#Whats-in-a-name?:

It’s not unusual. A new mum, fresh out of labour, hops on to Facebook and announces the birth of her child.

Earlier in the week, one American mum wrote on her page “Hashtag Jameson was born at 10 o’clock last night.” The Facebook message continued to give weight details and the fact that mum loved her baby girl.

Hashtag?

If you’re a Twitter user like we are (@www_motherpedia), you’ll know that a hashtag or # symbol is used in Twitter to denote keywords or trending topics. They can range from anything general – for example #gillard if someone is referring to the Prime Minister to something quirky, such as #5songstoremember.

Anyway, baby Hashtag Jameson is now quite the social media star – but no one has yet been able to determine whether it was “a very unfortunate typo”, as the Huffington Post suggests, or a legitimate name from a very big Twitter fan.

Of course, in true Twitter fashion, the topic of whether the baby’s name is really Hashtag has its own hashtag - #babyhashtag – with many Twitterati suggesting baby should use her middle name instead of her first name if, indeed, it is Hashtag. One clever twitter user, @ParisMackey, tweeted that they could see #babyhashtag playing with her friends #Like, #PTAT, #Tweet, #Share and @.

But too late for that also.

In May last year, an Israeli couple named their third daughter ‘Like’ after – you guessed it – the Facebook button.

“I’m not worried about other children teasing Like,” said her mother, Vardit Adler. She said that her other two daughters are named Dvash and Pie and they are not teased – which suggests that Israeli children are very polite.

As you would expect, Like has thousands of ‘likes’ on her Facebook page.

But don’t confuse Like’s Facebook page with Facebook’s Facebook page. Yes. In 2011, an Egyptian couple named their daughter ‘Facebook’ in honour of the role social media played in Egypt’s protests and uprising that began in January 2011.

Traditionalists might raise their eyebrows, but it can also be argued that they are just a sign of the times as were names such as William, Charles, Jane, Charlotte ages ago; then Betty and Bruce; followed by Kylie and Jason; and more recently Skye and Zac.

As Shakespeare said: #whatsinaname?