Names: My newspaper column -- last three links restored

[Lady Winter Rose]

Love the article.

[Ormond]

Here's today's column. For you "Lord of the Rings" film fans -- I mentioned Brad Dourif (and a couple of athletes named Brad) in what I sent the paper, but they got edited out.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20131112/LIVING/131119786/1696#cleveland-evans-brought-by-the-mayflower-brad-still-in-broad-use

[Gertrude]

I checked out that map linked earlier. What struck me as odd was that the number one names seemed to first pop up in the center of the country rather than the coasts. I'd imagine that more urban areas would set the trend. Is it possible that the problem of different spellings causes this? The more conservative/rural areas tending to go with a more traditional spelling and the urban areas maybe changing that spelling up and diluting it? Interesting none the less.

Brad is one of those names that are just around. I went to school with two sets of twins named Brad/Chad and I always kind of associate those names together. Chad seems more dated than Brad, but both are reliable names and neither has worn out their welcome.

[Ormond]

I checked out that map linked earlier. What struck me as odd was that the number one names seemed to first pop up in the center of the country rather than the coasts. I'd imagine that more urban areas would set the trend. Is it possible that the problem of different spellings causes this? The more conservative/rural areas tending to go with a more traditional spelling and the urban areas maybe changing that spelling up and diluting it? Interesting none the less.

No, that's probably not the reason.

People seem to think that politically conservative areas must be "culturally conservative" in all ways, but that just isn't true. In names the coasts (but more so the East coast than the West) are more conservative than other areas and it's been that way for years. This partly has to do with the fact that parents of newborns would tend to have higher educations and be a bit older on the average in places like New England. More highly educated parents usually want to find names for their kids that have a long past history of use, even if they haven't been common recently.

A lot of the girl's names which do make it to the #1 spot nationally or in individual states are names which sort of hit both the blue collar parents who just want something "new" and the white collar parents who want something that's a "revival" of an "older" name, because they seem to have a long cultural history when they really were never very common before. Names like Jennifer and Jessica can technically be traced back to older origins, and so get "legitimated" for the college-educated, but they really had never been widely used at all before their big booms that led them to make it to #1. Today's Olivia, Isabella, and Ava fashions are similar -- people somehow think these names were common in the 19th century, but they are really far more common today than they ever were back then.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

No, that's probably not the reason.

People seem to think that politically conservative areas must be "culturally conservative" in all ways, but that just isn't true. In names the coasts (but more so the East coast than the West) are more conservative than other areas and it's been that way for years. This partly has to do with the fact that parents of newborns would tend to have higher educations and be a bit older on the average in places like New England. More highly educated parents usually want to find names for their kids that have a long past history of use, even if they haven't been common recently.

A lot of the girl's names which do make it to the #1 spot nationally or in individual states are names which sort of hit both the blue collar parents who just want something "new" and the white collar parents who want something that's a "revival" of an "older" name, because they seem to have a long cultural history when they really were never very common before. Names like Jennifer and Jessica can technically be traced back to older origins, and so get "legitimated" for the college-educated, but they really had never been widely used at all before their big booms that led them to make it to #1. Today's Olivia, Isabella, and Ava fashions are similar -- people somehow think these names were common in the 19th century, but they are really far more common today than they ever were back then.

I would have thought Isabella, while not as popular in the 19th C, particularly when combined with its alternates (Isabel(le), Isobel, etc.) does, in fact, have a long history and has had periods of relative "commonness". Of course, I'm basing this on the inordinate number of Midaeval queens who seemed to be named Isabella, so perhaps my sample size isn't all that good.

Separately, I looked back at a huge geneology of one branch of my family, published at the turn of the 20th Century, searching for names (boys names are HARD). It was actually interesting to see which names ACTUALLY showed up over and over again. For women: Elizabeth and Eliza, Cora, Violet, Susan, Anne, Jane, Catherine and then, because this was a well educated Southern family, some real corkers (e.g., Minerva, Parthena, Beulah, etc.). For men: James, Bryan, David, William, Samuel, Ward, Franklin and then, post-1865, the a Wade Hampton or two slunk in for a couple of them. There were also some awesome biblical men's names that showed up for younger children esp. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting to be honest, and the continuity of naming cross generations and cross family trees was really interesting.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

Can't lie, I keep reading this part as

There were also some awesome biblical men's names that showed up for younger children esp. "It wasn't exactly what I was expecting to be honest"

[Ormond]

I would have thought Isabella, while not as popular in the 19th C, particularly when combined with its alternates (Isabel(le), Isobel, etc.) does, in fact, have a long history and has had periods of relative "commonness". Of course, I'm basing this on the inordinate number of Midaeval queens who seemed to be named Isabella, so perhaps my sample size isn't all that good.

