In mid-2014, K. Steenson of the University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections blog offered “fifteen genuine examples of people’s names taken from the manuscripts that we have come across.”
The original list included a lot of fun details, but here’s the gist of it — just the names themselves:
- Barefoot Booth
- Daft Smith
- Dymock Wallpoole
- Hearsay Wood
- Kitty Bounds
- Madewell Crisp
- Marmaduke Witham
- Mercy Puffin
- Original Steele
- Restored Bendall
- Saintly Whitehead
- Stockdale Avison
- Thoroton Pocklington
- Treverse Spilie
- Webster Whistler
In the comments, an archivist from Somerset threw in a few more: Strangeways and Truefoot (brothers), Purified, and Keren-happuch.
Source: What’s in a name?
This is not directly related to this post, but there was a bit on Saturday’s episode of NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me about an apparent trend in naming babies after names of weapons manufacturers and other gun-associated terms. You might wish to investigate.
Transcript here: http://www.wbur.org/npr/439736844/limericks
Thank you, Frank! Yes, that news has been making the rounds lately. And it’s true — SSA data shows that gun-inspired baby names (e.g., Shooter, Trigger) are indeed on the rise.
They’ve been creeping upward for a few years now. Gunner surpassed the traditional spelling, Gunnar, about a decade ago.
I’ve never posted about the gun-name crazy specifically, but here are some older posts on Cabela, Beretta, and 12-Gage.