Popular names for children come and go as daily naming conventions come and go. Mary becomes Madison. Customer becomes community.

We're no longer plain old customers to a company, we're a member of the company's community of users. Suddenly, with a simple naming convention change, you've gone from a customer to a member.

Not being much of a joiner does that make me less of a customer?

Christendom faces a similar crisis of naming conventions to attract parishioners (or, whatever they're called these days). First Church of Whatever became an Assembly of this or that, then a Fellowship of something or other.

Even those popular religious naming conventions are giving way to such fashionable terms as Gathering, Mosaic, and Portico.

Early Christians were social activists, banding together in small congregations and groups to spread the gospel and share resources to help the poor. Many churches today play pop music between sermons, blending the sacred and the stylish. A sermon is a performance, sans fish and bread.

Times change and so do the naming conventions we use in our everyday lives, personal, social, business.

Parents are father, mother, mom, dad, but seldom Jonas or Meredith. Children on son, daughter, child, kid, even offspring, but mostly Todd, Emily, and so on.

For a few centuries, married women took the name of their husbands. Some so-called enlightened women added their family name to their husband's family name, joined by a hyphen, and passed the hyphenated name to their offspring.

That particular fad didn't go beyond a generation or two, as we seldom hear of someone named Mary Benton-Hartley-Wong-Smith-Tanaka.