If you’re like me (and for your sake, I hope not), you grew up with the Peanuts gang.

Those lovable, illustrated rugrats that derived from the imagination of Charles Schulz, there wasn’t a holiday special that I didn’t watch that included this group of chums. Does anyone know how soon the “Great Pumpkin” charade is going to be on?

It’s hard for me to choose my favorite character. Each person had his or her own special quality. There’s Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Woodstock, Marcie, 5…..

Some of you might be scratching your heads right about now. I’m sure not everyone is familiar with the boy named 5. He played on Charlie Brown’s baseball team for a short run, he wasn’t a regular “Peanut.” And his name was 5, which was short for a certain seven or eight digit number that began with 5. Hence the name.

When I was first introduced to 5 at age eight, I thought that a person having a number for a name was absurd. Who would be so foolish (albeit original) to name their child in the form of a numeral?

Now at age 21, with the advantage of more developed thought processes, I have concluded that the parents of 5 might have been members of a lesser privileged family. They didn’t have a clean reputation behind their family name, and decided to go with the more anonymous title of a multi-digit number.

I like the idea of having the titles by which we are referred to in the form of numbers. If I had my way, we would be using our social security numbers as our names. It would make things a little impersonal when relating with others, but I think this is a small sacrifice to make.

It would also eliminate the chance of some rather embarrassing or humorous (depending if it’s your name or not) names. Example given: An actor from “The Bob Newhart Show,” Peter Bonerz (it’s okay to laugh, go ahead.)

Since social security numbers don’t have a pattern within family members, it would be impossible to detect a person’s descent from the nine-number combination. Therefore, judgments about a person could not be made strictly from title.

Without last names, there might be a little less prejudice in our society. There is too much weight placed on a person’s family name that leads to certain judgments about a person, regardless of that person’s history.

Coming from a small town in northeast Iowa, I have seen the effects that a person’s last name can have on that person’s image or reputation.

For some people, it is a true blessing. Having a particular last name can give a person a “get out of jail free” card of sorts. People with such a name are descendants of people that have done something great for the community. They might not have done a thing in their life, but with their name, they will get by.

There is another side to the coin, of course. Some last names bring instant scrutiny to an individual, usually because someone of the same last name has been deemed an outcast.

People instantly decide that any member of a blacklisted family is as despicable as the single individual that brought the wrath of the community upon it. People that have something to offer to a community are often shut out due to the reputation their name has “earned.”

I would expect everybody on the down side of this issue to agree with me completely. The frustration brought on by this unfair judgment can drive a person to fall into the behavior that causes the reputation behind their name to pass on to the next generation.

They figure they aren’t going to have a fair shake, so screw ’em, they’ll be exactly what the others want them to be. It might be fun for a while, but after a rather unsatisfying life it will leave an empty feeling inside their collective souls…not to mention regret that they didn’t try to buck the system.

I actually feel a lot of the people that have their names on the “gilded” list would want to lose their names, too. How so? When you are a member of the “good” people, you have to make sure you don’t do something to ruin such a reputation. A person’s name may be enough to refute a nasty rumor, but when solid proof is brought about, there’s not much that can save them.

You and I both know that no one is perfect, regardless of reputation. Human nature leads people to want to do some things that are a little less than acceptable in society’s norms. People with a last name that is held in high regard are under incredible amounts of stress to repress these sinful thoughts.

Losing the last names could possibly bring about more freedom, not to mention lower blood pressure.

Possibly the most important point would be that without a last name attached to a person, you’d actually have to get to know somebody before you make a judgment. Wouldn’t that be nice? If nothing else, it would be something new.

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Christopher Clair is a senior in journalism mass communication from Waukon.