Texting generation carrying spelling habits to birth certificates?

It's bad enough when exams have to cater to horrific spellers due to their SMS-based vocabulary, but we're doing everything we can to make ourselves believe this latest report simply isn't true. Reportedly, a social analyst in Australia somehow believes that the wide range in spellings in a few popular names is due in large part to the fact that we spend way too much time as a whole conjugating and hyphenating in order to get text-based messages across. Said analyst was even quoted as saying that "the use of a 'y' instead of an 'i' has hit epidemic proportions, as has the use of 'k' over 'c'." Realistically, we're not about to believe the SMS craze is actually affecting children's names en masse, but please, do your next born a favor and give him / her the vowels they deserve.

[Via textually]

[Omagus Posted Mar 7th 2008 2:21PM]

This shouldn't solely be blamed on texting. I think hip hop has a lot to do with it as well. I love hip hop (the real stuff, not the garbage played on the radio or in music videos) but I can't deny that it contributes to soemthing like this.

[Omagus Posted Mar 7th 2008 2:22PM]

And I misspelled "something." How perfectly appropriate.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 7th 2008 2:36PM]

With t9 or "word" texting, it actually forces me to spell correctly. Many times I've had to spend 2 minutes going back and trying to find the right combination of letters to spell a word that I otherwise would have spelt incorrectly.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 7th 2008 2:37PM]

I agree with Omagus - this doesn't really have to do with texting. "Kreatyv" names, as they are known in some circles, have been around for some time. We're not talking about names like "Jnthn," but rather names like "Krystal," "Mckynzy," and stuff like that. There has always been naming fads, and it has always been best to avoid them (in my opinion). I understand the desire for a "unique" name, but if there are four Mckenzies of various spellings in your daughter's preschool, than you're not unique, no matter how you chose to spell it.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 7th 2008 7:38PM]

Ha...my son was born at Torrance Medical Center.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 8th 2008 4:27AM]

I was born at Torrance Medical.. haha.