Baby Name: Gemma

Here are dozens of quotes about names that don’t quite fit into the other quote posts (each of which has a theme, such as quotes about the names of athletes, artists, writers, or musicians, or quotes about names from television, movies, books or songs).

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From a Daily Mail article about nominative determinism:

And now, a man called Keith Weed has been appointed president of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Of course he has. Especially when you hear that his father’s name was Weed and his mother’s name was Hedges.

‘If a Weed gets together with a Hedges, I think they’re going to give birth to the president of the RHS,’ said Mr Weed, 59, who lives near RHS Wisley in Surrey.

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From a 2004 New York Times article about Denmark’s Law on Personal Names (which was originally put in place to force the Danes to use family surnames instead of patronymics):

Then in the 1960’s, a furor erupted over the first name Tessa, which resembled tisse, which means to urinate in Danish. Distressed over the lack of direction in the law, the Danish government expanded the statute to grapple with first names. Now the law is as long as an average-size book.

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About the historical “Silbestre Esquivel” inscription inside Petrified Forest National Park:

Who was Silbestre Esquivel? In 1811, he inscribed his name in what would become Petrified Forest National Park. Was he passing through? Was he a lonely cowboy or shepherd? Even the history of discovery of the inscription is mysterious. Two different articles in a magazine and a newspaper in 1943 and 1945 claim to discover the name. The earlier one found it by directions from a business woman in the area — wouldn’t she be the one to have discovered it? A professional photographer, Michael Bend, did find out that the man was part of a party traveling from Santa Fe to Utah lead by José Rafaél Sarracino to trade with the Ute people. Such fascinating secrets!

(The name Silbestre — like the related name Sylvester — can be traced back to the Latin word silva, meaning “forest.”)

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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 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.

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From a 2020 Facebook post by The Pioneer Woman, Anne Marie “Ree” Drummond (found via Mashed):

Happy Father’s Day to my father-in-law, whom I love, my own dad, whom I adore, and my husband Ladd, pictured here with our first child (who was conceived on our honeymoon, btw…sorry if that’s TMI, we almost named her Sydney but changed our mind because we didn’t want her to have to explain it her whole life).

(They ended up naming her Alex.)

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From the 2015 obituary of Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney in the New York Times:

Mr. Pinckney’s late mother, Theopia Stevenson Aikens, was a baseball fan who named her son after Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star, who had died in a plane crash seven months earlier while delivering aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua, family members said. His last name, one of the most storied in South Carolina politics, is that of a pair of white slaveholding cousins who signed the United States Constitution.

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From an article in The Catholic Standard about students at a Maryland high school (found via Abby):

Keyvar Smith-Herold of the class of 2022 at DeMatha Catholic High School smiled as he explained the inspiration for his name, noting that his father Vincent Smith works as a locksmith.

“That’s why ‘Key’ is in our names,” he said, shedding light on the origin of his first name and that of his twin sister, Keydra, and also their older brother Keyden, a 2018 DeMatha graduate.

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Some interesting thoughts on why only certain Irish names tend to be anglicized, from the Irish Arts Center:

“Caoimhe” has been consistently more popular than the anglicized spelling, “Keeva.” How did this happen when so many other Irish names appeared to make concessions to English spelling norms?

While Medb/Maeve, Sadhbh/Sive, Seán/Shawn and other names were popular at a time when the Irish language and pride in Irish identity was against the ropes, Caoimhe and Fiadh are names that rose in the ranks when Ireland was swaggering culturally and commercially. It was also a time when Irish language television and schools were making strides.

Caoimhe is one of the names given by parents to the first generation of daughters not expected to emigrate, who would grow up surrounded by people who would know that the “mh” sounds like a “v” in the middle or at the end of a word.

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From the 1812 book A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels (Vol. 4), edited by Robert Kerr:

When the eldest son of Huana Capac was born, he ordered a prodigious chain or cable of gold to be made, so large and heavy that two hundred men were hardly able to lift it. In remembrance of this circumstance, the infant was named Huascar, which signifies a cable or large rope, as the Peruvians have no word in their language signifying a chain. To this name of Huascar was added the surname Inca, belonging to all their kings, just as Augustus was given to all the Roman emperors.

