Babies with 'bad' names can grow to be fine adults

Some readers think they spotted an obvious red flag among the names of the victims in this week's horrific slaughter in Chicago. The 32-year-old man charged with murdering his pregnant wife, his pregnant niece, his 3-year-old niece and his baby son, named his baby boy Jihad.

To many Americans, the word jihad is synonymous with a holy war of bloodshed and terror. Naming a baby Jihad is going to raise eyebrows here. But the word jihad also can refer to the positive, righteous struggle Muslims embark on as they strive toward self-improvement, intellectual advancement and good morals.

"I wouldn't want people to think the parents in the Arab world who name their son Jihad are into a holy war because that's not true," says names expert Cleveland K. Evans, associate professor of psychology at Nebraska's Bellevue University and past president of the American Name Society. Lots of names have more than one meaning.

"Americans who name their son John are not naming him 'prostitute customer,'" Evans quips.

That doesn't mean Evans, who researches names, isn't free to wonder what one set of Nebraska parents were thinking in 2008 when they named their son Mayhem.

"Parents should take the connotations of the name into account and know what it is. They have to proactively explain to the kid why they chose that name and make the child proud of it," Evans says, adding that some memorable "bad" names have "good" explanations. (Ima Hogg got her first name from a character in a poem written by her uncle. Iona Knipl was named after her grandma.)

"Names have meanings," agrees Michel Nguessan, an assistant professor of library science at Governors State University in south suburban University Park and a frequent presenter at American Name Society annual meetings. "You should take into consideration how the society where you will live will perceive the name."

Could a kid named Jihad grow up normal in the United States?

"Nobody knew what the name meant back then," says Jihad Shoshara, who was born in 1969, grew up in Chicago and Lombard and graduated from Glenbard East High School. "When a child has a name that stands out from his peers, you try really hard not to stand out."

To blend in, Shoshara used the same strategy employed by my Uncle Spud (real name of Fern) and Barry (real name of Barack) Obama.

"After grade school, I took a more Western nickname- Jay," Shoshara says. "I tried to do typical American things. I played football. I did sports. Culturally speaking I'm American and that's how I saw myself."

I wouldn't say he's a typical suburban kid, however, since he played football for the University of Chicago and now is a pediatrician with a practice in Naperville.

Dr. Shoshara might still be Jay if it weren't for his gig helping needy kids at a summer camp.

"I showed up the day after I graduated, and I said, 'Hello, my name is Jihad,'" Shoshara recalls, "and before I even got out 'but you can call me Jay,' they said, 'Oh, Jihad. Nice to meet you.'"

Shoshara has been Jihad ever since, and, with the exception of an occasional quizzical look, the doctor hasn't had a problem.

"When you are in a position where people can see you for what you do, people judge me by that," Shoshara says.

His name didn't hold him back. Neither did it inspire him to achieve.

"I benefited from the hard work my parents did in raising me, and that could have happened with any name," Shoshara says.

A rose by any other name does smell as sweet.

"The names themselves don't have a divine impact on the child," Nguessan says.

"A lot of that is what attitude a parent takes," Evans says, noting a parent who names a baby Adolf Hitler Smith might want to use the child to offend people and create trouble.

"The social reaction to the name will have an impact on the child. It can impact the child's self-perception," Nguessan says. "It can be the source of positive energy or it can be the source of negative energy."

Nguessan, who grew up on the Ivory Coast of Africa, says people sometimes see his first name of Michel and expect him to be female, or think he simply misspelled Michael. Evans, who inherited the first name Cleveland from a relative in Virginia who was named after President Grover Cleveland (the first Democrat elected after the Civil War), occasionally was teased by being called "Ohio" during his childhood outside Buffalo, N.Y. Now, he says some people, perhaps influenced by "The Cleveland Show" television cartoon, are surprised he's not black.

People can form a rudimentary first impression after hearing a name. My fraternity unanimously voted to accept my friend as a little sister sight-unseen as soon as they heard her last name was Horswell. But judging people by the names bestowed upon them by parents usually lasts only until people get acquainted.

"Really, what it comes down to is you have to teach your children to judge and be judged by what people do and not superficial aspects like their name," Shoshara says. "Like Martin Luther King said, 'Be judged by the content of your character.'"