Name quotes #122: Fingal, Cecil, Madison

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Greetings everyone! Here’s this month’s quote post…

From a 2017 article about the off-Broadway play They Promised Her the Moon (which tells the story of pilot Geraldyn “Jerrie” Cobb, the first American woman to test for space flight):

“I immediately fell in love with the story,” the show’s director and producer, Valentina Fratti, told Space.com. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t know about Jerrie Cobb.” 

Fratti had been named for the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, but hadn’t known about the “almost first,” her American counterpart. 

From a 1907 article in the Deseret Evening News called “Genealogy“:

A very good guide, in the study of New England genealogy, is given by the Christian name. In some families, Simon, Stephen and Thomas may follow down the line of sons; while others carry only John, James and William. Genealogists have great confidence in this clue, for those Christian old worthies used to name their sons after themselves and their fathers. They had not evolved into the “Vernons” and “Cecils” and “Irvings” of now-a-days; these modern names which mean nothing but a morbid craving for the romantic and unusual. Romances guide the Christian names of babies today, alas, instead of sense of family loyalty. Have we not lost something of the real spirit of genuineness and fealty with the changed nomenclature of our babies?

From a review of the documentary The Ashley Madison Affair in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Ashley Madison launched in 2001 and took its name from the two most popular baby names at the time, “Ashley” and “Madison.” Right away, that’s creepy.

[Not technically true, but close. Ashley and Madison were the 4th- and 2nd-most popular baby girl names in the U.S. that year. In Canada — which is where the dating website is based — they ranked 13th and 4th.]

From a 1964 article in the Eugene Register-Guard called “Quite a Problem, Naming the Baby“:

The American melting pot has made something of a stew of old world cultures. Isaac and Rebecca Goldberg are the parents not of Moses and Rachael, but of Donald and Marie. Hjalmar and Sigrid Johanson are the parents of Richard and Dorothy. It seems rather a shame that Axel and Jens, Helma and Ingeborg, not to mention Stanislaus and Giacomo and Pedro and Vladimir have just about disappeared. The custom seems to be for the first generation to anglicize the given name as soon as possible. The next generation or two branches out and we get Pat Johnson, even Angus Puccini. Then, after a few generations, there is a tentative reach backward for the Shawns or even the Seans. Katy’s real name may again be Caitlin, Pat’s Padriac.

Have you spotted any interesting name-related quotes/articles/blog posts lately? Let me know!

Name quotes #121: Britney, Shirley, Arizona

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Ready for more name quotes? Here’s the latest batch…

From a 1989 Los Angeles Times article called “Names in the News“:

Mark Calcavecchia, who won the British open last month, withdrew from the PGA Championship, which starts Thursday in suburban Chicago, because his wife gave birth to their first child — a seven-pound, six-ounce daughter named Britney Jo.

[To clarify: The baby, born two weeks after the British Open, was named Britney to commemorate the victory.]

From a 2013 article about names in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“The Name Game” was a hit for Shirley Ellis in 1965. You know the song: “Shirley-Shirley-bo-burly, banana-fana-fo-furly, fee-fie-foe-murly … Shirley!” She bragged that “there isn’t any name that you can’t rhyme.” While entertaining soldiers in Vietnam, however, she discovered she couldn’t rhyme “Rich” or “Chuck.”

[The other names featured in the original version of the novelty song were Lincoln, Arnold, Tony, Billy, Marsha, and Nick.]

Vogue editor Anna Wintour (in the February 2011 issue) writing about Tucson-born model Arizona Muse:

When I look at Arizona, I see shadows of Linda Evangelista and Natalia Vodianova, but most of all I see her, a gorgeous, smart, grown-up. And how could anyone resist someone with that name?

Want to see more quotes about names? Check out the name quotes category.

Name quotes #120: Abba, Barbara, Clementa

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Here’s the latest batch of name-related quotes…

A name story from the recent Washington Post article “What’s in a name?” by John Kelly:

When Barbara Zigli was young, she never bothered to ask her parents why they named her Barbara. Much later, she learned that Saint Barbara is the patron saint of miners.

“My mother’s father was a coal miner, so I asked her if that was why they named me Barbara,” wrote Barbara, of Arlington.