(The name Huascar was a one-hit wonder in the SSA data in 1997, incidentally.)

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About the Hmong-American 2019 Gerber Spokesbaby, Kairi (pronounced KY-ree):

So, who is Kairi? According to her parents, the 15-month-old loves to play hide and seek and build forts with blankets. She has a spunky attitude and vibrant facial expressions. And she was named after a character from the video game Kingdom Hearts.

(According to Gerber, Kairi’s mother Ying went by “Kairi” as a nickname during high school.)

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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.”)

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A 2017 tweet by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to the daughter of South African cricketer Jonty Rhodes, India Rhodes (b. 2015), who was named in honor of the country:

Happy birthday to India, from India. :)

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From a 1935 article about baby names in a newspaper from Perth, Australia:

After Amy Johnson (Mrs. J. A. Mollison) made her wonderful flight to Australia it seemed that every baby girl was being named “Amy.” They were comparatively lucky. “Amy” is rather a nice name, but what about the unfortunate boys who were called “Lindbergh” or “Lindy” in 1927 to commemorate the young American’s lone Atlantic flight?

(I don’t have any Australian baby name data that goes back to the late 1920s — Amy Johnson‘s solo flight from England to Australia was in 1930 — but, anecdotally, most of the Australian Amys I’m seeing in the records were born decades before the flight.)

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From a biography of North Carolina businessman Edward James Parrish in the book Makers of America: Biographies of Leading Men of Thought and Action, vol. II (1916):

Colonel Parrish was born near Round Hill Post Office, then in Orange County (now Durham County), on October 20, 1846, son of Colonel Doctor Claiborn and Ruthy Anne (Ward) Parrish. His father had the peculiar given name of Doctor because he was a seventh son, in accordance with the old belief that the seventh son has the gift of healing.

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From an article about Irish TV personality Vogue Williams:

Everyone thinks I made up my name or I changed it at some stage and I’m actually called Joanne. But I like having a different name. Brian and I squabble all the time over baby names – because I want to give any children we have an equally mad name as the one I was given.

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From a 2016 article about “weird” Dominican personal names by Isabelia Herrera:

When my mother was pregnant with me, she and my father read La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde, Omar Cabezas’ personal account of his time living with Sandinista guerrilla revolutionaries in the Cordillera Isabelia, a mountain range in Nicaragua.

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Two quotes from an article in which the author argues that distinctively black names in America emerged long before the civil rights movement:

[I]n the 1920 census, 99% of all men with the first name of Booker were black, as were 80% of all men named Perlie or its variations. We found that the fraction of blacks holding a distinctively black name in the early 1900s is comparable to the fraction holding a distinctively black name at the end of the 20th century, around 3%.

…and second:

[W]e found that names like Alonzo, Israel, Presley and Titus were popular both before and after emancipation among blacks. We also learned found that roughly 3% of black Americans had black names in the antebellum period – about the same percentage as did in the period after the Civil War.

But what was most striking is the trend over time during enslavement. We found that the share of black Americans with black names increased over the antebellum era while the share of white Americans with these same names declined, from more than 3% at the time of the American Revolution to less than 1% by 1860.

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From a 2017 article about UC Berkeley student (and mom) Natalie Ruiz:

Doe Library’s North Reading Room became Ruiz’s haven. “It was one of the few quiet places where I felt I could focus,” she says. “That season of my life was extremely dark; I didn’t know if I’d make it to graduation, or how I could possibly raise a baby at this time.”

One day at the library, she noticed light shining down on her growing belly, right over the university seal on her T-shirt and the words “fiat lux.” She and Blanchard had considered Lillian or Clara as baby names, but now the choice was made.

“I felt my daughter kick, and it occurred to me that clara in Spanish means ‘bright,’ and I imagined the way that this baby could and would be the bright light at the end of this dark season,” says Ruiz, who gave birth to Clara on May 15, 2014.

