Alkapone and his namesake
Being the daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian is handicap enough, one would think, without having to go through life branded with the name “North West.” But in the annals of self-indulgent and reckless child-abuse-by-birth-certificate, what the rapper and the whatever-the-hell-she-is inflicted on their love child is small potatoes compared to the cruel and horrible name affixed to this unfortunate:
“Big Island police have charged the man arrested in connection with a carjacking Wednesday night in Hilo. Alkapone Cruz-Balles, 19, who has no permanent address, was charged late Friday afternoon (July 19) with first-degree robbery and unauthorized control of a propelled vehicle…A Hilo man was ready to get into his car at the Target parking lot of on Puainako Avenue when police say Cruz-Balles brandished a weapon and threatened the victim. Police say he then took the keys and took off in the car….”
“Alkapone Cruz-Balls?”
There’s nothing like pointing your son toward the cell block when he’s barely out of the womb. I don’t know why any parents would name a child “Alkapone,” much less why they would voluntarily adopt the surname “Cruz-Balls,” which sounds like a weapon in a Sci-Fi porno film. I do know that any parent who would do so are a pair of unethical jerks. Presumably they thought the name was funny….how nice: burden your child with the name of an infamous gangster so you can have a few laughs at dinner parties. I don’t believe in name determinism, but someone named “Alkapone” is going to have a hard time entering a lot of fields—accounting, banking, law enforcement, politics (except perhaps in Chicago.) It obviously doesn’t bestow any advantages; Al Capone was a criminal mastermind.
Alkapone is just a punk with a terrible name.
___________________
Spark and Pointer: Fark
Facts: Hawaii News Now
Ethics Alarms 
Years ago as a Paramedic I transported a 19 y/o girl who was pregnant with her 4th child. Her mother had ridden in with us and checked her in with admissions. The baby girl was born almost immediately after we arrived up in labor and delivery. A few min after the birth the L&D secretary came in the room and asked if the girl’s mother could come back to the room. The MD said: “Let’s wait until after she has delivered the placenta”. The girl looked up and said “Placenta? That would be a good name.” The L&D RN and I spent the next few minutes talking her out of it.
I want you to be joking so very badly. It’s like the scene in “Waiting” where a man says that he wishes he could name his daughter “Chlamydia” because it’s such a pretty word.
I wish I was joking. About more than the name.
I hoped you were joking about the name. The 19 year old with 4 kids keeps deleting itself from my memory every time I close the page, probably to preserve my sanity and faith in humanity.
It’s possible (given his young age), that we was named for the rapper “Al Kapone.” Still a stupid name.
Thanks for that info…I wasn’t aware of the rapper—who, of course,named himself, and named himself to evoke the original Al. Is it possible that Alk’s parents didn’t know about the bootlegger? That’s almost worse—ignorance AND stupidity.
I didn’t even think of that — and I should have of course. That is definitely worse!
Jack,
is it Cruz-Balls?
or Cruz-Balles? pronounced (Bah-Yez)
I love Freakonomics discussion on setting children up for failure in naming.
I like the Freakonomics analysis as well but have wondered whether their analysis isn’t a little backwards. I think the reason kids with awful made-up names are doomed is because their parents are bereft and dopey. Thus, the bad name is a symtom of the underlying problem the kids will have to deal with, not a cause of their problems. I.e., the problem the kids have is their parents.
symptom
I can agree with that theory to an extent. Of course a person’s success rate later in life is multifactorial.
People these days seem to have no concept that names are supposed to MEAN something. Naming you child for criminals is bad enough. Inventing a name that is meaningless is almost as bad in my book. Then you have those who blindly name their children for celebrities of dubious merit or even for their characters in films. Every parent-to-be should get a book of names and find out what they mean before inflicting something of their passing fancy on their children. A name is an important thing, as it’s carried by someone through life.