Where did the baby name Landis come from in 1907?

Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866-1944).
Ken Landis

Yesterday’s post told the story behind Kenesaw Mountain Landis‘ unique name. But there’s even more to the story…

In 1895, Kenesaw Landis returned to Chicago and founded a law firm with two other lawyers

A decade later, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him a U.S. District Judge for Northern Illinois.

His “involvement in [various] high profile cases, combined with his flair for theatrics, brought his decisions and behavior to national attention. After Standard Oil [in 1907], Landis was dubbed the “most talked of persona in America.”

So he was already a well-known public figure by the time he became the first commissioner of professional baseball in late 1920 (which was not long after news of the Black Sox scandal broke).

Why am I getting into all this detail about Kenesaw Landis?

Because, once he became relatively famous, he began acquiring namesakes of his own!

The name Landis, for instance, debuted in the baby data in 1907 and nearly doubled in usage in 1920:

  • 1922: 17 baby boys named Landis
  • 1921: 18 baby boys named Landis
  • 1920: 23 baby boys named Landis
  • 1919: 12 baby boys named Landis
  • 1918: 13 baby boys named Landis
  • 1917: 14 baby boys named Landis
  • 1916: 17 baby boys named Landis
  • 1915: 13 baby boys named Landis
  • 1914: 7 baby boys named Landis
  • 1913: 7 baby boys named Landis
  • 1912: 6 baby boys named Landis
  • 1911: unlisted
  • 1910: 5 baby boys named Landis
  • 1909: unlisted
  • 1908: unlisted
  • 1907: 6 baby boys named Landis [debut]
  • 1906: unlisted
  • 1905: unlisted
Graph of the usage of the baby name Landis in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Landis

The German surname Landis was derived from the Middle High German word landoese, “landless,” which was originally a “nickname for a highwayman or for someone who lays waste to the land.”

Even more interesting, though, are the dozens of boys who got other permutations of his name, such as…

Plus there’s Kenesaw Mountain Landis II — Ken’s own nephew, born in 1910 in Indiana to his younger brother Frederick.

Sources:

How did Kenesaw Mountain Landis get his name?

Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866-1944)
Kenesaw Mountain Landis

If you know Major League Baseball history, no doubt you’re familiar with Kenesaw Mountain “Ken” Landis, who served as professional baseball’s first commissioner from 1921 to 1944.

But…do you know how he got that unusual name?

In 1862 — in the middle of the Civil War — Ken’s father, Dr. Abraham Landis, left his family behind in Ohio to serve as a surgeon in the Union Army. (His family, at that time, consisted of wife Mary and five young children.)

Abraham was severely wounded at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia on June 27, 1864. He spent many weeks in the hospital recovering before he was finally able to return home.

His sixth child, a son, arrived on November 20, 1866 — long after the war was over.

[I]t took Dr. and Mrs. Landis some time to decide on his name. In fact, the delay in providing a name prompted both family and community members to suggest a deluge of different names. Mary Landis did not like the name Abraham, so when Dr. Landis suggested calling their son “Kenesaw,” the name and alternate spelling stuck. Clearly, the site of the doctor’s personal tragedy remained in his thoughts.

The name of the mountain is an Anglicized form of the Cherokee name Gahneesah, which means “burial ground” or “place of the dead.”

(All of Ken’s eventual six siblings had more ordinary names: Katherine, Frances, Walter, Charles, John, and Frederick.)

Ken went on to pass the bar exam and attend law school (in that order) and, by the early 1890s, was practicing law in Chicago. Within a couple of years, he was offered (and accepted) a job in the federal government:

In the Union Army, Abraham Landis was under the command of Lt. Col. Walter Quinton Gresham during Sherman’s advance through Tennessee and Georgia. […] In 1893 Gresham was appointed secretary of state by President Grover Cleveland. He needed a personal secretary and he chose a 26-year-old Chicago attorney with no knowledge of foreign affairs, Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

When Gresham unexpectedly died in 1895, Grover Cleveland offered Ken the post of minister to Venezuela. Ken declined this offer to return to private practice in Chicago and to get married to his fiancée, Winifred Reed.

A year later, Kenesaw and Winifred welcomed their first child, a son named Reed Gresham Landis — middle name in honor of Ken’s late boss (and his father’s former commander).

I have more to say about Kenesaw Mountain Landis, but I’ll save the rest for tomorrow. In the meanwhile, here’s a post about Malvern Hill — another unusual baby name inspired by a Civil War battle/location.

Sources:

The 23 children of Darejan Dadiani

Painting of Darejan Dadiani

In 1750, Georgian noblewoman Darejan Dadiani married the twice-widowed Georgian king Erekle II (who, at that time, ruled the historical region of Kartli).

