Some time back I was showing my 1953 high school yearbook to one of my daughters and she pointed to one of the pages where the teachers were named. “Mother,” she gasped, “look at the silly first names these people have!”I looked down and saw nothing silly. I saw pictures of my teachers: Madge, Myrtle, Gertrude, Emily, Florence, Ada, Clara, Helene, Dorothy, Wilma, Lucille, Elva…. Nothing funny about them, I though. Of course we didn’t call them by their first names but we knew what they were and to us they were just common and ordinary names. The men had similar names – Claude, Leon, Reginald, Norman, Cyril, Kermit, Wilbur, Norlyn and I didn’t find those odd either. But my daughter giggled to think that people actually had such names.
Later I looked in my mother’s yearbook from the 1920s and I found an entirely different set of names for that generation: Marinda, Woodruff, Nettie, Elmore, Walfred, Edith, Evangeline, Niels, Willard, Mabel, Ingeborg, DeEtte, Nellie, Ferne and Thornton. Now I have to admit I found those somewhat odd and old fashioned, though less so probably because I am used to dealing with old names in genealogy.
So now, at a time when my 1953 classmates all in their mid-70s, I looked in my yearbook again but this time at the names of my old chums, names that my grandkids are likely to think outmoded and very out-of-date. First up was my own “real” name: Barbara. Do you know that when I was in school there were always at least three Barbaras in every class. Maybe next to Shirley it was far and away the most popular name. My sister was named Virginia, which is as passé now as Agnes. When is the last time you heard of a child being named any of those names? Other names that were common among my classmates, names that my grandkids will probably laugh over are Howard, Donna, Phyllis, Evelyn, Dixie, Neil, Phyllis, Pete, Alfred, Lester, Lewis, Gay, Wayne, Billie, Patricia, and Gladys. These are names of my contemporaries. They are not odd names….. are they?
But let’s face it. When is a name not a name? Maybe when it is Moon Unit or Sunday or Tuesday or Flicka or Diesel or the famous Apple. Obviously the parents of these people thought they were perfect names, but honestly, they make Phyllis and Nellie and Thornton sound perfectly ordinary, don’t they?
In my indexing I’ve come across some funny names. I couldn’t help but laugh every time someone in Ohio named a son “Ralf.” And you would probably think I’m fibbing when I tell you that there were at least 29 Pearl Smiths in Ohio – Pearl being the name of men who were registering for a second draft during WWII. And the other day I came across a new baby who, when he was born back in the late 1890s, was given the name Henderson Molesworth Townsend. He was on the same page as Cinderella Jones and Clover Clementine Harris.
So who’s to say what is a good name and what is a weird name. Not me. I try to keep my own opinions of child-naming to myself. I had my fun naming my kids, and whenever the urge hits to name something else I try to find an animal around that doesn’t yet have a name. And if that isn’t possible, I can name a person in a portrait (like Agatha Klingbottom). Or a bird that comes to our feeder, like Archie Grosbeak and his wife Edith. Good names, huh?
Some time back I was showing my 1953 high school yearbook to one of my daughters, pointing out something or other, and she pointed to one of the pages where the teachers were named. “Mother,” she gasped, “look at the silly first names these people have!”
I looked down and saw nothing silly. I saw pictures of my teachers: Madge, Myrtle, Gertrude, Emily, Florence, Ada, Clara, Helene, Dorothy, Wilma, Lucille, Elva….. Nothing funny about them. Of course we didn’t call them by their first names but we knew what they were and to us they were just common and ordinary names. The men had similar names – Claude, Leon, Reginald, Norman, Cyril, Kermit, Wilbur, Norlyn and I didn’t find those odd either. But my daughter giggled to think that people actually had such names.
Later I looked in my mother’s yearbook from 1920 and I found an entirely different set of names for that generation: Marinda, Woodruff, Nettie, Elmore, Walfred, Edith, Evangeline, Niels, Willard, Mabel, Ingeborg, DeEtte, Nellie, Ferne and Thornton. Now I have to admit I found those somewhat odd and old fashioned, too, though less so probably because I am used to dealing with old names in genealogy.
So now, at a time where my 1953 classmates all in their mid-70s, I looked in my yearbook again but this time at the names of my old chums, names that my grandkids are likely to think outmoded and very out-of-date. First up was my own “real” name: Barbara. Do you know that when I was in school there were always at least three Barbaras in every class. Maybe next to Shirley it was far and away the most popular name. My sister was named Virginia, which is as passé now as Agnes. When is the last time you heard of a child being named any of those names? Other names that were common among my classmates, names that my grandkids will probably laugh over are Howard, Donna, Phyllis, Evelyn, Dixie, Neil, Phyllis, Pete, Alfred, Lester, Lewis, Gay, Wayne, Billie, Patricia, and Gladys. These are names of my contemporaries. They are not odd names….. are they?
But let’s face it. When is a name not a name? Maybe when it is Moon Unit or Sunday or Tuesday or Flicka or Diesel or the famous Apple. Obviously the parents of these people thought they were perfect names, but honestly, they make Phyllis and Nellie and Thornton sound perfectly ordinary, don’t they?
In my indexing I’ve come across some funny names. I couldn’t help but laugh every time someone in Ohio named a son “Ralf.” And you would probably think I’m fibbing when I tell you that there were at least 29 Pearl Smiths in Ohio – Pearl being the name of men who were registering for a second draft during WWII. And the other day I came across a new baby who, when he was born back in the late 1890s, was given the name Henderson Molesworth Townsend. He was on the same page as Cinderella Jones and Clover Clementine Harris.
So who’s to say what is a good name and what is a weird name. Not me. I try to keep my own opinions of child-naming to myself. I had my fun naming my kids, and whenever the urge hits to name something else I try to find an animal around that doesn’t yet have a name. And if that isn’t possible, I can name a person in a portrait (like Agatha Klingbottom). Or even birds that comes to our feeder, like Archie Grosbeak and his wife Edith. Good names, huh?
2 comments:
The father of one of my soccer girls is named January. He claims that his mother was a hippy and she was smoking something when he was born. :)
Names tell people almost to the year when you were born. There are annual lists of favourite names.
Sadly, I cannot claim that my real name was chosen by my parents; they'd left it until the midwife said something like: 'what, no name yet? here's your little . . . . then'.
It was all downhill from then on.
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