Freedom from all defects and imperfections, diseases, and distempers, infirmities and deformities, maimedness and monstrous shapes.

Throughout this book I have been trying to get my head around my head. And now I am about to try to get my head around the very processes by which I have been trying to get my head around itself: I am going to think about thought.

But celebrities actually have a weak effect on baby names. As of 2000, the pop star Madonna had sold 130 million records worldwide but hadn't generated even the ten copycat namings―in California, no less―required to make the master index of four thousand names from which the sprawling list of girls' names on page 227 was drawn.

The expenditure of time, money, and political capital on this project has been excessive.