Naming the offspring - so that they don't become homicidal killers

This is a HUGE problem and you wanna take your time on this one. Remember, names last FOREVER, that's a tad longer than ETERNITY. If you name your child well, they may grow up normal or even extraordinary. If you name you child 50 cents or Chainsaw, they going to jail.

Now in Malaysia, we have a syndrome called the national education system. What this means is that 99% of the educators in Government schools are rural folks who have not watched a single Hollywood movie. What that leads to is that they will be unable to pronounce names like Sage (tell them to pronounce sausage but without the "sau"), Matthew (will sound like a Cantonese swear word), Elliot (will pronounce idiot) or new age psychedelic names like Destiny, Mother Earth or Toad Excrement.

The other reason why you want to name your child well, is so that they won't get teased all their school life and end up losers or worse, homicidal serial killers! You see those TV news reports that say, that this kid was a quiet, polite kid and no one understands why he suddenly took a gun and starting shooting up his school. No one can give an explanation why this should happen to a kid like Ballwhacker Jones.

So you wanna be EXTRA sensitive about this. Malaysia also has another problem where we have multi racial implications to the names. So we have to ensure that the names don't mean something else in another language. For me it was doubly hard as I had to make sure our Japanese-occupation, tapioca-eating , 10-miles-to-schoolwalking, kerosene-lamp-reading and being constantly under fire parents could pronounce our babies' names. Secondly we had to make sure it didn't mean something different in any language to the best of our knowledge.

So we decided to play it safe and take common names with a nice flow to it.

There is also the occult way where you wanna see if the numbers in the names align to the person's birth date, the day the peed for the first time, etc. I didn't want anything to do with that so we just stuck to the normal English language names. I always like the name Sean and how it was pronounced despite its spelling. Then I looked for the most suitable and well meaning name and I came upon Joseph and Michael. Michael meant who is like God and the captain of God's Angels is St. Michael the Archangel. How much cooler can you get!!!! That's like the leader of Transformers, Justice League, G.I. Joe all rolled into one, a million times over!!! Also Michael Sean had a better ring to it than Joseph Sean.

So Michael Sean it was.

With Amanda, it was a lot tougher. Primarily because the saints' names are either very biblical or ages you. Names like Agatha, Mary, Catherine, Caroline, Bridgette, etc. That made it difficult as I don't want her sounding like a 60 year SOOO soon! Eventually the Christian name I chose was Grace since it was the same meaning as Mary but a lot more chic. That was the middle name. I chose and shortlisted these first names, Amanda, Nicole and Stacy. I gave these names to my colleagues and asked them which girl name they would date.

The majority was on Nicole with Stacy coming in a very strong second. Then my Chindian colleague (you can always trust a Chindian to make things easy for you), Joseph commented that Nicole sounds hot and dirty and Stacy sounds like a porn star's name. You never seen me move as fast as I did when I wrote down Amanda and drove to the Registration Dept to submit her name. Flash Gordon would have been proud!

So hence the names Michael Sean David and Amanda Grace David. I am glad to know that there is only one other kid I know in his school named Michael and Amanda was just as uncommon. So much for it being TO common. So Mikey and Mandy or M&M got their names through very meticulous method of selection which followed these principles:-

1. It has got to have no vulgar or ridiculous meaning
2. Doesn't represent any body parts
3. Easy to pronounce even by one certified to be clinically dead
4. Doesn't turn you one (for a girl's name)
5. Doesn't sound like a porn star
6. No or minimal teasing with the names
7. Doesn't spawn nick names that can be used in rap videos or prison

So there you have it. Algernon Constipated Charles Weedshaker III is a no-no. Please! You might as well kill the boy. Keep it simple, has a good, strong meaning. Gives your kids confidence.

Hey! Maybe try something like Aquaman or Optimus Prime or The HULK!!!