Mystery baby name: Nerine (Solved!)

26 thoughts on “Mystery baby name: Nerine (Solved!)”

1. “The Twins of Bergamo” is a play featuring a Nerine. It appeared in “The Drama, Vol. 8,” published in 1918. Staged readings and dramatic arts were popular both within the community and at home a century ago.

   http://books.google.com/books?id=K0cjAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA351&dq=nerine&hl=en&ei=NWs3TriUBa_KiALSoK3MDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=nerine&f=false

   Gardening also had a craze in the post-WWI years, and “The Garden: an illustrated weekly journal of gardening in all its branches” is just one of the publications that mentions Nerines.

   http://books.google.com/books?id=BgpJAAAAYAAJ&q=nerine&dq=nerine&hl=en&ei=NWs3TriUBa_KiALSoK3MDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBA

2. Also, anyone at this staging of Moliere’s “Impromtu du Vieux Colombier” on Nov. 28, 1917 would have encountered Nerine as a name. I’d imagine all these would be upper-class phenomena: gardening, plays, Moliere. Any clues as to the states or income levels of the parents of baby Nerines?

   http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60F1FF73A5E11738DDDA10A94D9415B878DF1D3

3. Charly, thanks for your help!

   “The Twins of Bergamo” and the gardening craze I did not know about. The Moliere play I knew about, but, as you mention, I don’t know if any of these things would have had the mass appeal necessary to catapult Nerine from fewer than 5 babies in 1916 to 43 in 1917.

   State-by-state data from both the SSA and the SSDI indicate that Nerines were born all over the country, not just in one particular state/region.

   I’m not aware of data that ties baby names to parental income levels, though I think inferences could be made using census data (e.g. occupation, property ownership).

   SSDI data does list 3 Nerines born in December of 1916, which is interesting — maybe something happened at the tail end of 1916? Hm.

4. I wonder if this could be a coincidence type of situation– naming children after flowers was very popular at that time, and the Nerine flower came to prominence around then as well I think (I wonder if it may have been that 1916/17 was a moment where the flower became more widely available, or something like that?

5. Please see the 1915 San Diego World’s Fair, which
   ran till 1917. Also known as the Panama-California
   Exposition, they boasted a large botanical exposition
   with structures they built which I think still might
   remain today. It’s a long-shot, but maybe the flower
   debuted there?
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama–California_Exposition_(1915)#section_5

6. Thanks for the comments, Maria and Flora!

   Nerines were available long before 1917, but perhaps they suddenly came into fashion around that time, and perhaps it had something to do with the World’s Fair. Certainly plausible. I’ve been looking for evidence, though, and I’m coming up short.

7. Thanks, Nancy. I searched all the Vaudeville players, given the time-frame. BTW, I found the play of such interest; I had long forgotten about it. Were songs searched? Did I miss that?

8. I searched for songs — I do my best to comb through all the main pop culture categories (movies, music, books, politics, etc.) — but didn’t have any luck.

9. Thanks, Nancy, I figured you already had. I spent a little more time today on two more ideas to no avail, but I remember a Lady Nerine :) from my youth, so I will keep at this mystery along with you!

10. Here’s something interesting I found over at Behind the Name:

    My name is Nerine, I am named after my 86 year old Aunt. My Grandfather had read a book right before she was born in 1918 and one of the persons in the book was named “Nerine” he liked the name and gave it to her. I would like to find out Any information concerning the book–She never asked and he has pass on. She is getting older also and I would like to reseach book for her. I know the name Nerine can be found in Greek Met. but he would not have been interested in reading that type of topic.

    This Nerine may have been named for the Nerine in “The Twins of Bergamo.”

    Or…she may have been named after a character in some other book that’s been eluding us all this time!

11. The only book I’ve found so far is “Nerine’s Second Choice” by Adelaide Stirling. But it was published (and serialized in at least one newspaper) in the late 1890s, so it’s not a match on the year, unfortunately.

12. Thanks for your further finds Nancy. This one is still on my mind and i keep looking into it from time to time!

13. Thank you, Flora!

14. Still wondering… after all these years.

15. Me too! I wish we could figure this one out. I did try looking for a “Lady Nerine,” but didn’t find much.

    Here are the current SSDI numbers for people with the first name Nerine:

    • 1915 – 1 Nerine born
    • 1916 – 4 Nerines born
    • 1917 – 45 Nerines born
    • 1918 – 15 Nerines born
    • 1919 – 5 Nerines born

    More babies were named Nerine during July, August and September than during the other months of 1917, but this might just reflect the higher numbers of births during those months. (Source: In Which Month Are the Most Babies Born?)

16. Hi! Please allow me to see if I can get this close to correct, as it involves ship lines and fleets. There was a ship built in 1896 — the ex-Maria Rickmers. In 1900, the ship was purchased from the Rickmers Line and renamed Helgoland. In war-time 1914, it was captured by Britain in the Mediterranean. That ship, in 1915, was renamed Nerine.

    Citation: http://www.theshipslist.com

17. http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/nglloyd.shtml

    Go down this list in an alphabetized manner, searching for ‘Helgoland’ on the far left column. Then, the row will have the data. (If I posted it over properly, I had several pages of their site open.)

