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Names: My newspaper column: now featuring The Old Man and the most famous spouse of witch


Ormond
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Here's the link to today's column. I did something a little bit different with this one.

http://www.omaha.com/living/evans-in-honor-of-mardi-gras-a-primer-on-some/article_805a79c8-376b-533b-93cb-c85477dc0339.html

Sorry I didn't have space to mention Daniel Defoe's character Friday in Robinson Crusoe.  

If one takes the last two centuries as a whole, Saturday looks like it's the rarest day of the week name ever. 

By the way, I haven't been able to figure out why Sunday had such a sudden one year boom in 1966. When a name goes up and down so quickly there has to have been some pop culture reason, but I haven't found it yet. If anyone else out there knows, please tell us. :)

Edited by Ormond
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  • 2 weeks later...

Here's the link to today's column. If I had had room I would have mentioned Queen Joanna I of Naples (1328-1382), one of the first European women to rule a country in her own right. 

I knew Joanne was "younger" in the UK than the USA before I wrote the column but was a bit surprised to see just how far apart the difference between the two peaks was. 

http://www.omaha.com/living/with-french-roots-famous-joannes-and-joannas-spread-far-and/article_e26defe8-114e-592e-848f-73f0d0687e50.html

Edited by Ormond
fixing queen's dates
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1 hour ago, Lady Winter Rose said:

But Joanne is Jo-Anne, no?

Yes.  Joann is also usually pronounced as "Jo-Ann", but there are probably a few exceptions who pronounce it the same as Joan. 

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1 hour ago, mormont said:

There's a Scottish politician whose first name is Johann, pronounced Jo-Ann. Is this a variant maybe more commonly found elsewhere?

I thought she was a man for ages, simply because I always read it with the German pronunciation.

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1 hour ago, mormont said:

There's a Scottish politician whose first name is Johann, pronounced Jo-Ann. Is this a variant maybe more commonly found elsewhere?

I haven't seen this in any numbers at all in the USA. I just checked the 1934 Social Security data, the year Joanne was at its height in the USA, and there were 31 girls born that year in the USA named "Johanne", 26 "Johann", and 8 "Johan". So I guess this is a rare variant some parents who wanted an unusual spelling came up with in all English speaking countries, inspired by the spelling of the exclamation "Oh!". 

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Here's the link to today's column. I didn't have time to explain in it that the Scandinavian surnames Neilsen and Nilsson are NOT from Neil but are from Scandinavian forms of Nicholas.
 

http://www.omaha.com/living/evans-famous-neils-have-made-giant-leaps-throughout-history/article_655163c1-6279-5c21-a24b-302fe3ca3c41.html

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here is the link to today's column. Personally I have always thought Gloria was a name with a beautiful sound. I am amazed that most baby name books in English speaking countries don't seem to know that Gloria, like Dolores and Mercedes, is a Marian devotion name from Iberia. British name books seem to think that George Bernard Shaw invented the name for a character in his 1898 play "You Never Can Tell." But in that play the character Gloria has just returned to England after... living on the Portuguese-speaking island of Madeira for about 17 years. She was taken to the island by her mother as a baby, and it's stated her mother renamed her Gloria -- she was actually named Sophronia after her father's sister at birth, but the mother was fleeing a bad marriage when she moved to Madeira. So Shaw probably was thinking she chose a Portuguese name for her daughter so she would fit in.

http://www.omaha.com/living/evans-gloria-is-a-name-that-s-ready-to-relive/article_067cbbf4-f1e6-58d6-9222-4c47b2010e0f.html

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  • 4 weeks later...

I was so busy I never got around to putting in the link to the column from two weeks ago:

http://www.omaha.com/living/evans-daisy-the-popular-english-name-has-french-origins/article_6ff5e272-604c-5068-9524-6b750882eb87.html

Didn't have space there to mention the song "Daisy Belle", which everyone remembers as "A Bicycle Built for Two" (written in 1892), or the most famous American woman named Daisy, civil rights activist Daisy Bates:

https://www.biography.com/people/daisy-bates-206524

They have cut me back to 500 words on the column, so there wasn't room to mention lots of stuff I wanted to say about Barbara -- such as the fact that it was much more popular in Scotland than in England in the 19th century, which may have something to do with the Scottish folk song "Barbara Allen", which goes back to the 17th century.

http://www.omaha.com/living/evans-the-barbara-boom-brought-big-names/article_d9374bbf-01bc-5257-88dc-e28c8c2ac2c5.html

 

 

 

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On 3/27/2018 at 5:33 PM, Ormond said:

Here is the link to today's column. Personally I have always thought Gloria was a name with a beautiful sound. I am amazed that most baby name books in English speaking countries don't seem to know that Gloria, like Dolores and Mercedes, is a Marian devotion name from Iberia. British name books seem to think that George Bernard Shaw invented the name for a character in his 1898 play "You Never Can Tell." But in that play the character Gloria has just returned to England after... living on the Portuguese-speaking island of Madeira for about 17 years. She was taken to the island by her mother as a baby, and it's stated her mother renamed her Gloria -- she was actually named Sophronia after her father's sister at birth, but the mother was fleeing a bad marriage when she moved to Madeira. So Shaw probably was thinking she chose a Portuguese name for her daughter so she would fit in.

http://www.omaha.com/living/evans-gloria-is-a-name-that-s-ready-to-relive/article_067cbbf4-f1e6-58d6-9222-4c47b2010e0f.html

That was so nice to read.

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2 hours ago, Lady Winter Rose said:

What do you think of repeating names of new Prince of Cambridge?

Repeating names? Do you mean what do I think of the fact that his first name is the same as his older brother's second middle name? I don't see any problem since the older brother is never going to be addressed by his second middle name alone.

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10 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Repeating names? Do you mean what do I think of the fact that his first name is the same as his older brother's second middle name? I don't see any problem since the older brother is never going to be addressed by his second middle name alone.

Louis and Arthur are also two of Prince William’s middle names.

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1 hour ago, Ormond said:

Repeating names? Do you mean what do I think of the fact that his first name is the same as his older brother's second middle name? I don't see any problem since the older brother is never going to be addressed by his second middle name alone.

Well, previous kings have taken the throne under one of their middle names. Though admittedly the chances of a King Louis, outside of us losing a war to the French, are remote. :P

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13 hours ago, Ormond said:

Repeating names? Do you mean what do I think of the fact that his first name is the same as his older brother's second middle name? I don't see any problem since the older brother is never going to be addressed by his second middle name alone.

I mean Charles is variant of Charlotte. But I guess you're right...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here is the link to today's column. There is really a lot more to my argument about "Shania." I did not come up with the "ani aya'aa" phrase just by looking through the Ojibwe dictionary on my own. It was suggested to me by posters on the Ojibwe Language Society (Miinawaa) internet discussion board back in 2004 when I was writing The Great Big Book of Baby Names. 

http://www.omaha.com/go/music/evans-fan-of-shania-twain-here-s-the-story-behind/article_dc704ea5-cc92-5511-a56c-99ff63799427.html

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