Atomic age spawned filmmaker's first name

The dawn of the atomic age in Egypt resulted in filmmaker Atom Egoyan's unusual first name.

Egoyan was born in 1960 in Cairo, around the time that nuclear power plants began opening in Egypt.

"My parents had the idea that here was this new source of energy, so it would be great to name their son after it. Sort of a vaguely hippie-ish idea," Egoyan, 42, said in a Los Angeles interview last week to promote his film "Ararat."

"Atom" also was a close variant of "Adom," a classical name among Egoyan's Armenian ancestors. Since his first name was pronounced like "Adam," it created a running joke when Egoyan's parents named his sister Eve.