Saturday

Another great passage from Epstein's Snobbery. He first quotes from Kurt Andersen's novel, Turn of the Century:

George has been amazed to discover that there were two Griffins in Max's class this year. . . . But Griffin is precisely the kind of name that's in vogue among parents who send their children to nonreligious private schools called St. Andrews, who buy forty-dollar-a-gallon Martha Stewart pain and fifty-dollar doll-size American Girl butter churns made of solid chestnut. One of Max's classmates is named Huck - not Huckleberry, Huck - and in Lulu's class there is a Truman, a Chester, a Sawyer, three Benjamins, two Coopers, a Walker, a Hunter (Hunter Liu), as well as multiple Amandas, Lucys, and Hopes, and even a Gwyneth.

Epstein then offers his insight into this (let's face it, annoying) phenomenon:

What is going on here is the need to mark one's child off as different, unique, stylish, above and - why not come out and say it - just a little beyond the others. And why not? Our little Stefan, Sophia, Luc, Alyssa is, after all, the child of parents of exquisite taste. If not, he or she wouldn't carry such a special name, n'est-ce pas? These are children, let us face it, aimed at better places than, say, Michigan State or a job selling automobile insurance.