our society. Names like Helen, Joseph, Laura, and Matt, are replaced by Hunter, Paige, and Kylie, or unique spellings of names such as Aimee and Rhys. During the one scene in the strip club, one of the dancers was telling the audience not to name their children Barbie or Candy because they were bound to grow up and become "entertainers". I found a website that stated that a British study of 3,000 parents released in May suggested "one-in-five parents regret the name they chose for a child, many of whom were distressed over the unusual or oddly spelled names they'd chosen." The baby naming phenomenon has become so large that people work as professional "baby namers". Names are extremely important to a child's future because our culture is biased on what we see and hear. A name could make or break a job, or cause someone to live in glory or shame.