Could Baby Names Help Battle Climate Change?

Today, for Blog Action Day, over 8,000 9,000 10,000 blogs from all over the world are posting about climate change in order to raise awareness and spark discussion.

Climate change & baby names…unlikely pairing, is it? Tying these two topics together in a meaningful way isn’t easy.

A post about nature names would be the obvious solution. But nature names only appeal to a small number of people; not many parents are willing to consider names like Ocean and Sky for their newborns.

So I asked myself: Are there baby names out there for parents who aren’t into nature names, but still want something that reflects their commitment to environmental responsibility? Names that might actually make a difference as far as climate change is concerned?

After some thought, I came to the conclusion that yes, names of this sort might just exist. And, if they did, they’d be names with short, simple, standard spellings.

Why? Because short, simple, standardized names aren’t misspelled as often as names that are long, or complicated, or have more than one standard form (e.g. Eric & Erik). Misspellings lead to waste. Not just the waste of printing a name incorrectly and then having to reprint it, but the waste involved with drawing attention to that mistake and providing whatever proof is required to correct it. That amounts to wasted paper, wasted electricity, maybe wasted fuel, and definitely wasted time. If we reduce the number of misspellings, we can reduce some waste, and reducing waste is one of the key things we can do to battle climate change.

Luckily, hundreds of names fit the bill. Adam, Amy, Edgar, Emily, Leo, Lisa, Martin, Megan, Jonas, Julia, Simon, Susan…all are short, simple names typically spelled one particular way. Using one of these instead of something like Maximilian, Taliesin, Jaidyn or Maeghanne certainly won’t match the impact of, say, driving a hybrid or installing solar panels. But it may make some sort of difference. And, when it comes to climate change, every little bit helps.