Ever since the Puritans named their babies Fly-Fornication, America has been a land of naming freedom and self-expression. While other governments impose restrictions—German parents have to choose a name that clearly indicates the gender of the child and is not a surname, and the French, among others, forbid names that might expose a child to mockery—in the United States, anything goes. In 1950, nearly 30 percent of all babies were given one of the top ten names, a proportion that’s now shrunk to less than 10 percent. Popular baby names today include locales like Brooklyn and London; surnames as given names that summon images of Waspy dynasties, such as Morgan and Whitney; and brand names of upscale products. A century ago, immigrants often changed their names as a first step toward assimilation, with Bridgets morphing into Bettys and Giovannis naming their sons plain John. Now parents are going back to their ethnic roots for inspiration. With assimilation no longer the issue, the classic Italian name Giovanni is close to being in the top 100 names for boys, and Gianna has already made it into the top 100 names for girls. Giving your child an ethnically distinct name can be a double-edged sword. "I grew up hating my name," says Orly Telisman, 35, named for her grandfather Orrin. But in college, she discovered an unexpected advantage Orly comes from the Hebrew word for light. "Explaining my name gave me a way to say, I’m Jewish, which culturally and spiritually means a lot to me," she says. "To appreciate my name, I had to grow into my own skin. " The search for a name that screams " I’m unique!" leads some parents to invent names or play with traditional spelling. Besides the classic Irish Aidan in the Social Security list of top 1,000 names, for example, there are also Aiden, Ayden, Aden, Adan, Aaden, Aydan, and Aedan. Sometimes bucking the latest trends means choosing something that others might see as decidedly out of style. Lee Krasny, 34, named her now-two, year-old daughter Dorothy, after the girl’s maternal great- grandmother. "We struggled for a long time with whether to name her Dorothy or just use the D and select a modern-sounding name, but it seemed most authentic to go straight up. " A downside of a "creative" name is that it may come with baggage, not all of it positive. "I always felt I was prejudged by my name," says Gestin Skaggs, 43, whose parents named her for a word they heard in a German love song. "I’ve either had to overcome some stereotype of a short, fat German man or live up to an expectation that I’m a really wild and creative thinker.② People ascribe all kinds of personality traits to me that I don’t have. " But that’s a small price to pay, say the teens with offbeat names we spoke with. "I’ve met a lot of people because of my name. They hear it and think it’s cool," says Calypso Gibaldi, 15, named by her ocean-loving father for Jacques Cousteau’s boat. "If my name was Jane, I’d be average like everyone else. \ As to a distinct name, all the following are true EXCEPT that ______.

A. parents who don’t choose it might be considered outdated
B. most parents like to follow the latest trends
C. every coin has two sides, so is a distinct name
D. some parents would like to produce one