An April Fool’s Roundup
Yesterday, April Fool’s Day, was a day of unrealized dreams: dreams of all the great, funny names I could claim are true. But in reality, in this case, the truth is funnier than the pranks. Really. And if you don’t believe me, buy my book (more shameless self promotion, check out the links on the sidebar) or just browse through the comments on Assignment 1.
I did, however, see a number of fun, Bad Baby Name-related items. I’ll highlight two here:
The featured article on the main page of Wikipedia yesterday was about the infamous Ima Hogg. Is there any better example of a Bad Baby Name in the real world? Here are some interesting things gleaned from the article:
- Ima was named after something specific, in this case a character in a poem her uncle wrote. Apparently her father was unaware of what he was doing until after the christening. As I’ve said, well-meaning ignorance.
- Ima was made fun of in school.
- She disliked her own name. She purposely wrote her own signature illegibly and often avoided situations where she’d have to explain her name.
- There was no “Ura” or “Hoosa”. At least not in this family (I did find a Ura Hogg in Arkansas in 1880, though it may have been Ura Hagg—not much better).
- Despite her name, she was quite successful.
- She defended her father’s honor to the end.
It’s an interesting read into the psychology of bad baby naming. Check it out.
As to the other item, I need to explain a little. If you’ve read my book (can you say shameless self-promotion?), you know that I’m a geek. Stand proud, I say. You may have gleaned that from my Dungeon Dragon Gygax comment before. Well, on the Dungeons & Dragons homepage, they always go all out for April Fool’s and they had this “press release“.
Did anyone else see any good April Fool’s jokes that deserve mention here?
Posted: April 2nd, 2008 under Name Media.
Comments: 3
Howdy!
Great book. I loved it and have lent it to my mother-in-law to read.
Congrats on your little one. He’s a month old now and growing big, I’m sure.
Just wanted to share two naming tidbits with you:
1) My husband has a member of his family tree named Seaborn Burt, who was born in 1706. Along with many others, Seaborn’s parents, Benjamin and Sarah, were captured by Indians at the burning of Deerfield, MA, and taken to Canada. Ensign John Sheldon of Deerfield made four expeditions to Canada to redeem his fellow townfolk. Finally on 30 May 1706, he left Quebec with over forty of them, among whom were Benjamin, Sarah, and their child. They went down the St Lawrence River and thence by sea to Boston, where they arrived on 2 Aug 1706. On the voyage, Sarah gave birth to a son, who was named “Seaborn” from the place of his birth.
2) When I was a kid growing up, I was friends with a boy named Hal Shrader — nothing unusual there. But his dad was named JB Shrader –where the J and B initials did not stand for anything. On JB’s tax return, he wanted to clarify things a bit for the IRS so he wrote his name as J (only) B (only) Shrader. Yep, the IRS got it. And JB got his refund check written to Jonly Bonly Shrader!
Thanks for listening!
Shannon
Mesa, AZ
Wow. I always thought there was a Ura Hogg… either way, I’ve also always felt the greatest sympathy for Ima. Poor girl.
So, anyways, I have a bad name for you:
My previous math tutor told us of once when he was at an office or something somewhere and he looked at two nametags. They said “Green Jello” and “Orange Jello”. He, being completely confused, asked somebody with the “What IS this?” look on his face. They, casually and coolly as ever, simply pronounced it as “Greenjello (GRAHN-juh-lo) and Orangejello (or-AHN-juh-lo). And to say it properly, you must clearly emphasize the GRAHN and AHN…
…Yeah….
So, anyways, thought you might be interested. :o)
Shannon
(Russia)
Writing from Houston, Texas, home of Ima Hogg’s mansion, which is maintained as a museum and houses a respectable collection of early American furniture. She is always “Miss Ima” here–with no snickering. Ever–and is remembered as a great philanthropist.
Initials-only was evidently quite common early in the century. I did some work once that involved handling a lot of old medical licensure applications and there were quite a few doctors that had either a first name only, a first name and middle initial only (you would think parents could have splurged on another three letters and named him “Robert John” instead of just “Robert J”), or initials only. I saw a lot of the “J (only)” stuff.