Congratulations to our dear friends Kelly and Jessica (they are loyal readers of this thread), who just brought a little masterpiece into the world by the name of Emrys William Smith. It wouldn't do to share an exact name with untold hordes of William Smiths, so he fortunately has a special first name that sets him apart...the number of other people in the world today with that exact same name is probably zero.

Emrys is a great name, and the internet tells us it has Welsh and Greek roots meaning "immortal."

I went the opposite way with my name...there was probably exactly one Joaquin Hartman in the world, and although that's still my legal name, I unofficially changed it to Jay Hartman many years ago....and consequently, I share the name with many other folks.

I always get a laugh out of the name story of my father: In high school, he was mortified that his parents spelled his name Peder with a "D" in the middle. He severely criticized them for giving him such a oddball name...why, he wondered, couldn't they have been normal and just named him "Peter," which my father subsequently changed his name to. And then, he turns around a several years later and names his kids Jedediah and Joaquin.