A Baby Named Google

I think it means he wants his son to think like a search engine.

A reporter named Iron Gonads?? Yikes!

I think he is saying that he plans on turning his son into a dork....so he is saying "ofcourse he will be teased"...

Maybe he thinks the kid will grow up tougher because he will have to learn to fight when he gets teased. Remember the old Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue".

Seriously though, I wonder what goes through some people's heads when they come up with things like this. Growing up is tough enough without the additional handicap of a stupid name. Why make your kid's life even tougher?

If this guy thinks it's such a good idea, why doesn't he change his own name to Google?

Lest we forget--
Google is actually a number (100 raised to the 100th power).

So being named Google is like being named "Forty-seven" or "Eighty-six."

Science fiction come to life (if this story is true).

Not entirely science fiction. Naming children after numbers was a common enough practice when large families were the norm: Septimus (seven), Otto (eight), Nona (nine)...etc for just a few examples from Europe.

10^100 is a googol, not a google. It was first used by a mathematician who had asked his child, "What can I call a number that is 10 to 100th power?"

The reply was, "A googol."

The article also talked about the name increasing the chances of aquiring many friends. Choosing Googol is extreme overkill since 10^100 is greater than the number of atoms in the entire universe.

Uh, ToxicPurity, Otto is Old German for "one with riches" I think you were thinking of "Octavian" which was, of course, the original name of Augustus Julias Ceasar.

Christopher Cole:

The Otto I know isn't German, he's Italian. It could be short for Ottavio or an Italianised version of Odo or some other Old German name, but he says it's the same word as for "eight". He's not an eighth child, though.

ToxicPurity you may have a point (comb your hair differently and no one will notice - old joke)with Otto in this case being a nickname for the Italian for "eight" but I was going by baby name books which in this case say that Otto is derived from the Old German Odo or Otho which meant something along the lines of "one with riches" as one book put it or "prosperous" as another book put it. I don't speak Italian, I'm struggling to learn Spanish and Ottavio could be the modern form of Octavius. The Spanish word for eight is ocho if I remember right and Spanish is derived from Latin as is Italian. However people do name their children weird names - it keeps psychiatrists and psychologists busy helping those people deal with the traumas of what kids do to other kids with oddball names.

And I wish to point out that I screwed up with the name of Octavius Julias Ceasar Augustus, the gand-nephew and heir of the more famous Gaius Julias Ceasar. Octavius being the personal name, Julias being the family name and Ceasar being the clan name and Augustus being the nichname.

Then again there are some of us that use our middle names because they are more normal than the first name.

The father (might) want the kid's friends to hear the name and want to use the search engine. But It sounds like he is trying to create a bizarre learning tool and ad of his son.