From the 1750s to the early 1780s, Darejan gave birth to 23 children (though some sources say it was just 19).

Here are the names of 22 of those 23 children, listed alphabetically:

  • Alexander
  • Anastasia
  • Archil (son)
  • Beri (son)
  • Ekaterine – the Georgian form of Katherine.
  • Elene – the Georgian form of Helen.
  • Ioane – the Georgian form of John.
  • Iulon
  • Ketevan (daughter) – the Georgian form of the Persian name Katayoun.
  • Khoreshan (daughter)
  • Levan – the Georgian form of Leon.
  • Luarsab (son) – the Georgian form of the Persian name Lohrasp, which is a form of Aurvataspa, which means “swift horse” in Avestan.
  • Maryam
  • Mirian (son) – the Georgian form of the Persian name Mihran/Mehran.
  • Parnaoz/Pharnaoz (son) – the Georgian form of the Persian name Farnavaz.
  • Salome
  • Solomon
  • Sophia/Sophie
  • Soslan-David – Soslan is the name of a hero/trickster god of the Nart sagas (Caucasian mythology).
  • Tekle – the Georgian form of Thekla.
  • Teimuraz (son) – the Georgian form of the Persian name Tahmuras, which is a form of Takhma Urupi, a character in the Avesta (the Zoroastrian religious text). The name means “strong body” in Avestan.
  • Vakhtang (son) – a form of the name Warkhtanag (“wolf-bodied”), a character in the Nart sagas.

(Wikipedia says the 23rd child was a boy named Aslamaz-Khan, but I can’t find any sources to back that up.)

Darejan’s own name also has an interesting history: it comes from the literary name “Nestan-Darejan,” which was coined by Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli for the name of a fictional princess in his epic poem The Knight in the Panther’s Skin (ca. 1200). The name was based on the Persian phrase nest andare jehan, meaning “unlike any other in the world” or “no such beauty in the world.” Both components — Nestan and Darejan — are now used as given names in Georgia.

Sources:

African names in the newspapers

In 1971, a list of African names published in Jet magazine had an impact on U.S. baby names.

In 1977, a list of African names published in Ebony magazine had a similar impact on U.S. baby names.

And in between, in 1973, a list of African names was published in an interesting place: U.S. newspapers nationwide. That is, not in a magazine written for an African-American audience specifically.

African names, newspaper article, 1973, baby names
African names in U.S. newspapers, Aug. 1973

So…did this newspaper-based list have an impact as well?

Yes, turns out it had roughly the same impact as the other two lists.

The opening line of the article was: “Here’s help for young black couples wanting to give their infants African names.” Toward the end, the article featured a list of 23 names. Most of these names ended up seeing movement in the data, including 10 (!) debuts.

  1. Abeni – debuted in 1974
  2. Avodele – never in the data
  3. Dalila – increased in usage ’73
  4. Fatima – increased in usage ’73/’74
  5. Habibah – debuted in 1974
  6. Halima – increased in usage ’74
  7. Hasina – debuted in 1974
  8. Kamilah – increased in usage ’73/’74
  9. Salama – debuted in 1974
  10. Shani – increased in usage ’74
  11. Yaminah – debuted in 1973
  12. Zahra – debuted in 1973
  13. Abdu – debuted in 1973
  14. Ali – no movement in the data
  15. Bakari – debuted in 1973
  16. Hasani – debuted in 1973
  17. Jabari – increased in usage ’73/’74
  18. Jelani – debuted in 1973
  19. Muhammad – no movement in the data
  20. Rudo – never in the data
  21. Sadiki – not in data yet
  22. Zikomo – not in data yet
  23. Zuberi – not in data yet

The article cited as its source The Book of African Names (1970) by Chief Osuntoki. As it turns out, though, the Chief wasn’t a real person. He was a fictional character invented by the publisher, Drum and Spear Press. Here’s a quote from the book’s introduction, purportedly written by the Chief:

It is strange, indeed, it hurts my heart, that brothers from afar often come to greet me bearing such names as “Willie”, “Juan” and “François”. But we can not be hard against them, for they have been misled.

Of the 23 names listed above, the one that debuted most impressively was Jelani. In fact, Jelani ended up tied for 43rd on the list of the top boy-name debuts of all time.

  • 1976: 55 baby boys named Jelani
  • 1975: 46 baby boys and 6 baby girls named Jelani [debut as a girl name]
  • 1974: 53 baby boys named Jelani
  • 1973: 36 baby boys named Jelani [overall debut]
  • 1972: unlisted
  • 1971: unlisted

Which of those 23 names do you like best?

Sources:

  • “African chief explains symbolism of names.” San Bernardino County Sun 15 Aug. 1973: B-4.
  • Markle, Seth M. A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism, 1964-1974. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2017.