Your name won’t be mud. Or Louis.

"Memphis is such an awesome name and we wasted it on the dog,” I said as Memphis, sitting on my foot, opened her mouth wide to let out a high-pitched dog yawn. Sensing an opportunity, I stuck a finger in her mouth and waggled it up and down against her teeth like I was playing a triangle.

Incidentally, you don’t see too many triangle players these days, which is strange because it’s the only instrument that says, “you can master every nuance of me during a commercial break” and “it’s time for dinner” simultaneously.

With a baby on the way, we’re working on acclimating the dog to little annoying surprises. She didn’t look annoyed at all after her interrupted yawn, just a little confused, which bodes well for her future. She’s a very patient animal. When our friends’ two-year-old decided that she wanted Memphis to come closer during a recent visit, the little girl grabbed Memphis by her eyebrows and tugged with all her might. As I ran over to help, Memphis calmly looked up past her outstretched forehead as if to say, “Don’t worry, it’s cool. But I think I deserve a biscuit now.” In any event, she handles the yawning mouth-triangle thing much better than my wife Kara does.

“Dude, we weren’t going to name our son Memphis anyway,” Kara replied. “That name only works for dogs and strippers.”

She had a point, but people these days go out of their way to give their kids unique names. When I was a kid, there were only three boy names to choose from: Mike, Chris and John. If a family had four boys, they either had to give two of them the same name or give one of them a girl’s name, of which the choices were Jenny, Amy and Sarah. Now there are little Logans and Madisons hanging from every Baby Bjorn.

The Social Security database lets you browse the most popular baby names in any given year. See if you can spot the pattern in this sample of eight of the top 100 boy names listed for 2008: Jayden, Brayden, Aiden, Jaden, Kaden, Ayden, Hayden and Caden.

“Wow, there are a lot of aden-sounding names,” Kara said as we browsed the list for inspiration.

“Raiden was my favorite character in Mortal Kombat,” I suggested. “He could make a person’s head explode by filling it with lightning bolts from his fingertips.”

“What about Tom?” Kara said. “Toms are nice people.”

“I like Toms, too,” I said, “but Tom Todd’s too alliterative. Sounds like the main character of a tongue twister.”

Since we’ve started having these discussions, we’ve found it impossible to consider a name without loading each one down with the attributes of everyone we’ve ever known who possessed that name before, especially those people we went to high school with.

Toms are nice people who help the science teacher operate the LaserDisc player that will be obsolete in three years. Louises (Louisi?) grow armpit hair at age eight and spend the next decade punching you in the arm and being the only naked person in the locker room after gym class. If you make eye contact with a Louis, you are likely to spend the next minute of your life in a headlock with a terrible view. Steves chew tobacco in computer class and spit on the carpet when the teacher has her back turned, leaving a puddle-shaped discoloration by the end of the marking period. Kirks try to stuff your head into the toilet when Mr. Hagen has his office door closed. And on and on.

It’s too bad “I’m never going to name my baby after you!” isn’t a better defense against bullies. Kids can be so short-sighted when they’re cramming you into a trash can.

You can play the castanets on Mike Todd’s head at mikectodd@gmail.com.