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From a 2018 interview with entrepreneur Eden Blackman in The Telegraph:

For many entrepreneurs, starting a business often feels like bringing new life into the world. It’s not every day though, that your endeavours result in a baby named in your honour.

“That’s the pinnacle for me, it’s simply mind-blowing,” says Eden Blackman, founder of online dating business Would Like to Meet and namesake of young Eden, whose parents met on the site several years ago. “That is amazing and quite a lot to take on but it’s a beautiful thing.”

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From an article and a blog post about the naming of Wendy’s:

When it came to deciding what to call the chain, [Dave Thomas] tried out the names of all five of his children before he settled on the nickname for his daughter, Melinda, which was Wendy.

Before my dad left us [in 2002], we had a long conversation about him naming the restaurant Wendy’s. It was the first time we’d ever had this conversation. He said, “You know what? I’m sorry.” I asked him what he meant. He explained, “I should’ve just named it after myself, because it put a lot of pressure on you.”

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From a 2017 LDS Living article about Mormon names:

Jennifer Mansfield, a current graduate student in the Folklore Program at Utah State University, identified six different types of Mormon names: religious (Moroni, Nephi, Brigham), combination (Taylee, Mandylyn), invented (Kaislen), creatively spelled (Kady, Taeler), ancestral (Freestone, Jenkin), and themed (Monson, Hinckley, Kimball).

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From CUNY linguist Leonard R. N. Ashley (via Futility Closet):

I once had a student named Usmail, which I at first thought was some Hispanic version of Ishmael. It transpired that he had been named for the only contact his family in a remote Puerto Rican village enjoyed with the outside world, the red-white-and-blue truck that came frequently and had painted on its side US Mail.

(Here are more names like Usmail.)

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From an Us Weekly article about Oprah‘s BFF Gayle King:

I changed my name from Gail to Gayle in seventh grade because I liked to make a loopy y.

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From the essay “The Joy of Being Called Morven Crumlish” by the awesomely named Morven Crumlish (via British Baby Names):

I like having an unusual name. The Morven part is not so uncommon in Scotland – most people I meet know another Morven, and I know at least half a dozen. I once ended up in the pub with two other Morvens, which got funnier as the night wore on. Added to the Crumlish, though, my name is, I think, unique. “There can’t be more than one Morven Crumlish!” is something I hear a lot, when the different parts of my life accidentally collide, which makes it difficult to misbehave. In the past my name has become an abstraction. “So this is what a Morven Crumlish looks like,” said the porters who wheeled me down to get my tonsils removed, reducing me to an indefinite object.

(Here are some other very Scottish names.)

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From a 2013 article in The Atlantic about the names of NPR reporters:

Neda Ulaby’s first name means “dew” and is fairly common in Syria. (“It’s also the name of the heroine of an opera called Pagliacci who is literally killed by a clown,” she told me over email.)

…And another quote from the same article:

Robert Smith of Planet Money told me by email that the only reason to change his name “would be so that I could be more famous. You would remember it better if I ended by reports with, ‘I’m Mobius Tutti.'” But at the same time, he says, “I’m in this business to tell other people’s stories, and not to promote myself or my own name. Being a Robert Smith is always a good reminder that you aren’t that different than the people you cover.”

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From the article “What your name says about your age” (2016) in The Hindu:

Movie stars seem to have an impact on naming conventions too. The median [age of women named] Raveena, Karishma, Twinkle and Kajol are between 20 and 23 today, which, given the two movie stars’ debuts in the early 90s, makes sense. The median Aishwarya is 21, which is roughly how many years ago Ms. Rai Bachchan won the Miss World title.

Among men, there has been a sharp rise in the popularity of Shahrukh and Sachin, both peaks coinciding with their debuts on film screens and the cricket field respectively. Amitabh is declining in popularity after hitting a peak among those who were born in the mid 70s.

