PASADENA, California. Amid growing concern that the world’s store of words has nearly been depleted by entertainment industry parents, the California Institute of Technology today announced the development of a supercomputer that will assist Hollywood stars in coming up with unique names for their children.
“It has become not just socially acceptable but downright fashionable to saddle your kid with a weird name like ‘Pilot Inspektor’,” said Dr. Philip Walker of Cal Tech’s Center for Advanced Computing Research, referring to the name chosen by actor Jason Lee and his wife Beth Riesgraf for their son. “It’s like giving your child a tattoo while he’s still in diapers, with none of the commotion you’d get if you poked him with a needle.”
Baby Keanu Reeves: “It’s an anagram for ‘a nuke’.”
The new computer will be dubbed “BABYNAMER,” an acronym that stands for “baby name” with an “r” at the end. Funding will be provided by a coterie of Hollywood’s biggest stars including Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Pitt and his wife Angelina Jolie have a daughter named “Shiloh Nouvel,” which means “No Checks Accepted” in Nama, the language of Namibia, the African nation where the child was born.
Shiloh Nouvel: “Why’d you give me such a stupid name!”
“People think of actors and actresses as self-centered people who don’t care about anything but money and fame,” said Cal Tech’s Walker. “But many were concerned that there wouldn’t be any names left when they had a child, and that made them open up their hearts and their wallets to us.”
The weird name movement is believed to have begun with Frank Zappa, the eccentric rock musician who named his children “Dweezil” and “Moonunit.” Zappa’s flights of fancy have since been topped by comedian Penn Jillette, who has inflicted the names “Zolten” and “Moxie Crimefighter” on his offspring.
Cute widdle Moxie Crimefighter!
Cal Tech says BABYNAMER will be up and running in the summer of 2023 after it passes through “beta” testing, the tech world’s term for the process by which bugs in software are exterminated. “We did a dry run the other day that assumed a B-list actor with a background in daytime soaps, and a loopy wife who campaigns for mandatory condom use by coyotes,” Professor Walker explained. “The computer spit out ‘Larry’ and ‘Julie,’ so we’ve got some work to do.”
It’s the science of stupid.
Reeves is an anagram for severe. So Keanu Reeves is an anagram for A Severe Nuke, which is, of course, worse than a mild nuke. This post was great.