Time for the latest batch of name quotes!
From a recent Daily Mail article about an Englishman named Pele Johnson (who was born in September of 1970 — not long after the 1970 World Cup took place in Mexico):
“[M]y whole life has been shaped by the fact that I’m called Pele. Everywhere I’ve gone, it’s always been about my name first.
“It’s never hindered me in my career or anything, it’s a wonderful thing.”
[…]
His father Anthony Johnson wanted to name him after all the forwards and midfield of the Brazilian team in tribute to them winning the Jules Rimet trophy for the third time three months earlier.
It would have made him Pele Jairzinho Tostao Rivelino Clodoaldo Gerson Johnson.
[…]
Instead, the couple compromised on using two of the team’s names, meaning he was christened Pele Jairzinho Johnson.
From the 2004 book I’m a Believer: My Life of Monkees, Music, and Madness by Mickey Dolenz:
I have three younger sisters. The oldest of the three is “Coco.” Her real name is Gemma Marie, but somewhere along the line I nicknamed her “Coco Sunshine” and it stuck. I don’t think she has ever forgiven me.
From the 1915 article “What’s in a Name?” in Cosmopolitan magazine:
Carroll McComas has done her best to make up to her father, Judge C. C. McComas, for the disappointment she caused him in failing to be born a boy. When he insisted upon going through with his prepared program, notwithstanding her sex, and named her Charles Carroll McComas, her family history records that she dimpled sweetly and never whimpered.
[Stage actress Charles Carroll McComas (1886-1962) and her like-named father were descendants of Charles Carroll, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Her three older sisters were named Helen, Alice, and Clare.]
From the October 2000 Libertad Digital article “El Tribunal de Elecciones de Honduras rechaza los nombres ‘raros’” (translated):
The National Elections Tribunal (TNE) has announced that it will introduce an initiative to the legislature to prohibit the absurd, obscene or grotesque names of people in Honduras. The measure has been taken because in that country the law does not allow Hondurans to change their names.
The president of the TNE, the liberal Lisandro Quezada, has indicated that “the height of the situation is that there are strange names such as Cruz de Cardán, Silvín, Llanta del Milagro, Bujía and Motor Martínez that, without a doubt, cause annoyance to those who owe them take your whole life.”
[Those five names were inspired by automotive parts: Cruz de Cardán means “Cardan cross,” Silvín (created from the English words sealed beam) means “headlamp,” Llanta del Milagro means “miracle tire,” and Bujía means “spark plug.”]
From a 2017 Cricket Australia article about Trinidadian cricket player Brian Lara:
“So special did Lara consider his inaugural Test hundred [at Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney, Australia, in early 1993] … [that] when his first daughter was born in 1996 she was christened Sydney. And following a visit to the venue that inspired her naming with her famous father in 2016, she now holds honorary membership at the SCG.”
Finally, here’s what Sports Illustrated learned from Maye Musk last year about the names of the Musk children:
- Elon (b. 1971) “was named after his mother’s grandfather, John Elon Haldeman.”
- Kimbal (b. 1972) “was named after the book titled Kim by Nobel Prize-winning author Rudyard Kipling.”
- During his 2018 Reddit AMA, Kimbal said: “My name means Warrior Chief. It is the name of an english orphan in Rudyard Kipling’s book called Kim (short for Kimball). My parents mispelled [sic] my name on my birth certificate, so I’m Kimbal, not ‘Kimball’.”
- Tosca (b. 1974) “was named after a girl that Musk’s ex-husband [Errol] had a crush on in high school.”
- Maye noted: “I didn’t care. I thought the name was pretty. And I liked it and it suited her.”
For more quotes about names, check out the name quotes category.
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