(If you don’t get the reference in the title, don’t worry. Neither does anyone else, probably, but I liked the sound of it.)

While searching for bad baby name goodness, I came across this story. In general, it is remarkably similar to the story in this post: parents want to name their child something funky (in this case, “4real”) but their goverment prevents them. In this case, there is apparently a regulation against names that begin with numbers. According to the article, this–and presumably other regulations–are in place to “prevent names that are likely to cause offense to a reasonable person.” The article mentions further that the New Zealander government has blocked other names in the past, such as Satan and Adolf Hitler.

It seems we could have used a similar regulation here as well, since scores of Satans show up in the U.S. federal census.

I picked this one because his name was clearly “Satan” (no indexing errors here), though based on handwriting elsewhere on the page, his last name could be either “Gripp” or “Tripp.” He was an engineer in California who was born in Ohio and who was 27 at the time this census (the 1860 census) was taken.

I’ve tried to imagine the motivation behind naming your child Satan (especially in 1860!) and I come up short, and believe me, I have a fertile imagination. Alas.

Posted: January 4th, 2008 under Name Fun, Name Highlight.
Comments: 2

One of the things that has consistently amazed me as I’ve explored the bizarre names of the past is the motive. Take a look at this one:

The editor of my book was concerned that many of my readers may not know what a chimera is (and thus not get the name Chimera Griffin in the book). If that’s true, and you don’t get why that name is so awesome, check out the Wikipedia article on chimeras. So, for fun, I thought I’d start with another Chimera, Chimera Crook.

Actually, her name was orginially Chimera Corthon, but married a man surnamed Crook. So here’s the trick: when I found her in 1930, the census record showed that she was born and lived in Georgia, was born in 1897, and got married when she was 13 (her husband was 18). Her husband was a farmer and neither of them could read or write.

Step back a generation. Chimera’s father, Siras, was a laborer on a farm (this from the 1900 census). He could read and write, but doesn’t appear to have gone to school. His wife, Lizabeth, could read but not write (again, all of this is from information shown on the census record).

Now, if you’ve read the article on chimeras, or if you already knew what they were, you’ll recognize that the chimera is not something that probably comes up in conversation among farm laborers (and if it did, I say more power to them). Consider also that none of Siras and Lizabeth’s other children had unusual names (Alice, Gerald, Will, Augustus, Carlton, and Tomas, according to the 1900 record). So where did the name Chimera come from?

I’m open to any suggestions or ideas. I think it’s fascinating. My guess is that the Greek myths were much more pervasive when Siras and Lizabeth were kids than they are today. One of them must have heard the story somewhere and liked the name, (though again, I have to wonder about naming your daughter after a monstrous creature that breathes fire).

So what do you think? Why would a farm laborer and his wife in turn-of-the-century Georgia name one of their children after a monstrous creature from classical literature? The floor is yours.

Posted: December 17th, 2007 under Name Highlight.
Comments: 1