The Columnist Manifesto

To quote the famous headline from the Onion: Factual inaccuracy found on internet!

It was recently suggested in these pages that there are no girls named "Brooklyn." According to A, the Director of The Columnist Manifesto's After-the-Fact-Checking Department, this is incorrect.

According to the Social Security Administration's Popular Baby Names website, Brooklyn was the 119th most popular baby name in 2003. However, none of the other boroughs was among the top 1000 baby names for the years 1990-2003, [during which] Paris ranked 275, London ranked 892, and Gary ranked 326.

The Columnist Manifesto, while proud of its witty fact-checking experts, feels very foolish for having overlooked the, in retrospect, overwhelming likelihood that baby-name websites would exist in abundance on the internet. To be sure, once the Bush Administration privatizes Social Security, the SSA's "Baby Naming Website" will doubtless either be abolished or else made available only to premium pay subscribers.

The Columnist Manifesto regrets the error, particularly since we do not relish having the following conversation in our law school classes 22 years from now:

PROFESSOR OSCAR MADISON: How was the due process clause interpreted in the case you read for today? Brooklyn?

STUDENT: It's Brook-lyn.