Names: My column. Now featuring Davos Seaworth and an evil telepath

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Ormond,

Can you explain why people give names to their children that will obviously get them picked on? Like, if your last name is Proudfit or Hurtz or Gateway, for example, why would you name your child Richard? Because those are real.

[Ormond]

Tywin, how old are your examples? 

The first instances of "dick" as a slang term for "penis" occur around 1891 as British army slang. Most Americans probably weren't aware of the slang meaning until the 1940s.

And for several decades after that, even people who had heard the slang meaning of "dick" would not have that uppermost in their mind when they first heard the word, precisely because they knew so many men and boys who were called Dick in everyday life. When someone over the age of 70 today first hears the word "Dick" in isolation, their mind immediately goes to "male name", NOT to "penis". Most people under the age of 40 today, though, don't know anyone their own age called Dick and so their mind immediately goes to the slang meaning and they wonder, like you do, why people would use the name.

On babynames.com a few years ago a young woman reported that she had asked her grandmother "Why did you name my uncle DIck?"  Grandma's answer was "We didn't have dicks back then like you kids do today."

John has been slang for "toilet" since 1937 and for "prostitutes' customer" since 1911. Yet no one ever wonders why parents with last names like Waters, Money, Bowles, Blow, Handel, etc. would name a son John, because our minds do not immediately "go to" the possible slang meanings when we hear "John Waters" or "John Money."

There is a man named Donald Duck who was born four years BEFORE Walt Disney created the character. And there are hundreds of girls in the USA named Isis who are having a hard time being teased right now. Before you criticize parents for this, you have to make sure they reasonably could have expected their child to be teased at the time they chose the name. 

[Baitac]

On December 3, 2015 at 4:01 PM, Ormond said:

Here's a link to a TIME article that's mostly quotes from me:

http://time.com/4133803/instagram-baby-history/

Fantastic!

[Ormond]

Here's the link to today's column:

http://www.omaha.com/living/cleveland-evans-jesse-is-a-gold-medal-name/article_26b29bb9-55ee-5e9f-b8f7-1cba4378537c.html

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Ormond,

Thank you for that breakdown. The examples I used are of people who were born roughly 30 years apart, with the eldest being close to 90 and the youngest being in his early 30s.

[Maltaran]

I always thought Jessie as a woman's name was the short form of Jessica. Also, the only male Jesse I know is a Sikh who uses it as the anglicised version of Jaswant.

[Ormond]

Here's today's column. I thought it was cool that Howard and Weasley share the same birthday.

http://www.omaha.com/living/cleveland-evans-a-wizard-a-clown-a-president-and-other/article_7bc1b712-02c1-58ea-a148-f9131f8ebe08.html

 

[Ormond]

Here's this week's column. I always have special fun writing about fantasy names, even from fairy tales.

http://www.omaha.com/living/cinderella-her-real-name-like-her-shoe-is-lost/article_0754423b-19ce-5614-b6c4-1440c518342b.html

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

On ‎3‎/‎16‎/‎2016 at 10:04 AM, Ormond said:

Here's this week's column. I always have special fun writing about fantasy names, even from fairy tales.

http://www.omaha.com/living/cinderella-her-real-name-like-her-shoe-is-lost/article_0754423b-19ce-5614-b6c4-1440c518342b.html

I always thought it was weird that Cinderella didn't have a real name, then in the 1998 film "Ever After: A Cinderella Story" they named her Danielle, and for some reason, that seemed worse than not giving her a real name.  (guess I am hard to please  )  I do like using Ella for her name though.

[Baitac]

Thank you for sharing your latest columns. I wasn't aware that MacDonald was the largest Mac name. Being married to a MacGregor, I find those details to be interesting. In Spanish, we call her La Cenicienta. Ceniza is our word for ashes. Miércoles de Ceniza is Ash Wednesday. 

