In 1982, 10-year-old American schoolgirl Samantha Smith wrote a letter to the head of the USSR, Yuri Andropov, asking him about the possibility of a nuclear war between the U.S. and the USSR.
Andropov wrote back. In his letter, he invited her to visit the USSR.
So, in July of 1983, Samantha and her parents spent two weeks visiting Russia. The trip was widely publicized in both countries.
Just two years later, Samantha was killed (along with her father) in a plane crash in her home state of Maine.
Several months after the crash, Moscow newspaper Trud reported that a baby girl born in Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, had been named Samantha — “a name virtually unknown for Soviet girls” — in honor of Samantha Smith.
Source: “Soviet Baby Named for Samantha Smith.” Gadsden Times 13 Jan. 1986: C2.
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Baby Name Needed to Go with Middle Name Wade
A reader named Abby is expecting her first child, a baby boy, in a couple of months. The baby’s middle name will be Wade and his surname will be a 2-syllable M-name similar to Marlow.
So far Abby’s favorite first name is Benjamin. Her husband isn’t sold on it, though, so they’d like some other first name ideas.
Here are a few that I thought might work:
Anthony
Calvin
Christopher
Daniel
Henry
Jonathan
Joseph
Nathaniel
Nolan
Oliver
Patrick
Peter
Ryan
Sebastian
Stephen
Theodore
Which of the above names do you like best with Wade? What other names would you suggest to Abby?