I hope all those asses at least get those Cohen kids circumcised.

1. Why any non-Jewish person would want to name their child Cohen, I don't know. But then, I get nausea when I hear most people's ideas for baby names these days. However, having said that...

2. Even if we get past the fact that there are already tons of non-Jews with the last name Cohen, and the fact that only a small percentage of Jews surnamed Cohen are actually Kohanim, using the name Cohen for a non-Jewish child is NOT STEALING. It's goofy, but it's not stealing. This is an insane accusation. Religious communities don't get a trademark on sounds. Some people badly want to be offended, I guess.

It's a clueless choice, and reminds me of being invited to an "ecumenical" seder where participants sang "Old Rugged Cross." But nobody gets to patent a name or a ritual in our melting pot of a country.

Names with religious meanings do tend to spark controversy, don't they? Before it was Cohen, I heard lots of nasty comments about Nevaeh.

I can't relate to the frustration over Cohen, but I'll admit that, as a Catholic, I find Trinity wildly inappropriate. But it wouldn't bias me against the parents or the child wearing the name - and I can see that some parents might find the religious meaning appealing.

Just wait until all the trendy variations come out, like they did with the name Aiden 2-4 years ago: Jayden, Cayden, Ayedin...you name it, it's been done.

As someone from an Orthodox Jewish background, I'm not insulted by this at all. It's actually quite flattering. I think it's funny. I would, however, object to people changing their SURNAME to Cohen when they are not actual Kohanim. That would make a greater difference.

Boy, this is really going to spoil the gene pool, when all these Cohens start intermarrying with the real thing! .

does the phrase "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" ring a bell? I would think that in this day and age, to have someone choose a name from a culture other than their own would be a good thing.

I personally don't get the idea of naming your kid something just because you like the name, and I especially don't get naming your kid something trendy and faddish, to boot. We all have so many relatives and ancestors who came before us and put us where we are today, why not honor them and keep their names in your family?

What's wrong with Stephen, John, Robert, William, Jack, or Fred? What the hell is Jayden or Caleb or Colton except a dumb fad that disconnects the kid from his lineage? And why last names as first names?

Names mean things - everyone laughs at the old joke about the inner-city mom naming her newborn daughter "Vagina" yet no of these stupid parents seem to get that other names have meanings, too, that may or may not be appropriate for a child.

My two boys are named after their parents' respective paternal grandfathers (Jack and Roy) and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I think the sound and meaning of a name are important (and I like heritage too).

And I all but break out and laugh when I think of the day when I see "Barbie" and "Tiffany" etc... in the nursing home.

But come on... in this day and age, there are more important things then this article.

I love the irony! Illiterate bible-thumping, evangelical, anti-Semites name their kids Cohen, only to have their ilk mistake them for being Jewish, beat them up and taunt them mercilessly. Suh-weet revenge!

The last name Cohan, is a common Irish last name. To say that any person or religion should and could be offended by the naming of a baby is preposterous. While I personally would not name my children some of the names that are being chosen by celebrities and 'persons of high caste,' I would surely think that naming a child in honor of someone of the priestly sect of the Jewish faith would be pleasing and most assuredly an honor.

Assimilation always has a price.

If you're surprised about this, you haven't hung around many Jews. And I don't mean this badly -- I just happened to go to a very Jewish university and have plenty of conservative Jewish friends. I don't know, if you've got a bloodline that has survived 3000 years of all sorts of exclusions and massacres and so forth, you might just feel a little protective of it...

But here's a general rule: if you don't know what your kid's name means, you probably shouldn't saddle your kid with it. I think that's a fairly sensible rule. Maybe names don't have significance anymore, but there are cultures in which they do, and you don't have to go very far back in Jewish cultural traditions to find folktales of people whose names represent their fate, such as a little boy who is miraculously saved from the Cossocks and adopted by Gentiles, but doesn't know who he is until he hears his name, Chaim -- "life" -- being uttered. Of course a name should be aesthetically pleasing to the parents, but ultimately, it seems kind of unfair to send a kid out into the world with a name that sounds nice but means nothing. Not that this has stopped many people...

I find baby-naming fascinating. My son's name is David, and he's usually the only David in his class. When I was growing up in the 60s, I usually had one or two Davids in my class every year. My oldest daughter is named Barbara (after my mother), and I remember once when I was at a playground, calling Barb, a woman approached me and said, "What an unusual name!" Not in the 1920s, I thought. There were a lot of Barbaras then!

I think this whole Cohen issue is interesting, but not troubling (I'm not Jewish, though, so maybe I'm being insensitive). I think it's really a complement-the implication being that giving people the impression that you're Jewish is cool. If you think about it, you never hear of WASPs giving their children Muslim names.(Though I know African Americans do, and I think some of the Arabic girl's names are pretty).