What gave the baby name Joby a boost in 1963?

The character Joby (played by Robert Duvall) in the TV series "Stoney Burke" (1962-1963).
Joby from “Stoney Burke“

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Joby saw an uptick in usage (as a boy name) in 1963:

  • 1965: 20 baby boys named Joby
  • 1964: 15 baby boys named Joby
  • 1963: 23 baby boys named Joby
  • 1962: 9 baby boys named Joby
  • 1961: 6 baby boys named Joby

Why?

Because of a single-episode character on the TV show Stoney Burke. The episode was called “Joby” and aired on March 18, 1963.

In the episode, Joby Pierce (played by future Oscar winner Robert Duvall) was a well-meaning but simple-minded stable boy on the run from his past.

What are your thoughts on the name Joby? (Do you like it better for boys, or for girls?)

Source: Stoney Burke “Joby” TV episode – IMDb

Baby name story: Frederica

Painting of the Battle of Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo

Peter McMullen of Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, was seriously wounded at the Battle of Waterloo while serving with the 27th Foot.

“Incredibly, his heavily pregnant wife Elizabeth was watching the battle nearby and, fearing her husband was dead, she rushed into the midst of bodies.” She found Peter still (barely) alive, and attempted to carry him off the active battlefield, despite her condition. As she did this, she was shot in the leg with a musket ball.

After the battle, both Peter and Elizabeth were taken to a hospital in Antwerp, where Peter lost both of his arms due to injuries.

They were then transported to a hospital in Chelsea. While recuperating at the English hospital, Elizabeth gave birth to a baby girl.

Prince Frederick — the Duke of York, and Commander-in-Chief of the British Army — heard about the couple, and visited them at the hospital. While there, he agreed to be the baby’s godfather. And so the newborn “was christened Frederica McMullen of Waterloo” in his honor.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from The storming of La Haye Sainte by Richard Knötel

Babies named for the Battle of Waterloo

Painting of the Battle of Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo — which marked the final defeat of Napoleon and the end of the Napoleonic Wars — took place on June 18, 1815, near the village of Waterloo (located south of Brussels).

Fighting against Napoleon were two forces: a British-led coalition that included Germans, Belgians, and Dutch (all under the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley) and an army from Prussia (under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher).

Hundreds of babies were given the name “Waterloo,” typically as a middle, during the second half of the 1810s. Most of them were baby boys born in England, but some were girls, and some were born elsewhere in the British Empire (and beyond).

  • William Wellington Waterloo Humbley,* b. 1815, in England
  • Isabella Fleura Waterloo Deacon,† b. 1815, Belgium
  • John Waterloo Todd, b. 1815, England
  • Fredrick Waterloo Collins, b. 1815, Wales
  • Jubilee Waterloo Reeves (née Davis), b. 1815, England
  • Dent Waterloo Ditchburn, b. 1815, England
  • Joseph Waterloo Hart, b. 1815, England
  • Henry Waterloo Nickels, b. 1815, England
  • Sophia Waterloo Mills, b. 1815, England
  • Henry Waterloo Prescott, b. 1815, England
  • Richard Waterloo Renny, b. 1815, England
  • John Waterloo Posthumous Brittany, b. circa 1815, England
  • Charlotte Waterloo Grapes, b. circa 1815, England
  • Louisa Waterloo France, b. circa 1815, Belgium
  • James Waterloo Clark, b. 1816, England
  • Henry Waterloo Johnson, b. 1816, England
  • George Waterloo Holland, b. 1816, England
  • Charles Waterloo Wallett, b. 1816, England
  • John Waterloo Wilson, b. circa 1816, Belgium
  • Frederick Waterloo Jennings, b. 1817, England
  • William Waterloo Horford, b. 1817, England
  • George Mark Waterloo Smith, b. 1817, England
  • Edward Waterloo Lane, b. 1817, England
  • Robert Waterloo Cook, b. 1817, England
  • Eleanor Waterloo Whiteman, b. 1817, England
  • Ann Waterloo Barlow, b. 1818, England
  • Wellington Waterloo Teanby, b. circa 1818, England
  • William Wellington Waterloo Jackson, b. circa 1819, England

Interestingly, babies were still being named Waterloo long after the battle was over. Many more Waterloos were born from the 1820s onward:

The place-name Waterloo is made up of a pair of Middle Dutch words that, together, mean “watery meadow.” Since the battle, though, the word Waterloo has also been used to refer to “a decisive or final defeat or setback.” (It’s used this way in the 1974 Abba song “Waterloo” [vid], for instance.)

The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) followed the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-c.1802), which followed the French Revolution (1789-1799), which gave rise to a number of revolutionary baby names in France.

*William Wellington Waterloo Humbley was born on the day of the battle (while his father, an army officer, was abroad taking part). He was baptized the following summer, and the Duke of Wellington himself stood godfather. Several years after that, in 1819, his parents welcomed daughter Vimiera Violetta Vittoria Humbley — named after the battles of Vimeiro (1808) and Vitoria (1813).

†Isabella Fleura Waterloo Deacon’s father, Thomas, had been wounded in the previous battle (Quatre Bras, on the 16th). Her mother, Martha — who was traveling with the army — searched the battlefield for him all night. Eventually she discovered that he’d been transported to Brussels, some 20 miles away, so she walked there with her three young children. (Through a 10-hour thunderstorm, no less.) She reached Brussels on the morning of the 18th, located her husband, and gave birth to Isabella on the 19th.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from The storming of La Haye Sainte by Richard Knötel

Where did the baby name Sossity come from in 1972?

Jethro Tull's album "Benefit" (1970)
Jethro Tull album

While researching -ity names (like Felicity and Serenity) at one point, I happened upon the odd name Sossity, which was in the U.S. baby name data a total of twice, both times in the 1970s:

  • 1977: unlisted
  • 1976: 7 baby girls named Sossity
  • 1975: unlisted
  • 1974: unlisted
  • 1973: unlisted
  • 1972: 5 baby girls named Sossity [debut]
  • 1971: unlisted
  • 1970: unlisted

Where did it come from?

The Jethro Tull song “Sossity: You’re a Woman,” which was the last track on their third album, Benefit (1970).

As made clear by the lyrics, the fictitious female Sossity is meant to be symbolic of society at large:

Sossity: You’re a woman.
Society: You’re a woman.

According to Jethro Tull singer Ian Anderson, the song “obviously [was] written as a double-meaning where I’m notionally talking about an imaginary girl in frankly a rather thin and embarrassing pun.” He also said the song was “kind of okay musically…but lyrically I was never really comfortable with it. And it’s mainly that one word, Sossity, an invented word that seemed like a rather prissy girl’s name.”

So how did the British band come to be named after a 18th-century British agriculturist/inventor?

In the late ’60s, when the group was playing small clubs, they changed their name frequently. “Jethro Tull” was a name they tried in February of 1968 at the suggestion of a booking agent, and that’s the one that stuck.

Ian has said that he since regrets choosing that name, specifically disliking the fact that it came from a real historical person: “I can’t help but feel more and more as I get older that I’m guilty of identity theft and I ought to go to prison for it, really.”

(Jethro Tull’s next and more successful album, Aqualung, featured a song about a character named Aqualung. I’m happy to report that “Aqualung” has never popped up in the SSA data.)

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