18. That’s interesting, thanks Flora! I wonder if the renaming of the ship is somehow related to (or maybe foreshadows?) the baby name spike a few years later.

19. Perhaps I was unclear or I’ve gotten something wrong after these long years!

    There were three, I think, Heligoland skirmishes. I’m referring to the WWI battle taking place the first week of August 1914, which was the first major naval victory of the British Royal Navy over Germany.

    The Brits captured a number of vessels–some destroyed; other overtaken and renamed. It’s a hard track to follow, with a few confusing links. However, that’s what lead me to a first Nerine of 1914.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Heligoland_Bight_(1914)

    Yours,
    Flora

20. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Dunedin_Star

    It’s so circuitous. It appears to have been converted into a civilian ship, ending up in South Africa. There’s a few stories about it on message boards also. They veer into the WWII theatre….and sound more mercenary than civilian….

21. Oh, Nancy, I had meant to mention: I could not get quite how close the gap (month-wise) the naming events were separated between 1914 and 1915.

    [For clarity’s sake: The ship was captured in August 1914. Renamed 1915 month unknown. First recorded Nerine baby born, 1915 month unknown.]

    Unfortunately, I have no idea the what the convention was for the British renaming a captured enemy warship. Was a name already on a list? I searched the Captains and Naval officers (those I could obtain) wives’ names. However, I had no way to search the daughters’ names.

    My point, from what I could glean from the limited information, is that while the paperwork we have today appears to show a gap, we don’t have enough historical data to know. It was the first captured ship by the Allies, however, by its not becoming a Royal Naval Ship, but instead turned over to a shipping magnate, makes the research more difficult follow.

    At the time the capture occurred, however, it was a major battle win for the British.

    As I have remained looking around for our mysterious Nerine, when I get a chance; I shall pass on the shipping information to someone I know who is very familiar with WWI British Naval practices and history.

    If I cannot get further information there, I’ll keep looking here and there. Maybe I’ll have you an answer by 2020!

    Flora

    P.S. I checked in today because of the Cyd
    Cherisse post. Cyd is one of my nicknames. Flora is my great-grandmothers name, which one rarely sees/hears anymore.

22. Such interesting information. Thank you, Flora!

23. Nerine was mentioned as a flower in “Myself and Others” in the July 1917 issue of Cosmopolitan. Lillie Langtry.

    “Isn’t there a lily that grows in our island— the Jersey lily?”
    On my replying affirmatively, he asked me to send for one directly. It is a fragile little flower, neither decorative nor imposing, and I think my countryman was rather disconcerted when it arrived. Still, he painted it held in my hand, and, calling the portrait “The Jersey Lily,” gave, at the same time, a title to the picture and a sobriquet to me by which I was forever afterward known. The work is three-quarter length, showing me in a black, clinging gown, fastened with able black bows. At the throat is a white-lace collar, with a gardenia – immortalized at some one’s special request-tucked in one side, the crimson lily, Nerine sarniensis, providing the only touch of color in the scheme.”

    Not sure if that would have been enough of an exposure or if the dates would line up, though.

24. Thank you for the idea!

    The timing is right, and Cosmopolitan was quite popular in the 1910s. (Here’s a link to “Myself and Others.”)

    But my feeling is that a single mention of Nerine as a flower name — not as a female name — wouldn’t have suddenly influenced dozens of readers to use Nerine as a baby name.

    I think that whatever caused the debut (story? song? comic strip?) very likely presented Nerine as a plausible female name. I think this context makes a difference.

25. “Nerine’s Second Choice” had been serialized in the late 1890s, but I found it serialized again in the magazine “Comfort” in April and May 1917. I can’t find other issues from late 1916 or earlier in 1917, but two chapters were published in each of those issues. This is speculation, but if each issue contained two chapters or so, then serialization would have begun in November or possibly December 1916. I found a reference in a newspaper from March 1917 to the then-current serialization of “Nerine’s Second Choice.” It was absent in the next-oldest available Comfort, from September 1916.

    Comfort serialized at least one other novel by Adelaide Stirling the next year (“The Girl He Loved,” originally ~1906), and it was the first magazine to reach a circulation of over a million subscribers. It had an audience… “in a million and a quarter homes,” at least per the tagline on the May 1917 cover!

26. Oh that’s a very promising lead!

    I will come back tomorrow and add more to this comment — it’s way past my bedtime — but I think you may have solved the mystery, Anonymous!

    …

    Ok it’s tomorrow. :)

    I’ve found some old copies of “Comfort” — which I’d never even heard of before — at the Internet Archive. The first installment of “Nerine’s Second Choice” was published in January (following the conclusion of another Adelaide Stirling story, “Love and Spite”). It ran until September. The title of the story was in very large print, and all but the final two installments included illustrations.

    More importantly, “Comfort” was indeed a very popular periodical back in those days — apparently the first to reach 1 million subscribers, in the mid-1890s. (It ceased publication in the 1940s.)

    Everything lines up — thank you so much for figuring this one out!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.