There are limits, though, to what the general public will accept in terms of advertising and corporate sponsorship. In 2001, a New York couple used Yahoo! and eBay to offer naming rights to their baby son for a minimum of $500,000. Their intention was to use the common practice of corporate sponsorship to finance raising and educating their baby. They were willing to name him Microsoft, Coke, Kraft – pretty much any company who would come up with the fee could name the little boy. And, rather shockingly, a survey conducted by AmericanBaby.com right after the couple’s plan hit the news revealed that approximately half of all parents surveyed would consider naming their child for a corporation, if the payoff was large enough!

Nonetheless, there were no bids from the corporate world. They may have been scared off by public reaction to the couple’s behavior – they were called money-grubbers, heartless, crass, and worse, in blogs, letters to editors, and personal communications. (The baby, incidentally, was named Zane, since no company offered the financial incentive required.) It appears that this is where we as a society draw the line.

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