Welcome to May! Here’s this month’s batch of name-related quotes.
From a 2022 article in Sporting News about young Czech hockey player Ivan Ivan:
Ivan Ivan, a Czechia forward who has the same first and last name, took the hockey world by storm last December when he was on the team’s roster at the canceled World Juniors. While a graphic from December stating that his name was Ivan Ivan Ivan caused a stir, it’s unfortunately just Ivan Ivan.
(“Ivan Ivan” is a reduplicated name.)
From the 2021 article “How your name affects your personality” at BBC Future:
[W]hile a less common name may be disadvantageous in the short-term (increasing the risk of rejection and lowering your likeability) it could have advantages over the longer-term by engendering in you a greater sense of your personal uniqueness. Consider another new study by Cai and his team at Beijing’s Institute of Psychology — even after controlling for family and socioeconomic background, they found that having a rarer name was associated with increased odds of having a more unusual career, such as film director or judge.
[…]
Having an unusual name might even shape us to be more creative and open-minded, according to research by Zhu at Arizona State University and his colleagues. Zhu’s team cross-checked the names of the chief executives at over a thousand firms and found that the rarer their names, the more distinctive the business strategies they tended to pursue, especially if they were also more confident by nature.
In a 2022 interview with The Telegraph, English lyricist Sir Tim Rice was asked to recall his ‘best day’:
When my first child, Eva, was born in 1975, although you don’t think of these things in a league table of great events. We named her after Eva Perón, but also because Eva is a good old English name.
(Rice, who became interested in the life of Eva Perón in the early 1970s, later collaborated with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to create the Perón-inspired musical Evita, which opened in 1978.)
From the 2018 article “Oscar, Marcus, Casper, Cora: Companies are using human names to seem more friendly” in the Los Angeles Times:
Over the last few years, a crowd of new companies has emerged across tech, finance and health sporting a first-name brand. Oscar, Alfred, Lola — they have the look and feel of a friend, a colleague, maybe even your cat. And that’s the point: Make a connection with consumers that even Carnegie would appreciate.
[…]
The strategy seems to be working. Research shows that the more simple and human-sounding the name, the greater the company’s success.
[…]
The name game isn’t so much about the products or services being sold. It’s a subconscious approach to branding that borders on anthropomorphizing a company.
(I stumbled upon this one while doing research for a request post.)
From a January 2013 article about the divorce of Kelly Hildebrandt and Kelly Hildebrandt — one a male from Texas, the other a female from Florida:
The tale of the two Kellys began in February 2009, when Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, of Coral Springs, found the Facebook profile of her future spouse. She saw that they had the exact same first and last name and sent him a friendly greeting to note their shared name.
They started having online exchanges and three weeks later, male Kelly, then 24, traveled from Texas to South Florida to meet female Kelly, then 20. They hit it off immediately and got engaged.
NBC 6 first reported about the Kellys in July 2009, and their story soon after went worldwide.
(My favorite line from the piece: “Male Kelly said he would be reluctant to marry anyone with the same name again.”)
From a GMA3 TikTok video featuring actress Rachel Zegler (born in 2001):
My [older] sister’s name is Jacqueline, and my parents originally wanted to name me Catherine, but they thought it would get a little bit confusing, cause they sound very similar. And my mom’s a big Friends fan, and thought that the name Rachel, for Jennifer Aniston’s character, sounded very beautiful on TV. And that is why I was named Rachel.
From a 2008 interview with Erykah Badu (whose daughter, Puma, was born in 2004):
The puma is one of the biggest and strongest cats in the feline family, but it has no roar. I thought that was very unique.
(Thanks to Badu, the name Erykah was the highest-debuting girl name of 1997.)
Want to see more quotes about names? Check out the name quotes category.