[Ormond]

Here's today's column. I couldn't resist writing on a name when it's a famous person's 100th birthday -- plus it seems appropriate for this political season. It does make me feel old to know McCarthy would have been 100 today, though. 1968 was the first Presidential election I paid serious attention to.

http://www.omaha.com/living/the-name-eugene-has-prestige-but-not-popularity/article_819e624a-c6c4-522f-897f-3da984b4ddb6.html

 

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

That's very interesting, especially about the bump Disney has given the name. I had an uncle named Eugene (born around 1940). He went by "Tiny"  I don't think I knew what his name actually was until I was well into adulthood.

[Ormond]

Here's the link to today's column, about another one of those "Irish" names which was never used in Ireland until way after it became popular in other places:

http://www.omaha.com/living/with-an-e-or-an-o-this-irish-name-is/article_266129a2-b59a-52b1-ad15-39ecbc6c7bda.html

[Maltaran]

Another name added to the "legally banned" list: Cyanide

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-36045987

[Ormond]

1 hour ago, Maltaran said:

Another name added to the "legally banned" list: Cyanide

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-36045987

I wonder if the mother had NOT been someone with mental illness, all of whose children had been removed from her care, if this would have ever gone to court. 

[James Arryn]

I approve of the mention of a former Blue Jays outfielder who was playing when my rabid fan father named my sister likewise.

 

Maybe OT, but I have recently become interested in the (predominantly male as far as I can find) naming traditions in feudal Japan, wherein it seems to have been very common for noble males to change their names many many times, as well as being granted honorific ~syllables as half of a new name by royalty. The hard part I'm finding is that there doesn't seem to be any consistent pattern, even allowing for regional differences. Some men would only go through 4 or 5 names, just changing the given, others would be in the dozens and change both given and 'family/district/clan' names, and then others would adopt Buddhist monikers.

 

Long way of asking if you've ever looked into this area much, and if it's just as (relatively) confusing to someone like yourself, or if that's just my ignorance.

[Maltaran]

3 hours ago, Ormond said:

I wonder if the mother had NOT been someone with mental illness, all of whose children had been removed from her care, if this would have ever gone to court. 

OTOH, if the mother wasn't mentally ill, would she have chosen such a bizarre name?

[Ormond]

35 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

OTOH, if the mother wasn't mentally ill, would she have chosen such a bizarre name?

Bizarreness is a subjective judgment.

I have seen more than one poster on baby name sites say they wanted to name a daughter Tyranny because of how pretty it sounded, and the name has turned up more than once on real birth certificates in the United States. There were five girls named Tyranny born in the USA in each of 2007 and 2008 and six in 2009. I doubt if all of their parents were "mentally ill."
 

[James Arryn]

Additionally, though we mostly think of the poison, cyanides have many applications, in a wide variety of fields, from medicine to art to metallurgy, and can be found in many plants and particularly fruits...so it's not necessarily insane. I've known of nominally sane people choosing quite odd names. I had a childhood friend we called Uni who was actually named Universe Love _____, complete left over flower child title. If I had been a girl I'd have been Amanda Lynn, which my parents didn't realize was a musical instrument (said together) until I was a month old, so that would have been my lot.

 

Similarly, I've decided on Aelric (Oliver) for my hypothetical first born son, named after a Saxon master builder (and my grandfather), and my mom regularly tries to persuade me that it's balmy. Oddly enough, I am much more recently converted to Oliver, especially in French, whereas most of my life I thought it a crap name. Aelric has worked since I first read it.  

Second son, Tristan Orlando (second name gf's grandfather)

Third, Ethan Alexander.

First girl...I'll stop now.

[Ormond]

Here's the link to today's column. There are a lot of other names like Romeo I wanted to discuss but it would have made the column too long.

http://www.omaha.com/living/cleveland-evans-some-of-shakespeare-s-names-have-caught-on/article_2e525c4f-eeba-5121-ae7a-272c34b976ca.html