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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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  • 2 weeks later...

Here's the link to today's column. I am sorry I did not have enough space to mention the English actress Dakota Blue Richards. I have really enjoyed watching Beecham House on PBS's Masterpiece Theater, where she plays the governess Margaret.

https://omaha.com/entertainment/evans-westerns-soap-operas-helped-popularize-dakota-a-name-with-native-american-roots/article_c8ca6276-8b9b-544b-8f78-9b572a4934c5.html

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It's getting harder for me to find links in current events or anniversaries that are about names I haven't written on already. So when I saw August 1 was the anniversary of the GoT initial release I decided to finally write a column on its names. (I have written columns on names from Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and The Hunger Games in the past.)

I do wish I had enough space to mention more about Cersei, Samwell, and Tywin, which are also characters who have inspired enough real namesakes to just barely make it onto Social Security's complete list at some point during the run of the HBO series. 

If anyone wants to repost this link at an appropriate place on the discussion boards about the books or the show, feel free. I quit reading them so long ago I have no idea where to put such a link.

https://omaha.com/entertainment/evans-game-of-thrones-may-be-over-but-its-legacy-lives-on-in-names/article_b92d1109-2206-51ec-919a-1fd73ac1d4b9.html

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Here is the link to today's column:

https://omaha.com/lifestyles/cleveland-evans-atticus-was-a-relic-of-antiquity-until-to-kill-a-mockingbird/article_86f1b5c0-fb3e-5940-9447-412d626a4b24.html

As with most of my columns I didn't have enough room to discuss everything I wanted to. There were many people who were upset when the 2015 publication of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, set in the late 1950s, had Atticus being against desegregation. I ran across a couple of articles written by African-American authors pointing out that even in To Kill A Mockingbird, though Atticus feels he must defend an innocent individual against false accusations, he is resigned to the existence of racism and doesn't think there is any point in trying to fight for a general change in society.

Also, there are some classical names like Cato and Pompey that became predominantly African-American in the South because some slave owners were fond of showing off their learning by giving slaves such names. But Atticus wasn't one of those names -- the huge majority of Atticuses in the census are White.

Matt Ruff obviously chose the name "Atticus Freeman" for his character in Lovecraft Country to be symbolic, but I think it's the sort of name a White liberal like Matt Ruff gives an African-American hero. I'm not sure a Black author would really see this as appropriate for the character.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here is the link to today's column:

https://omaha.com/lifestyles/cleveland-evans-hurricanes-can-cause-a-brief-rise-in-a-names-popularity-then-a-drop/article_e9437b49-251b-5035-a013-bc3e24fd9fda.html

Since I only get about 540 words for the column, there's a lot more I wanted to say here I couldn't fit in. I would have liked to point out that one really can't get away from connotations no matter what words would be used to name hurricanes -- if you just numbered them, people would be more afraid of Thirteen than Seven. And no one is saying every individual is equally affected by the connotations -- I would expect those who have not lived through a major hurricane before (the young and those who have recently moved to the coast) would be more likely to have their evacuation decisions affected by this. 

I would have liked to comment on how odd I think some of the replacement choices have been. Katrina and Rita were replaced by Katia and Rina, just about as close as you can get to the originals. Two years ago Florence and Michael were replaced by Francine and Milton -- Francine & Milton sound like an elderly Miami Beach couple to me.

Finally, I wish I'd had space to mention the fact that although hurricanes are not supposed to be named after particular people, meteorologists being human have not always abided by that. It is now admitted that "Camille" got onto the 1969 list because it was the name of the then-teenaged daughter of meteorologist John Hope. Though it hasn't been officially admitted, posters to the "Storm 2K" weather discussion board have told me that Gilbert, Roxanne, and Jerry also all got onto the original six lists in 1979 because of particular hurricane experts or their relatives.

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Here is the link to today's column:

https://omaha.com/lifestyles/cleveland-evans-historical-carries-did-not-keep-calm-but-the-name-has-carried-on/article_932b6a8e-75a6-5aeb-805d-891c0432e3b0.html

I wish I'd had space to discuss more fully the pronunciation of Carrie, Kerry, and Kari. Though in most of the USA people say these the same, in England (and in New England and the New York City-New Jersey area) Carrie is normally pronounced with the same vowel as in "cat". That vowel sound just doesn't occur before "r" in the speech of most Americans west of the Delaware River, with Carrie and Kerry both being pronounced to rhyme with "hairy" or "ferry". 

I am not sure how people in England or New England would pronounce Kari. The original Norwegian pronunciation, though, has the first syllable close to the word "car", rhyming with "starry" as in "starry night sky",  and I have known a couple of Karis from the upper Midwest who had Scandinavian ancestry who tried to get people to pronounce the name that way. 

