Nancy's Baby Names

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

In a 2013 interview with OK! magazine, actress Charisma Carpenter was asked whether or not she was named after an Avon fragrance:

That is absolutely true! I don’t know if you’ve smelled it, it’s awful. I was born in an era where Avon was very much the thing. My grandmother brought my mother, as a gift, this perfume. The story is I went without a name for about a week and then my grandmother brought this perfume (named Charisma) and my mom and my dad settled on that name. They had met me, they had heard the name of the perfume and I guess it just clicked.

From a 2017 interview [vid] with professional basketball player Isaiah Thomas (who was, at that time, a star player for the Boston Celtics):

My dad is from Los Angeles, California. He’s a big Laker fan. And he made a wager that if the Detroit Pistons beat the Lakers [in the 1989 Finals] he’d name his son Isiah Thomas. […] My mom, she grew up in church, and she liked the name but she wanted it spelled the biblical way, that’s why my name is spelled slightly different than the older Isiah Thomas.

(Thomas was born in February, but the Finals weren’t until June. Sports Illustrated clarifies that the bet was made before the birth — and well before the Finals — but that, by the time the baby arrived, Thomas’ father had “had warmed to the idea of his very own Isiah.”)

From the same interview [vid], former Detroit Pistons player Isiah Thomas getting a kick out hearing his own name being chanted at the Boston Garden:

It’s so beautiful [laughs]. I love it. I love it that, you know, and even though they’re not chanting my name, to hear them chant “MVP” and they’re talking about Isaiah Thomas in the Boston Garden — it’s just awesome.

(Here’s some background on the Pistons-Celtics rivalry.)

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 2016 Boston Magazine article about Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA, who was born in 1969 and named Robert Fitzgerald Diggs after the Kennedy brothers Robert and John Fitzgerald:

The Kennedy brothers really had a big effect on my mother. She loved what they stood for, that’s why she named her son after them. I think the ideas that they possessed and tried to put into our country, whether it’s the idea of man achieving the high glory of reaching the moon or the glory of trying to help spread civil liberties to the people, fulfill the promise of our Constitution. Those type of things, I think, are always admirable. My mother was really touched by that and she named me after them.

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.