Amy Schumer's Baby's Name Was Accidentally A Great Joke
Joke names aren't hard to come up with, but it's special when they actually show up on the birth certificate.
Joke names are, in a broad sense, difficult to fall into. Nobody actually comes out of the hospital with a birth certificate that reads "Hugh Jass." At some point, someone's gonna hear that name suggestion and say, "Hold up, what?"
Well, sometimes it takes a little longer for that to register than usual. For example, Amy Schumer, who had little baby Gene with husband Chris Fischer.
He's almost a year old now, and it looks like Schumer is changing the kid's name? Why? Because it was accidentally one of the best jokes she'd ever written. The first name, Gene, is totally normal, even when you factor in the recent bizarre trend of giving babies geriatric names. He's going to get along just great with his future friends Wilbur and Ethel. But Gene's middle name was Attell -- chosen for Schumer's good friend, comedian, Dave Attell.
Which, is a fine tribute to a friend. The issue is that "Gene Attell" is about half a mispronunciation from "genital," and that's accidentally one of the best jokes Amy Schumer's ever done.
The whole "gen-ital" joke might have slipped by a bunch of adults for the better part of a year, but there's no way that kid was going to get out of middle school unscathed. My parents named me "Isaac," a name largely immune to shortening and/or mockery, and I still got called "Ballsack" at some point by just about every guy I knew (and plenty of girls) from about 5th grade up until my 20s. I know too damn well how rough little Gene would have had it. Luckily, Schumer's had the good sense to change his middle name to David, which is Attell's first name and her husband's middle name.
Better to have nipped this one in the bud, lest he be doomed to the fate of every other oddly-named guy who ends up writing comedy for a living.
