So here’s a nice reference to our book: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/family/archives/132057.asp?from=blog_last3.

If you read the comments, you’ll see an attempt to undermine my honor, claiming that we got the “Ima Pigg” wrong and it should be “Ima Hogg”. Don’t believe it. Regardless of the famous Texan, “Ima Hogg,” there is in fact an Ima Pigg as well. She was born somewhere around 1890 and lived in Oklahoma at the time of the 1930 census. Look for yourself.

Of course, this is a married name. I don’t know, ladies. Is this a deal breaker: “Will you marry me? If you do, you’ll forever be known as ‘Ima Pigg’.”

Posted: February 21st, 2008 under Book, Name Highlight.
Comments: 2

IT’S HERE!

You can now buy the book that was the inspiration of this blog. Finally. You’ll notice the new links on the sidebar (of course, if this is your first time here, it’s all new to you) which take you to three reputable bookstores whereat you can buy my book. It’s only $9.95, so go buy it. Really. Isn’t a good laugh worth $9.95?

Posted: February 20th, 2008 under Book.
Comments: 3

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