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05/22/2006: "I Guess It Beats "Sue" ..."

I'm not a parent, so I've never really put a lot of thought into potential baby names. But considering it's the single word by which your child will be know for the rest of its life, I'd assume that parents would spend time to assure their child's name was meaningful and pertinent. Maybe not ...

"In 1999, there were only eight newborn American girls named Nevaeh. Last year, it was the 70th-most-popular name for baby girls, ahead of Sara, Vanessa and Amanda.

The spectacular rise of Nevaeh (commonly pronounced nah-VAY-uh) has little precedent, name experts say. They watched it break into the top 1,000 of girls' names in 2001 at No. 266, the third-highest debut ever. Four years later it cracked the top 100 with 4,457 newborn Nevaehs, having made the fastest climb among all names in more than a century, the entire period for which the Social Security Administration has such records.

Nevaeh is not in the Bible or any religious text. It is not from a foreign language. It is not the name of a celebrity, real or fictional.

The surge of Nevaeh can be traced to a single event: the appearance of a Christian rock star, Sonny Sandoval of P.O.D., on MTV in 2000 with his baby daughter, Nevaeh. "Heaven spelled backwards," he said.

If your name is Heaven backwards, does that mean you should grow up to be a hell raiser? I guess I should be happy my parents favorite word wasn't "ssabmud" ...