Baby Name: Ailsa

From the 2006 movie Casino Royale, James Bond commenting about Vesper Lynd’s first name:

‘Vesper.’ I do hope you gave your parents hell for that.

About the choosing of Ailsa, the first name of the daughter of gold-medal winning Olympic curler Joe Polo:

Both her parents were curlers, members of a tight-knit sport where an intense reverence for the game tends to bleed over into the players’ personal lives. And so it was only natural that Joe and Kristin Polo decided to name their future daughter Ailsa, after the Scottish island where the granite that makes curling rocks is mined.

About the coining of Kikkan, the first name of gold-medal winning Olympic cross-country skier Kikkan Randall:

After Randall’s birth on Dec. 31, 1982, Ronn wanted to name her Kikki, after Kiki Cutter, the first American skier, male or female, to win a rase in a World Cup event, a slalom in 1968. Deborah preferred Meghan. They compromised on Kikkan.

(Kiki Cutter = Christina “Kiki” Cutter.)

From an article about unusual names by Felicity “Flic” Everett:

When I was eight, I changed my name. Until then, I was called Johanna Louise, because my youthful parents, huge Bob Dylan fans, had named me after his mystical 1966 ballad, Visions of Johanna. In mid-70s south Manchester, sadly, the mysticism was somewhat lost. I hated explaining my name […] and thought it sounded clunky and earthy, when I longed to be ethereal and balletic.

From an essay about ethnic names by Australian-born Turkish author Dilvin Yasa

“Have you ever considered changing your name to something more ‘white’?” asked a literary agent the other day. “It’s been my experience that authors with strong, Anglo names tend to do better at the cash registers than those who have ethnic or even Aboriginal names.”

[…]

“Leave your name as it is!” [Jane Palfreyman] wrote. “I can tell you that their names have affected the popularity of Anh Do*, Christos Tsiolkas, Kevin Kwan or Munjed Al Muderis – and indeed may well have contributed to their success.”

*Misspelled “Ahn Do” in the original text.

From an article called “Restore Yamhill!” in the March 30, 1917, issue of The New York Sun:

The City Commission of Portland, Ore., has succumbed to an attack of mock elegance and under its influence has erased from the map the excellent, juicy and meaningful name of Yamhill street, substituting for it the commonplace and sordid Market street.

[…]

Yamhill is ancient, respectable, typical, historic. Alexander Henry, a fur trader of the Northwest Company, traversing the then unknown Willamette country, met at Willamette Falls, January 10, 1814, seven “ugly, ill formed Indians” leading a horse. They were of the Yamhela tribe, as Henry spelled it in his diary, the name being derived from the Yamhela, or yellow river.

From an article about Rose Collom in True West Magazine:

Rose was the perfect name for the Grand Canyon’s first official botanist, because self-taught Rose Collom blossomed when exposed to the state’s flora.
…
Rose discovered several varieties of plants previously unknown, and each was named after her.