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Please don't name him Owen

I'd like to chime in that there's no requirement for a middle name, at least in non-Anglophone cultures. My hated her middle name with a passion. She ensured all her kids got short, distinct names, so that people wouldn't turn them into nicknames, i.e. naming a kid Sam or Alex because nobody will bother saying "Samatha" or "Alexandra".

Concerning "Owen", that name would make a lot of sense for the grandson. If they name it after a person, they'd probably pick a deceased one.

Slightly OT, but when Xolani addressed the Doctor as Emergency Medical Hologram Mark One, I thought the Doctor could've go with the name Mark Zimmerman.
 
Malcolm Peter Brian Telescope Adrian Umbrella Stand Jasper Wednesday *pop! pop!* Stoatgobbler John Raw Vegetable <whinny> Arthur Norman Michael {{squeak}} Featherstone Smith (whistle) Northcot Edwards Harris *bang! bang! bang!* Mason Chuff-Chuff-Chuff Frampton Jones Fruitbat Gilbert "We'll keep a welcome in the..." Williams If I Could Walk That Way Jenkins {{squeak}} Tiger-drawers Pratt Thompson "Raindrops keep falling on my head.." Darcy Carter <<HORN!>> Pussycat "Don't sleep in the subway" Barton Mainwaring Paris.

Or if they really wanted to mess with the kid's head they could name him "The Last Time I Saw". ;)
 
I don't really have a problem with them naming the 2nd Paris kid Owen, it makes sense in context.
I've also never had a problem with Rene as a character, although I do think is name is a bit more complicated than it really needed to be.
 
JD said:
I've also never had a problem with Rene as a character, although I do think is name is a bit more complicated than it really needed to be.
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I gather that French people sometimes do have more than two given names. Four given names is probably a bit unusual, though. In any case, in normal address, one would just use the first and last names; the French don't use middle initials, apparently. So he'd just be called Rene Picard unless one were being very formal or thorough.
 
Some teaching colleagues started their family in the 80s and named their children Luke and Leah. Forever after Leah's birth, they have had to deny being "Star Wars" fans. It was total coincidence. ('Cos otherwise they'd have spelt it "Leia".)
 
Therin of Andor said:
Data Soong said:
Natasha Riker? Will and Deanna knew Tasha less than a year and named their baby after her? They weren't that close.
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Tasha died trying to save Troi from Armus.
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That's a decent argument for the name which I'll keep in mind going forward, but I've always felt similarly about this choice--and even then, almost twenty years had passed between those two events.

As much as I personally like the character, the continuing importance of Tasha in the minds and memories of the TNG crew has always seemed disproportionate to how long she was actually a part of their (professional, not especially personal) lives.
 
TheAlmanac said:
As much as I personally like the character, the continuing importance of Tasha in the minds and memories of the TNG crew has always seemed disproportionate to how long she was actually a part of their (professional, not especially personal) lives.
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Look at Firefly fandom. That show ran for a single short season and one movie, yet its fan community today is more active and passionate than the fan communities for a lot of shows that ran far longer, or that are still on the air today. There is no predictable correlation between how long something was part of your life and how strongly you feel about it.
 
Christopher said:
TheAlmanac said:
As much as I personally like the character, the continuing importance of Tasha in the minds and memories of the TNG crew has always seemed disproportionate to how long she was actually a part of their (professional, not especially personal) lives.
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Look at Firefly fandom. That show ran for a single short season and one movie, yet its fan community today is more active and passionate than the fan communities for a lot of shows that ran far longer, or that are still on the air today. There is no predictable correlation between how long something was part of your life and how strongly you feel about it.
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...but fandom itself allows something to be active and a continuing, dynamic part of your life even when the original source material is "dead." (Sporadic though it may be, there is also still new official material being created.) Enjoyment of a franchise is something that can be experienced anew or reinvigorated in a way direct interaction with a deceasad co-worker can never be.

Besides, I love Firefly, and I still think the actions and devotion of many Browncoats today are unreasonable. :p
 
TheAlmanac said:
Enjoyment of a franchise is something that can be experienced anew or reinvigorated in a way direct interaction with a deceasad co-worker can never be.
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Friend, not just co-worker. As I said, season 1 did show that Tasha and Deanna were good friends. And Tasha died trying to save Deanna -- surely that must count for a lot.

And do you really think that past relationships can never be reinvigorated? You talk about the community of fandom keeping interest in an old show alive. Well, friends and family often talk to each other about the people they've lost, keeping their memories alive. When I go visit my Aunt Shirley, we'll often end up talking about my late father or my late uncle or my grandparents or other departed family members. My Uncle Harry will often talk about the long-dead physicists he studied under and worked with in his career. And so on.
 
TheAlmanac said:
As much as I personally like the character, the continuing importance of Tasha in the minds and memories of the TNG crew has always seemed disproportionate to how long she was actually a part of their (professional, not especially personal) lives.
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Pardon me for saying so, but I don't see why length of time matters. I've people in my life whom I've known for years but am not especially close to. Conversely, I've also people in my whom I've known for only a short time but already have a strong connection to them. There's no clock attached to emotions.

In fact, I'd argue that perhaps the reason why Tasha figures so prominently in the emotions and memories of her colleagues is because she was taken from them too soon. Someone like Deanna--who has even greater empathy than most people because of her Betazoid heritage--would almost certainly feel a sense of profound loss when thinking about her friend for this very reason.

--Captain Terrell
 
Perhaps a symbolic gesture like naming a child after a lost friend/colleague might even go some way toward resolving the issue of how much emphasis one places emotionally on the loss? Perhaps one feels guilty about forgetting the person, as might happen naturally as years go by and their importance diminishes. Maybe one is torn between letting them pass and the sense that they still owe them something?

As a young child, I had a collection of imaginary friends (about a hundred characters in all, actually). Over the years, as other concerns came to prominence in my mind and as I changed and grew, I no longer really had the time for them, or to keep track of them all. But the thought of letting them just fade away, just forgetting them, was unpalatable. So what I did was, I gave them a grand finale, said goodbye, they all emigrated to live happily somewhere else, and then that was that. (Mostly - there was an epilogue a month later in which the two earliest and most important characters (they started off as my arms, so I was more attached to them than most) returned briefly to say that everything over there was okay and to say final, more personal goodbyes). So maybe something symbolic that draws a line under the relationship is comforting. Yar hasn't been forgotten, she's been honoured, and it doesn't matter now how distant and "unimportant" she becomes?

There's something comforting and satisfactory in drawing a line under a past relationship in a way that ensures it has been given its due.
 
People definitely name children after deceased relations/friends-- a good friend of mine named her son after her grandmother who had passed just months before he was born, and I see there the same kind of cathartic effect mentioned by Nasat-- but I think not in the way or as often as it happens in fiction.
 
Christopher said:
In my first published story back in 1998, I named a 22nd-century female character Zena, because I figured we could expect a wave of girls named Xena and Gabrielle in the near future, and that in another several generations the TV origin (and spelling) of the name Xena might've been partly forgotten.
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Well, Zena (with that spelling) is a real name though, and it has been around a lot longer than the TV show you're referencing.

RoJoHen said:
In my experience, most parents actually try to avoid naming their kids after pre-existing people.
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My father's parents had two children: a boy and a girl. They named the boy with the exact same name as the father. They named the girl with the exact same name as the mother.

I always thought that was a bit weird.
 
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