Separately, I looked back at a huge geneology of one branch of my family, published at the turn of the 20th Century, searching for names (boys names are HARD). It was actually interesting to see which names ACTUALLY showed up over and over again. For women: Elizabeth and Eliza, Cora, Violet, Susan, Anne, Jane, Catherine and then, because this was a well educated Southern family, some real corkers (e.g., Minerva, Parthena, Beulah, etc.). For men: James, Bryan, David, William, Samuel, Ward, Franklin and then, post-1865, the a Wade Hampton or two slunk in for a couple of them. There were also some awesome biblical men's names that showed up for younger children esp. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting to be honest, and the continuity of naming cross generations and cross family trees was really interesting.

I was only thinking of Isabella, not Isabel, when I made my comment. Isabel was indeed fairly common in medieval England (#5 in the poll tax records of 1377-1381, the earliest good name data). It was mostly among the top 20 names until 1700 and the top 30 until 1800.

The Italian form Isabella seems to have taken over from Isabel in England in the middle of the 19th century and ranked 27th there in 1850 and 38th in 1875. But the forms ending in -a just don't seem to have been used in England back when Isabel was popular before the 19th century.

I don't think Isabella ever got that popular in the 19th century in the USA. On short notice I can't find either Isabel or Isabella as high as #50 in the USA before the last couple of decades. In 1880, when Social Security's yearly name lists start, Isabel ranked 181st and Isabella 215th.

Obviously names used by an individual family aren't going to be exactly the same as names generally popular. Cora seems to have been invented as a name by James Fenimore Cooper for The Last of the Mohicans in 1826. If your family geneaology includes any Coras born before 1826, that would be rather remarkable. Bryan and Ward would also probably be names much more popular in your family than in the general population.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

I was only thinking of Isabella, not Isabel, when I made my comment. Isabel was indeed fairly common in medieval England (#5 in the poll tax records of 1377-1381, the earliest good name data). It was mostly among the top 20 names until 1700 and the top 30 until 1800.

The Italian form Isabella seems to have taken over from Isabel in England in the middle of the 19th century and ranked 27th there in 1850 and 38th in 1875. But the forms ending in -a just don't seem to have been used in England back when Isabel was popular before the 19th century.

I don't think Isabella ever got that popular in the 19th century in the USA. On short notice I can't find either Isabel or Isabella as high as #50 in the USA before the last couple of decades. In 1880, when Social Security's yearly name lists start, Isabel ranked 181st and Isabella 215th.

Obviously names used by an individual family aren't going to be exactly the same as names generally popular. Cora seems to have been invented as a name by James Fenimore Cooper for The Last of the Mohicans in 1826. If your family geneaology includes any Coras born before 1826, that would be rather remarkable. Bryan and Ward would also probably be names much more popular in your family than in the general population.

I think the Coras date to the 1820s; they are certainly all 19th C. Did I mention that they were educated and literary (and quite romantic - I didn't even mention the Byron or two that showed up)? And yes, a family will specifically have different names than the general population, but I found that in and of itself fairly interesting. E.g., James Ward comes over, has a son he names Bryan after his father and another named James Ward. Those names get passed to the next generation where there is a David Samuel as well. Those names then go down BOTH lines (I guess the families were close) from the early 18th Century, all the way, as best I can tell, to the mid-20th Century thanks to notes made by my mother's great-aunt (Bonnie Byron, of course) in the book (and maybe beyond). There is a remarkable continuity both through the men and the women (Jane Adair and Eliza[beth] Catherine get passed down almost as frequently and even to daughters of daughters of daughters). It wasn't a huge help from an inspiration perspective (because there was so much repetition and where no repetition, untrammeled romanticism starting about 1820) but it was really really interesting and I spent far more time with the book than was probably warranted because I got so interested.

[Gertrude]

I love looking at family names. One of my ancestors came across with the name of Archibald and that name seems to have stuck in the family. It's not always the first son and not even in each generation, but for over 200 years, there has been an Archibald Ross or two in the line.

Also, it always strikes me as odd when I see Bryan/Brian as a name from older genealogies. I know it's an old name (Brian Boru and all that) but it just feels particularly modern.

[Ormond]

Here's today's column:

http://www.omaha.com/article/20131126/LIVING/131129133/1696#evans-from-vikings-to-south-africa-nelson-long-admired

I'd really like to know why Nelson was already twice as common as a surname in the USA as in Britain in 1850. Perhaps some Irish O'Neills had switched to Nelson?

