While working on my thesis earlier this week, it occurred to me that the name of one of the sociologists whose work I was citing was really pretty cool. That sociologist’s name is Donatella della Porta. I think that’s an awesome name. I said so on Twitter, and received this reply:

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/George_TGF/status/99603269281779712″]

In the interest of testing the theory that my wedding ring has granted me the ability to find and identify awesome names, I did a search for “awesome names” and found this baby name page. On that page there are a bunch of names that are supposed to be “awesome,” but I can’t say I agree with a lot of the choices. Maybe I’m in the minority; the choices were supposedly based on popularity ratings, after all. So that’s a strike against the theory.

To explore a variation on the theory, I looked up an old 50-word story I wrote called Proceedings of the Juvenile Court, in which I invented several names. The names I created for that story were, and still are, completely awesome (I especially like Fkaisl Ipsidav), but I invented them before I was married, so that can’t have been an ability granted to me by my ring. Strike two.

As my last attempt, I went to the Wikipedia page that lists sociologists, to see if my ability might just be tied to finding cool names among sociologists. This tactic showed some promise. A quick glance-through allowed me to identify Stanley Aronowitz, Enzo Faletto, Rick Fantasia, Tariq Modood, and Slavoj Žižek. You are obligated to agree that all of these sociologists have awesome names. Especially Mr. Žižek (some of whose work I have actually already been exposed to through various classes).

I still can’t be entirely sure that the awesomeness of sociologists’ names isn’t something that existed before I got married, but there may be something here to keep an eye on.