I have a dictionaries from the 30's never getting rid of them.

There used to be a similar concept in older "civilizations" that babies were not given names until they were a certain age since they were considered to not posses a soul until then. Its been thought this was a way to make infant deaths more tolerable.

If you actually took this logic, and removed all emotion. you could justify killing children well into early puberty, since "technically" they cannot take care of themselves, and rely on their parents for sustenance/shelter/etc. They are laying the ground work to be able to kill people with impunity..... Yay