There was a long pause, then Barbara’s mother said, “Uh, yeah, that’s it.”

Barbara was immediately suspicious. “No, really, mom,” she demanded. “Why did you name me Barbara?”

“Promise me you won’t get mad,” Barbara’s mother said. “You’re named after Miss Barbara on [the TV show] ‘Romper Room.'”

From a 2012 article about Woody Guthrie’s son Joady in the Mercury News:

Joady Guthrie was named for Tom Joad, the hero of John Steinbeck’s novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” because his father, himself a political activist and an Oklahoman, or “Okie,” was sympathetic to the plight of 1930s farmers of the Great Depression. Many of Woody Guthrie’s songs championed Dust Bowl migrant workers and working people.

From the 2015 obituary of Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney in the New York Times:

Mr. Pinckney’s late mother, Theopia Stevenson Aikens, was a baseball fan who named her son after Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star, who had died in a plane crash seven months earlier while delivering aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua, family members said. His last name, one of the most storied in South Carolina politics, is that of a pair of white slaveholding cousins who signed the United States Constitution.

From a 2004 New York Times article about Denmark’s Law on Personal Names (which was originally put in place to force the Danes to use family surnames instead of patronymics):

Then in the 1960’s, a furor erupted over the first name Tessa, which resembled tisse, which means to urinate in Danish. Distressed over the lack of direction in the law, the Danish government expanded the statute to grapple with first names. Now the law is as long as an average-size book.

From a recent article in the Mirror about a woman named Abba after Swedish supergroup Abba:

When I was a child, everyone would question my name and make comments about it. They’d get confused by how it’s spelt – it’s the same as the band.

I’ve never come across anyone else named Abba and I love how unique it is. I always get asked ‘Abba like the band?’ when I say it.

For more quotes about names, check out the name quotes category.

Name quotes #119: Eva, Kelly, Rachel

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Welcome to May! Here’s this month’s batch of name-related quotes.

In a 2022 interview with The Telegraph, English lyricist Sir Tim Rice was asked to recall his ‘best day’:

When my first child, Eva, was born in 1975, although you don’t think of these things in a league table of great events. We named her after Eva Perón, but also because Eva is a good old English name.

(Rice, who became interested in the life of Eva Perón in the early 1970s, later collaborated with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to create the Perón-inspired musical Evita, which opened in 1978.)

From the 2018 article “Oscar, Marcus, Casper, Cora: Companies are using human names to seem more friendly” in the Los Angeles Times:

Over the last few years, a crowd of new companies has emerged across tech, finance and health sporting a first-name brand. Oscar, Alfred, Lola — they have the look and feel of a friend, a colleague, maybe even your cat. And that’s the point: Make a connection with consumers that even Carnegie would appreciate.

[…]

The strategy seems to be working. Research shows that the more simple and human-sounding the name, the greater the company’s success.

[…]

The name game isn’t so much about the products or services being sold. It’s a subconscious approach to branding that borders on anthropomorphizing a company.

(I stumbled upon this one while doing research for a request post.)

From a January 2013 article about the divorce of Kelly Hildebrandt and Kelly Hildebrandt — one a male from Texas, the other a female from Florida:

The tale of the two Kellys began in February 2009, when Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, of Coral Springs, found the Facebook profile of her future spouse. She saw that they had the exact same first and last name and sent him a friendly greeting to note their shared name.

They started having online exchanges and three weeks later, male Kelly, then 24, traveled from Texas to South Florida to meet female Kelly, then 20. They hit it off immediately and got engaged.

NBC 6 first reported about the Kellys in July 2009, and their story soon after went worldwide.

(My favorite line from the piece: “Male Kelly said he would be reluctant to marry anyone with the same name again.”)

From a GMA3 TikTok video featuring actress Rachel Zegler (born in 2001):

My [older] sister’s name is Jacqueline, and my parents originally wanted to name me Catherine, but they thought it would get a little bit confusing, cause they sound very similar. And my mom’s a big Friends fan, and thought that the name Rachel, for Jennifer Aniston’s character, sounded very beautiful on TV. And that is why I was named Rachel.

Want to see more quotes about names? Check out the name quotes category.