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From “I Love the Q,” a Harvard Medical School interview with stem-cell scientist George Q. Daley:

HMS: So you have five brothers and sisters?

DALEY: Yes. I was born fifth, and my middle name, Quentin, means “fifth-born.”

HMS: I was going to ask why you use the Q.

DALEY: I love the Q. It’s the most distinctive thing about me. Everybody asks, “What’s the Q stand for?”

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From “Politics, Religion and…Baby Names” by Tim Bradley:

Our oldest son Jay (who was almost two at the time) insisted on calling our baby-to-be “Baby Fire” while my wife was pregnant. It caught on and throughout my wife’s pregnancy, our families would ask, “How’s Baby Fire doing?” Although it seemed like a fitting name, we just dismissed it thinking “Fire” was too “out there” for anyone to be on board. But on the way to the hospital during the wee hours of the morning on July 4th, my wife and I decided that “Fire” as a middle name seemed appropriate. It will forever link our sons since it was Jay’s idea, and it captures the memories and emotions we felt throughout the pregnancy. There’s the July 4th fireworks tie-in as well. And let’s face it “Fire” as a middle name is only one step away from “Danger” as the coolest name ever.

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From a late 2021 opinion piece, “Every Jewish name tells a Jewish story,” in the Jerusalem Post:

After the 1967 Six Day War, Israelis created names that were lovely and filled with hope. Tal, Elizur, Sharona were born. And names of cities and towns became first names – Sinai, Golan, Eilat are a few. The ’67 war was a watershed for hope in Israel and it was reflected in these new names.

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From H. L. Mencken’s 1919 book The American Language:

The religious obsession of the New England colonists is also kept in mind by the persistence of Biblical names: Ezra, Hiram, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Elijah, Elihu, and so on. These names excite the derision of the English; an American comic character, in an English play or novel, always bears one of them.

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How spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle (born Ulrich Tölle) came up with his new name:

Some time after this “inner transformation”, Tolle changed his first name from Ulrich to Eckhart following a dream in which he saw books lying around. On the cover of one was the name Eckhart and he knew he had written it. By coincidence, he bumped into an acquaintance, a psychic, a few days later who, for no apparent reason, called him Eckhart! Having become a completely different person he was ready to relinquish the name Ulrich and the unhappy energy the name held for him.

(Other sources say Tolle chose “Eckhart” in deference to 13th-century German theologian/mystic Meister Eckhart.)

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From a collection of baby name stories contributed by Long Island moms:

My grandfather hated tattoos. He used to tell his standard stories and would say only people who had tattoos in ‘his day’ were sailors. He said their tattoos always said either ‘death before dishonor’ or ‘true love Mabel.’ He always used Mabel as the example name. I’m not sure why. He died in 2013. We named our daughter Mabel as a nod to him.

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From the blog of UK historian Elizabeth Walne:

Some first names can be very helpful in providing an approximate birth date for an individual if you are unsure. I once researched a family with sons Foch, Petain and Joffre – all Marshals of France during WWI, effectively ‘dating’ them to around 1914-18.

Another example with less specific dates is the girl’s name ‘Adelaide’ which became popular with Adelaide, wife of William IV (born 1792, crowned Queen Consort 1831 and died 1849) and then fell in popularity – but importantly for red herring purposes didn’t disappear completely – after the turn of the century.

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From “JFK’s legacy in Bogotá lives on 55-years later” (in The City Paper) by Andy East:

It was Dec. 17, 1961, and nearly one-third of Bogotá’s 1.5 million inhabitants had turned out on a sunny Sunday afternoon for one reason: to catch a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. The massive outpouring was the largest reception the U.S. leader ever had.

[…]

The historic visit, which lasted only 14 hours, would change the lives of thousands of families and have a profound impact on the city that is still visible 55 years later.

[…]

In the immediate years after Kennedy’s visit, the most popular baby names registered at baptisms in Ciudad Kennedy were John, Fitzgerald (Kennedy’s middle name), Jacqueline and Kennedy.

