Name quotes #93: Kenai, Via, Annette

Letter about baby Kenai (via Rocky Mountain NP’s IG)

From a handwritten letter sent to Rocky Mountain National Park from “Shawn in Texas”:

My wife and I got to take our baby boy named Kenai (named after Kenai Fjords National Park) on his first National Park trip to Rocky Mountain National Park just right before the fires. This was a special trip for us seeing that this would make his first adventure before the many to come.

(The baby name Kenai has become increasingly popular recently. I don’t know what year this particular baby was born, but over 10% of the Kenais born in 2019 were also from Texas.)

From an article in the New York Post about the “Via Getty” confusion on social media:

Lefties fired up over protesters storming the US Capitol Building mistakenly believed one caught-on-camera rioter was named “Via Getty” — because of a photo credit for the media firm Getty Images.

Politico reporter Ryan Lizza had posted a photo on Twitter with the message “Via Getty, one of the rioters steals a podium from the Capitol.”

But online critics embarrassingly assumed “Via Getty” was the guy’s name — instead of attribution for one of the world’s largest visual media companies.

(Usage of the baby name Via is rising pretty swiftly right now — anyone know why? I’m stumped.)

From a New York Times article about parents looking for “positive” baby names:

Some parents-to-be have been so distracted by the pandemic that they’ve skipped the deliberation and quickly picked a name. Amanda Austin of Erie, Pa., owner of an e-commerce store specializing in dollhouse miniatures, came up with her daughter’s name on a whim. “It was in March, when the whole world was shutting down,” she said. “Covid terrified me. My husband and his dad own a construction company and Pennsylvania had banned construction work.”

The name “Annette” popped suddenly into her mind. “I shared it with my husband and he loved it,” Austin said. “His reaction is a far cry from my other daughter’s naming process, where we went back and forth for months. I think we had so much going on with the pandemic that we didn’t have the mental bandwidth to dig deeper.” The name also reminded the couple of the 1950s, a “less complicated” time.

3 thoughts on “Name quotes #93: Kenai, Via, Annette

  1. Great round-up, as always!

    RE: Via … I think it’s down to Wonder. The novel was published in 2012. The film adaptation came out in 2017. My daughter read the book before we saw the movie, which wasn’t until it was available at home … so probably not until sometime in late 2018/early 2019, I think? The spike starts in 2018, so I imagine it’s lots of families like ours – parents didn’t read the book, but did see the movie.

    The boy’s name is August; his older sister is Via, short for Olivia. But she’s pretty much always called Via in the movie. (In fact, IMDb lists the character as just Via: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543472/)

    It’s worth a watch!

  2. Thanks so much, Abby! I don’t know if I would have ever figured that one out on my own. :)

    That movie looks pretty great, actually.

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