What's In a Name?

Katherine Dalton looks at the names Americans give their children these days (not only "Bailey, Mackenzie or Caitlin," but "Baeleigh, M’Kenzee and Kaytlynneand") and is "interested in the meaning of words, particularly those that have no meaning, and in the language we use to define ourselves" — Nomen est Omen.

She says that "if we required any further evidence that we are rearing the Great Deracinated Generation, these names that have no root would clinch it." She suggests that "our media-flogged culture works to undermine our ties to our own places and our own folks is [by] push[ing] the cult of originality" and that "even the names of our children have become sacrifices to to it."