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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:

https://www.omaha.com/living/evans-over-time-ezekiel-s-popularity-as-a-baby-name/article_0e2171b6-9e87-5657-8b93-7ee7da70277f.html

I didn't realize how much Ezekiel had increased in the USA recently until doing the research for this column. Ezra and Asher were on my "radar screen" as up-and-comers but I was surprised to see that Ezekiel was in the top 100 names on the Social Security list for 2018.

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On 9/17/2019 at 5:45 AM, maarsen said:

Doesn't anyone run away to join the circus like Toby Tyler did? 

Yes, wish I'd had room to mention Toby Tyler as it may have also helped Tyler. (It certainly helped Toby, which had a quick up and down in 1960, the year the film came out.)

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Here's the link to today's column. Don't know why they came up with such a boring title this time. happy.gif

https://www.omaha.com/living/evans-c...27a5f5287.html

In the column it says that why George Stonestreet named his daughter Gwyneth is a mystery. Since then I have discovered some genealogical information online that partially explains it.

George Stonestreet was actually a very prominent clergyman from a wealthy family. He was chaplain to the Prince of Orange at the Battle of Waterloo and later the chaplain to the Duke of York. His own father, also named Stonestreet, was the high sheriff of the county of Surrey in England.

The sheriff was born the son of David Griffin and Anne Stonestreet, and was a Griffin at birth. He changed his last name to his mother's maiden name so the surname of her prominent family would not die out. (Of course an inheritance may have been involved!) The genealogies I have so far run across do not give the birthplace of David Griffin or the names of his parents, but do say he was of "Welsh extraction." Both of the George Stonestreets used Griffin as their middle name and sometimes their surname is even written as the hyphenated Griffin-Stonestreet.

So it seems clear that the Stonestreets chose a Welsh name for their third daughter to honor the "Welsh extraction" of her great-grandfather. Of course that still doesn't explain why they chose the particular name Gwyneth (often spelled Gwynneth in the genealogies, by the way) for her. Whether they were the first to invent its use as a given name or if they found it used as such in some obscure place is unknown.

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Well, I just found out the Omaha World Herald will not be having separate "Living" sections on Thursday or Friday any more, so they have moved my column from Friday to Saturday.
I really don't care what day of the week they publish my column as long as they continue to do so. But it is sad to see this newspaper continually cutting back, which isn't the fault of the editors or journalists. Except for papers with a national following like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, advertising revenue has plummeted as advertisers shift to social media and other Internet ads, and that sets up a vicious circle as papers cut content, and then more and more subscribers drop off as the papers get smaller while the subscription price goes up. I worry that there will soon
be no place where the general public can get information about state and local issues except through the short "sound bites" offered on TV and things like Google News.

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Here's the link to today's column:

https://www.omaha.com/living/cleveland-evans-blake-could-mean-black-or-white-could-refer/article_0c1a7d81-3311-5a8b-bbd1-3ba8faa01cae.html

Because of needing to discuss both the male and female usage of Blake, I didn't have space to mention famous people who didn't greatly impact the popularity of the name. There are several male professional athletes named Blake active in the USA at the moment.  There is a podcast about sports which gives a "Blake of the Year" award, recently won by the basketball player Blake Griffin:

https://www.podcastone.com/episode/Blake-Griffin-Comes-In-Studio-To-Accept-His-2019-Blake-Of-The-Year--Award--Mt-Rushmore-Of--Athlete-Traits-You-Wish-You-Had-

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On ‎2‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 11:42 AM, Ormond said:

Here's the link to today's column:

https://www.omaha.com/living/evans-long-history-has-helped-abraham-endure/article_32d6cd3c-e1a7-5aca-8bae-a95db15c125d.html

In researching this I was rather surprised to see that Abraham was among the top 50 boys' names in England all the way from 1550 until the end of the 19th century. I also was a bit surprised to see how it has risen on the SSA lists since 1967. It seems to be one of those slow-rising "sleeper" names that people don't realize are getting more popular. 

Does anyone on the board know any Abrahams under the age of 30 in the USA? Do they tend to go by Abe or by Bram these days?

I’m way behind in my reading of your articles (mostly cause I haven’t been around much) but I had to comment on this one:

 

Abraham is well-used by Latinos. Songwriter Abraham Quintanilla, Jr. (1939) is father of famed singer Selena (1971-95) and guardian of her legacy. Golfer Abraham Ancer (1991), a dual American and Mexican citizen, won the Emirates Australian Open last November.

 

I had no idea this was common.  When I used to work a job where I got to see hundreds of names a week, I thought Abraham Sanchez was incredibly odd, but a cool blending of diverse cultures. 

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Here's the link to today's column. I had been wanting to base my choice of topic for the column on a book release for a while and am surprised the first good candidate turned out to be a cookbook!

https://www.omaha.com/entertainment/evans-though-of-german-origins-the-name-irma-really-took/article_cd2d5e39-7db3-53bc-a859-1a292f9bdd22.html

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Here's the link to today's column:

https://www.omaha.com/lifestyles/cleveland-evans-has-elsa-become-a-more-popular-name-due/article_82a03aeb-6a8a-50f6-9a16-447403b5678c.html

Have any of you heard of "Elsagate"? I hadn't until last weekend when I was doing the research for this column. Do you think that's a factor in Elsa's precipitous drop in use since its spike in 2014, or is it just the Madonna/Oprah factor?

Of course there was also a bit of publicity about Elsa's 2014 boom as a baby name back in 2015 which may have given new parents the idea it was even more popular than it was. 

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Here's the link to today's column, the annual one about the American Name Society's Name of the Year vote.

I came up with the idea of the ANS doing this vote 13 years ago, copying our sister group The American Dialect Society's Word of the Year. I have always run the vote and so haven't voted myself. I am retiring from my position and so get to vote next year if I can make the meeting. :)  

I haven't always liked what the voters have chosen as Name of the Year but like this year's "out of this world" choice.

https://www.omaha.com/lifestyles/cleveland-evans-arrokoth-greta-thunberg-are-among-top-names-of/article_c6a84f34-d85c-5089-a8e2-a2908f829c0e.html

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