I have always wondered what it would be like to be able to pick your own name. What if there was a law that said that your parents gave you a temporary name at birth, but you got to select your permanent name later? They could call this decree the “Personal Branding Selectivity Act.”

That way you could navigate through life for a while, have a few experiences, make a few observations, and then be able to make an informed choice about what you’d like to be called for the rest of your life.

I know what you’re thinking … if we let a 5-year-old pick his own name, we’d wind up with a bunch of Shreks and Spider-Mans and Barbies and Hello Kittys. Now that I think of it, when I was a kid, I probably would have picked something like Pinocchio or Hopalong or some superhero. I could hear the kindergarten conversation now …