Headline of the Week
Abby Humphreys

Features

Headline of the Week

The mother of a two-year-old in Sweden is preparing herself for a difficult conversation with her son once he’s old enough to ask where his name came from.

Johanna Sandstrom thought she was getting a simple tattoo of her children’s names, but realized after she got home that the artist had misspelled “Kevin.” Since laser tattoo removal is expensive, painful, and time-consuming, there was virtually no way to rectify the mistake… unless her son’s name was changed to the misspelling. And according to Fox News, that’s what happened.

I’m no stranger to name misspellings, both first and last; there’s one one sad “Abigasil” name tag floating around my personal possessions after a typist was too lazy to backspace the S. But none of the variations of my name have turned out as cool as “Kelvin.” Take a look: 

The Independent

"I had never heard the name 'Kelvin' before," Sandstrom said, according to Fox News. "There isn’t anyone who names their kid Kelvin. So when I thought more about it, I realized that no one else has this name. It became unique. Now we think it is better than Kevin."

Kelvin, for the record, is a base unit of thermodynamic temperature equal in magnitude to Celsius. The unit was named after Lord Kelvin, a physicist who lived during the 1800s.

“Kevin,” on the other hand, is an Irish name (anglicized from Caoimhín) meaning “kind, gentle, handsome.” I’m not sure which name little Kelvin would have preferred, but it looks like he doesn’t get a choice at the moment.

Here’s what this headline would look like in print: