MAHDI: What's my name?

Allow me to set a scene that I have yet to endure in reality, but a scenario that will probably hit the majority of you squarely between the eyes with more momentum than Bridget Jones’s backside falling from a moving aircraft as she attempts to skydive before colliding into a muddy pen of pigs. All over the world, there are unassuming men having dinner with their respective wives or partners. Polite conversation ensues before the woman blurts out that she’s pregnant. The news hangs in the air like the ash cloud emitted from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull’s crater. The dispute over the baby’s name evolves into a battle of epic proportions, verbal negotiation representing the ferocity of blades and staccato yelling the repeated gunshots. For the Shakespearian devotee this melodrama is far too plebeian; the bard himself proclaimed, “For what’s in a name?” Well, I would argue that he might have to eat his own words.

The protests that swept the Egyptian nation resulted in a variety of consequences, ranging from political reform to the gratitude many now feel toward sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The unbridled scenes of a nation’s strife were widely publicized, thanks to the advent of Mark Zuckerberg’s entrepreneurial baby. This was human expression gone viral, a forum for anyone to watch the rise and fall of revolution from his or her desktop. However, Zuckerberg is no longer the only man on Earth able to call Facebook his “baby.” In Egypt, one man felt so indebted to what the social networking website had provided for his country, he named his firstborn daughter Facebook. Living in a world where celebrities name their children Apple, Sailor, Chastity and even Satchel (I’m holding my breath for Briefcase, seems like only a matter of time), having a child named after a website is completely…normal. It is with paternal pride that this Egyptian man welcomed to the world Facebook Jamal Ibrahim, simultaneously booking his place in technological history.

For a name that represents the very essence of our shift to online correspondence, the Internet community has been rendered speechless. There is now a living, breathing human being called Facebook. Or “Book” for short. Somewhere in Egypt will grow a diffident girl who will attend her first day of school and college, who will get a job and get married and have children. She will also probably open a Facebook account. Facebook will be using Facebook. The unimaginable has become tangible reality. Her name will serve as a constant reminder not only of Egypt’s revolution but also of a social craze that has captured our hearts and minds and tangled them in Ethernet cords and unrelenting poke wars. In “The Social Network,” Justin Timberlake famously rhapsodizes that a million dollars wasn’t cool – a billion dollars was. Having just a website with millions of users is no longer cool. Being the namesake to a breathing specimen is.

Now, imagine a different couple. Let’s assume that the aforementioned couple is on Facebook. Now let’s introduce the woman’s creepy, obsessive male friend who has suffered through his unrequited love for her by gazing at the back of her head longingly at work. His heartstrings vibrate along to old love songs that boom in his head every time she walks in the room. She confides in him that she is having relationship problems. Now with the advent of the Breakup Notifier, her friend will receive an e-mail alert as to when she becomes single, allowing for him to swoop in with Lionel Richie’s “Hello” playing in the background. Admittedly, through this application people are less inclined to stare motionless at the profile page of their beloved and instead get back to more important tasks at hand, such as leaving their rooms. But one fact remains: we need to take a step back and realize that we have reduced the revered art of courtship to an e-mail notification. Conversely, perhaps this innovative matchmaking facilitator will lead to more happy couples that conceive children named Facebook, who get bullied on the playground by a chubby child named Google and later devour ice cream when things with Yahoo didn’t quite work out.

Facebook’s ascension into the hallowed halls of Internet gold has been unprecedented. So what does the future hold? Does this shift in what qualifies as a plausible name for a human being mark the conception of hundreds of technological namesakes? Have we cheapened the art of finding love to an online hunt for the technologically savvy? Only time will tell.

Sofiya Mahdi is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at sofiya218@gmail.com.