There is a place that I think of as suburban Disneyland, a wondrous, shiny Technicolor place, with free babysitting, 79 cent bottomless coffee, Swedish meatballs, and assembly-required couches. That place is called Ikea. Ever since my son became potty trained and 37 inches tall, he qualifies for "Smaland," the kids' fun zone, and I repair up to the cafeteria for my version of R&R: readin' and (w)ritin'.

Today I sat near the TV playing Toy Story hoping to yip-yap with other suburban moms (city folks, I think, mostly do their madcap Ikea runs on the weekends. Poor saps.) My hot topic today, as the ladies on The View might say, was the top baby names of 2007, which came out on Mothers' Day on www.socialsecurity.gov. You've got to believe this is the most fun those Social Security folks have all year.

Linda Keenan worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN...read more

Now I knew my child's formal name, Francis, was low but I guess I didn't expect it to be as low as it was: #615. Frank is what we usually call him, and that was still a lowly #262. I was hoping to find a few other kids at Ikea with names as unpopular as my son's, but no such luck. There was no Stanley, #617. No Sincere, #622, No Jabari, #625, definitely no little Elvis, #676, in the building.

How did my child get a name that landed him at 615? Besides the fact that it's his grandfather's name, for me at least, it came down to three words: The Thorn Birds. Francis, or Frank, was the name of the doomed bastard half-brother of doomed, priest-lovin' Meggie. I also have a crush on Angela's Ashes author Frank McCourt. St. Francis was my mom's favorite saint. And "Frank Keenan," an early American actor, is the most famous Keenan, according to Google and when is Google ever wrong?

I must say I never put much thought into his name. He was always a Frank to me, there wasn't even a second name ever in my mind. But I did worry, as I still do four years later, that his name, which, by the way peaked at #6 in 1880 and stayed in the top ten for 42 more years, will make him a teasing target: Frankenstein. Freaky Frank. Frankfurter. Stanky Franky.

We have met only one other Frank and he was autistic, and the two of them couldn't share the realization that they shared the same name. I do have a friend who knows another wee Frankie, as my Irish forebearers, or someone in The Thorn Birds might say, but he is still mythic to us since we haven't met him and we're still not entirely convinced of his existence.

We met an old man about a year ago who looked down at my little guy and said "I haven't met a Frank for 45 years!" Looking at the popularity trajectory of Frank (down 55 percent in popularity in a decade), there might be no Franks left 45 years from now, like redheads who are thought to be a dying tribe as well.

As I sit here at Ikea scribbling instead of shopping I meet Owen (#56) and his mom echoes the sentiment of a half-dozen or so I talked to: they thought they were choosing something unique, only to find, a bit too sheepishly, that they were not. Olivia's (#7) mom was one of the renegades who didn't care that her chosen name was super-popular. She just liked, she said, that it meant ‘peace'. Olivia's brother's name was Joseph (#13) (not Joe or Joey, she told me emphatically) which intrigued me because like Frank, Joseph is a bit old-school but still popular. Sure enough, Joseph was named for his grandfather. If Mom had had her way, he would have been one of many, many Jakes (relative of Jacob, #1 in 2007).

I don't wish now for Frank to have one of those names that is called out on the soccer field and 5 different heads turn. But I do wish sometimes that there were more Franks out there for him to relate to, and that his name didn't sound so otherworldly to the Emily's, Ethans and Madisons out there. The only place where I've seen heads turn in happy recognition when I call out Frank's name? The fire station, which is one pleasing dividend of having a Frank.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what the most popular names are in the real home of Ikea, Sweden, they are not Thor and Hedwig. They are William and Ella. Those kids would fit in at an American suburban playground just fine. ...read more blogs