Edited by Ormond
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On 9/12/2020 at 6:12 PM, Ormond said:

I am not sure how people in England or New England would pronounce Kari. The original Norwegian pronunciation, though, has the first syllable close to the word "car", rhyming with "starry" as in "starry night sky",  and I have known a couple of Karis from the upper Midwest who had Scandinavian ancestry who tried to get people to pronounce the name that way. 

I’m a little bit late replying to this but I’d guess it’d be pronounced the same as Carrie in the UK. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Kari though.

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2 hours ago, ljkeane said:

I’m a little bit late replying to this but I’d guess it’d be pronounced the same as Carrie in the UK. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Kari though.

I have. I think it may have been an alternative spelling of Carrie or Kerry.

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The World Herald  has moved my column again, this time to Sundays.

https://omaha.com/entertainment/evans-what-are-the-real-top-baby-names-of-2019/article_6d2dfcca-9119-5db2-ac6f-9937887e013b.html

Everly is one of the fastest growing names we've had in the USA, rising from nowhere to #22 in less than a decade. In addition to is "different but not too different" sound resemblance to other popular names, the romantic connotations of the word "ever" are probably helping it. 

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Here's today's column. I wish I'd had space to write about even more Jacks, like Jack Russell terriers and Jack and the Beanstalk. :)

Note that the average British Jack of the 21st century will be older than the average American one, though it may not seem that way if most of the Jacksons in the USA get called Jack in everyday life.

https://omaha.com/entertainment/evans-jacks-reach-has-stretched-from-nursery-rhymes-to-literary-heroes/article_6326a701-6ea9-5f9d-9945-6e89260643d8.html

 

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Here's today's column. There were lots of famous Normans I did not have room to mention, including two winners of the Nobel Prize in physics and science fiction author Norman Spinrad.

https://omaha.com/entertainment/evans-psycho-killer-led-to-a-major-drop-in-popularity-for-norman/article_e6ab630c-310e-5b90-8571-813d2ead6b34.html

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Here is today's column. This was an interesting one to research in the census records. The reason I say in the column that Meta Scarlett was probably a cousin of Scarlett Akers is because records show that she originally came from the same area of southern Georgia (Glynn County and other nearby areas) that Scarlett Fudge Akers' grandparents lived in before they moved to Orange County, Florida. 

https://omaha.com/entertainment/evans-marvels-black-widow-helped-scarlett-reach-its-greatest-popularity-yet/article_6f7ef3aa-0f9b-5184-ac22-9a18f4dfe79b.html

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here is the link to today's column:

https://omaha.com/evans-country-singing-sensation-momentarily-revives-garths-popularity/article_2b44ad30-3f27-11eb-81b1-c3412504d078.html

I wish I had had space to discuss Garth Williams's 1958 children's book The Rabbits' Wedding, one of the few he wrote as well as illustrated. In that book a white rabbit and a black rabbit fall in love and marry. A segregationist Alabama state senator, E. O. Eddins, demanded the book be removed from all libraries in the state because he said it promoted interracial marriage. The state librarian, Emily Wheelock Reed, led a fight in the state legislature to prevent the book from being banned. This was one of the most famous "banned books" controversies in its day and I think Ms. Reed deserves to be better known for her courageous stand at that point in history.

Here's a link to Wikipedia's page on Emily Wheelock Reed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Wheelock_Reed

 

Edited by Ormond
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Here's today's column:

https://omaha.com/lifestyles/mauds-best-chance-for-a-comeback-lies-with-hollywood/article_b4d663ee-4a5e-11eb-84aa-236209374fe7.html

Maud had a revival in France during the 1980s. You can find many examples of French women now in their 30s named Maud if you put the name in a search engine. Maud's also been among the top 30 names for newborn girls in the Netherlands for at least a decade. This fits in with the Dutch preference for short names -- for many decades the top lists of baby names in the Netherlands have included more one-syllable forms for both boys and girls than almost anywhere else in Europe or the Americas. 

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My column that was published January 31 was on the American Name Society's Names of the Year. It is still not available on Omaha.com.  My editor at the World Herald says that's because of a "technical glitch". I hope that gets fixed soon. Meanwhile here is a link to a screenshot of that column a friend posted on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10223521054910905&set=a.1775439862192

And here is the link to today's column, on Dwayne:

https://omaha.com/lifestyles/cleveland-evans-history-has-many-famous-duanes-young-rock-could-spark-a-new-round/article_f5df7898-6bd4-11eb-bec3-579cb9681725.html

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The World Herald fixed their "glitch", so here is the link to the Names of the Year column on Omaha.com for those who prefer to look at it that way:

https://omaha.com/lifestyles/evans-2020-name-of-the-year-no-surprise-given-dominance-of-politics-pandemic/article_cfc0c24c-5fe6-11eb-a917-fbafd5b860bf.html?

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