turns out to be. Otherwise, why bother? The belief in parental power is manifest in the first official act a parent commits: giving the baby a name. As any modern parent knows, the baby-naming industry is booming, as evidenced by a pro- liferation of books, websites, and baby-name consultants. Many par- ents seem to believe that a child cannot prosper unless it is hitched to the right name; names are seen to carry great aesthetic or even predic- tive powers. This might explain why, in 1958, a New York City man named Robert Lane decided to call his baby son Winner. The Lanes, who lived in a housing project in Harlem, already had several children, each with a fairly typical name. But this boy-well, Robert Lane ap- parently had a special feeling about this one. Winner Lane: how could he fail with a name like that?   Three years later, the Lanes had another baby boy, their seventh and last child. For reasons that no one can quite pin down today, Robert de- cided to name this boy Loser. It doesnt appear that Robert was un- happy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the names bookend effect. First a Winner, now a Loser. But if Winner Lane could hardly be expected to fail, could Loser Lane possibly succeed? Loser Lane did in fact succeed. He went to prep school on a schol- arship, graduated from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and joined the New York Police Department (this was his mothers longtime wish), where he made detective and, eventually, sergeant. Although he never hid his name, many people were uncomfortable using it. "So I have a bunch of names," he says today, "from Jimmy to James to whatever they want to call you. Timmy. But they rarely call you Loser." Once in a while, he said, "they throw a French twist on it: Losier. " To his police colleagues, he is known as Lou. And what of his brother with the cant-miss name? The most note-