It’s amazing how having a kid takes you out of the loop for a while. Thanks to everyone who’s been commenting and reading. Now it’s onward and upward.

Last week I ran across this article in Mental Floss magazine that’s apropos.

When I was researching The Book I actually came across this name (the longest name in recorded history, supposedly), Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenberger-
dorffvoralternwarengewissenhaftschaferswessenschafewaren-
wohlgepflegeundsorgfaltigkeitbeschutzenvonangreifendurch-
ihrraubgierigfeindewelchevoralternzwolftausendjahresvoran-
dieerscheinenwanderersteerdemenschderraumschiffgebrauch-
lichtalsseinursprungvonkraftgestartseinlangefahrthinzwischen-
sternartigraumaufdersuchenachdiesternwelchegehabtbewohn-
barplanetenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneurassevonver-
standigmenschlichkeitkonntefortplanzenundsicherfreuenan-
lebenslanglichfreudeundruhemitnichteinfurchtvorangreifenvon-
andererintelligentgeschopfsvonhinzwischensternartigraum, Senior.  In fact, I ran across it several times, though I could never verify where it came from. So this is nice, though I still haven’t found any actual proof of it. Then again, proof just kind of ruins good legends, doesn’t it?

Posted: March 24th, 2008 under Name Fun, Name Media.
Comments: 10

Okay. We’ve seen some occurences of weird and bad names, momentary losses of good judgment (depending on how you look at it). Now we’re going to see a descent into naming madness.

So here’s a family (the Walkers) from Alabama as they show up in the 1860 U.S. federal census. Note the names of their sons: Bud, Little Bud, Buddy, Little Buddy, and Least Buddy. I thought it was bad that my wife and all her sisters have the same middle name. I can’t imagine family dinner at the Walker house: “Bud, stop hitting your brother! No, not you Little Bud, you’re not doing anything wrong! No wait, did I say Bud? I meant Buddy! Buddy, stop hitting Little Buddy. Least Buddy, stop crying!”

I guess it speeds things up when they’re all being bad.

Thanks to Ginger from Prattville, Alabama for this one. She posted this comment in the RootsWeb Review, a weekly newsletter from RootsWeb.com. They always have fun name stuff, so if you want you can subscribe and check it out.

Posted: February 26th, 2008 under Name Fun, Name Highlight.
Comments: 1

This is my first pull from assignment one, from Brenda:

“I came across this message by Linda when searching my Hooper ancestors on genforum.com:
‘I have an ancestor named Toliver Mansell. And you will love his grandson’s name - Semitoliver Mansell! Isn’t that a hoot?’

My response was:
‘How funny! That name, Semitoliver, makes me think of the British way of naming eighth, 16th, 32nd & 64th notes in music - quaver, semiquaver, demisemiquaver, and hemidemisemiquaver. I wonder if the family continued this and named the next in line Demisemitoliver?’ ”

There is something to naming your kid something that always reminds them that they are subordinate to you.

Just kidding.

Posted: February 12th, 2008 under Name Fun.
Comments: none

So, here’s an article from an Alberta newspaper about naming trends in Alberta over 2007.  A substantial part of the article discusses a variety of “unique” names that popped up over the course of the year. Well, as any good editor will tell you, the word “unique” doesn’t mean “uncommon.” It means “one-of-a-kind.” So I decided to delve into the census records at Ancestry.com to see how many of these names actually were unique. Not surprisingly, almost none of them. Now for you purists, I didn’t look at every single instance of these names, so these numbers are more like broad strokes (okay, for you pure purists, we’ll say broad broad strokes :)). Also, it’s really hard to search for names by gender, so there may be some crossover there too. Either way, unique is not in the eye of the beholder. Take a look (the numbers in brackets are the number of hits in the Ancestry.com census database):

“Among the most interesting names for girls in 2007 were Princess [3,293], Psalms [no Psalms, but 11 Psalm], Rhapsody [4], Oakley [14,779], Kalifornia [none with a K], God’s [9 Gods (none with the apostrophe) and 491 God], Morning Star [3], Evening [116], Elektra [10], Creedance [unique!], Cassiopeia [1], Breaze [2], Blessing [495], Brazil [834], Cerenity [none with a C, 8 with an S], Chaos [28] and Raenbow-Roze [unique! sort of, see below]…

“There was no shortage of uncommon names for little boys in 2007 either. Topping the list is an Adonis [1,789], Blue-Quill [unique!], Corny [267], Felony [11], Furious [7], Geronimo [5,993], Gretzky [unique!], Hinton [5,862], Jackpine [8], Jesus [101, 382, though I’m sure a lot of these are Jesús], Kajun [unique!], Ivy [of course there were a lot of girls named this, but as I scanned the 159,763 entries, I did find a lot of men with this name too], Little [49,875], Maxxamillion [52 with one X], Milwaukee [11], Obsidian-Angel [unique! though there are 60,410 Angels], Rainbow [749], Salmon [8,689], Slim [1,671], Stylez [1], Tao [335] and Zero [896]. There were also three Blazes [723]….”

 Unique my eye.

Posted: February 8th, 2008 under Name Fun, Name Media.
Comments: 5