[Lady Winter Rose]

Interesting article.

Ormond, did you notice that more girls get typically boys names or that more girls get unisex names or pure surnames as names?

Could you guess why?

[Lummel]

...

[Ormond]

Interesting article.

Ormond, did you notice that more girls get typically boys names or that more girls get unisex names or pure surnames as names?

Could you guess why?

You have phrased this in a confusing way for me.

"More girls receive names that are typically boys' names than vice versa" would be a correct statement.

"More girls get unisex names than boys" seems like it might be an incorrect statement, depending on how one defines "unisex."

"More girls than boys get surnames as first names" would definitely be an incorrect statement, but "more girls get surnames as first names than did in previous generations" would be true.

The first statement is correct because of sexism. People will give a girl a "boy's" name because it raises her status. Most people will not give boys names that they think are mostly used for girls because associating a male with something "feminine" contaminates him and lowers his status.

[Lady Winter Rose]

I think I notice more and more girls get boys, unisex and surname names. Why is that trendy?

[Ormond]

Here's today's column. Maybe I should have mentioned in it that Raven-Symone is now openly lesbian, but it didn't seem to fit well into the column.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20131210/LIVING/131219994/1696#cleveland-evans-that-s-so-raven

[WillWork4NinjaPowers]

I hate the name Nevaeh so very much. I like my daughter's name, but there are a ton of girls named madison, michaela, mckenna, mckenzie, etc, and hers is similar. My dad will even call her mckenzie, still, after 13 years. I've only met 2 other people with her name. It's an Irish name, but the three people I met were a 90yro Japanese man, a guy my age who is half Japanese and a random white guy who thought I was a crazy lady yelling at him to get of of the floor while getting my oil changed. He couldn't see my at the time 3yro crawling around on the floor and was like "miss, I'm not on the floor, are you okay? Do I know you?" He hadn't met anyome with that name before, and was relieved I wasn't a crazy person who somehow knew who he was. My son is named after his Dad, who's a turd, (and I get lots of comments about it not being a. a boys name b. a "white" kid's name). We just call him by a nickname. he asked to change his name, I said he could, but he only wanted to call himself King Kong Bob Lacey. So, that didn't happen. I had names picked out I really wanted, but my family hated them (Royal- Roy for short, Pryor, and Satchel- after the baseball player). We just went with making him a Jr. before leaving the hospital.

My daughter's grandma on her dad's side moved here form Japan as a child. Their friends told them they needed "american" names, and I guess it was common to drop the last syllable of a name. So she went from Rumiko to Rumi, they thought it sounded very american. They tried to do the same for her sister, Momiko, but then found out that Momi is the american word for, well, mother. They changed her name to Marion, because to them, there was nothing more all-american sounding.

[Gertrude]

I never would have guessed that Raven as a given name wasn't a modern invention. Very Interesting..

[Ormond]

Here's this week's column. In the USA this is probably a name common among friends and relatives of those who read this board:

http://www.omaha.com/article/20131224/LIVING/131229560/1696

I still can't use the copy and paste function so I hope I typed the above correctly and that it works.

[ztemhead]

I'm curious to know people's feelings about telling friends and family the name you've picked out prior to delivery. I'm against it because then you have to hear people's opinion about what you picked, whereas if the kiddo is already born, they're usually more wrapped up in holding/ tickling/ singing to the lil sprat.

[Seventh Pup]

Personally I think it depends on the family and the person. I for one like to get feed back. For instance when I found out I was pregnant we started talking about name if it was a boy. One of the names we both liked was Duncan. I brought this up to my mom she pointed out that because of my husband's last name it full name would sound like "Duncan Hines", like the cake mix. My husband and I laughed about this for a while, and Duncan got dropped from the list. I love that she pointed that out, and I have loved talking with her about other names.

Now if there was only one name I liked, and I thought I would get a lot of flack for it I might not share it. However I know myself, my husband and I agree on THE NAME, then that's it. If you trust the person's opinion who you are talking to them about they may point out something about the name you wouldn't have though of.

Example: I had a friend who wanted to name her little girl Isabella Sarah Hensen (last name has been changed, but it started with an H). When she was talking about this one of my other friends pointed out that that would make her initials ISH. Which my friend who was expecting says all the time instead of "shit". As in this food is ish. I got ish faced. et... They changed the middle name to Alice.

It's a personal decision either way. With pros and cons for both sharing and keeping it secret. :)