(Here’s a post about U.S. babies named for JFK.)

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From Through It All, the 2009 autobiography of Christine King Farris (older sister of Martin Luther King, Jr.):

My full name is Willie Christine King. Hardly anyone knows my first name. I am rarely called by it. “Willie” was chosen as a way to pay homage to the Williams side of my family; it was given in tribute to my maternal grandfather, Reverend A. D. Williams.

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From the book Christian Names in Local and Family History (2004) by George Redmonds:

Other regional concentrations worth noting are Edith in Dorset, Felice and Petronille in Staffordshire and Amice in Leicestershire, but a close examination of the evidence reveals significant small ‘clusters’ right down the list. Typical of these are Goda (East Anglia), Godelena (Kent) and Osanne, the last of these found only in Spalding in Lincolnshire. It derives from ‘Hosanna’, a Hebrew word used as an appeal to God for deliverance, which was adopted into Christian worship as a more general expression of praise.

Osanne started being used as a baptismal name during the twelfth century, “possibly to commemorate a birth on Palm Sunday.”

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From Rolling Stone, a quote about a baby named after a Gary Busey character:

[Leon] Russell’s son Teddy Jack, who was named after a Busey character from a regional TV show he performed on named Teddy Jack Eddy, produced Busey’s new project, his first solo release.

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From an article about the divorce of Lady Davina Windsor, 30th in line to the British throne, from husband Gary “Gazza” Lewis, a Maori sheep shearer:

Lady Davina gave birth to a daughter, Senna Kowhai, who is now aged eight, and a son, Tane Mahuta, six. He was named after the giant Tane Mahuta kauri tree in the Waipoua Forest, in New Zealand.

(Here’s more on the famous Tane Mahuta tree. The name Kowhai was also inspired by New Zealand tree.)

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From a 2022 Deseret News article about Utah’s unusual baby names by Meg Walter:

Heather Marné Williams-Young is named after Marné Whitaker Tuttle. According to legend, Marné Whitaker Tuttle’s mother named her Marne (with no accent) after the French town on the frontlines of World War I, thinking Marne, which rhymes with barn, was a beautiful name.

But Marné disagreed, so she added the acute accent over the e, and pronounced it “Mar-nay.” “There is nothing more Utah to me than women of a certain generation trying make their names more French by putting accents places they shouldn’t be,” Williams-Young says.

[Marné Whitaker Tuttle (1920-2014), the wife of LDS church leader A(lbert) Theodore Tuttle, served as “temple matron” in the Provo Utah Temple in the early 1980s. During that time, Heather’s mother worked as a Temple employee. Both Heather’s mother and Heather’s mother’s roommate ended up giving their future daughters the middle name Marné.]

“There are a handful of us around Utah County who were all named after the same woman with the made-up name,” Williams-Young says. “I feel such a kinship with them.”

(One of Marné Tuttle’s own daughters, Clarissa, was also given Marné as a middle.)

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From an article about a Georgia man whose name, Neal, came from a POW bracelet:

His father, the late John Carpenter, was an aircraft mechanic in the Navy and was deployed overseas at the time. He arrived home in time for his son’s birth. When it became necessary to scramble and find a boy’s name, John Carpenter looked down at the POW/MIA bracelet he was wearing.

The engraved name was Neal Clinton Ward Jr. He had been listed as Missing in Action since June 13, 1969. An airman, his plane had been shot down over Laos in the jungles of Southeast Asia, nine days before his 24th birthday.

The Carpenters named their son Neal Ward Carpenter.

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From a Cup of Jo post about offbeat middle names:

My friend gave her baby the middle name “Swift” because her labor was so quick.

Our friends chose the middle name “Buffalo” for their son because it was his dad’s nickname growing up. “It took my husband nine months to convince me,” my friend told me. “Then, in the middle of the night after signing the birth certificate, I had a mild panic attack at the hospital. Now I love it.”

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How columnist Richard Ord chose a middle name for his son:

His great grandad on his mother’s side was called Aston, so my wife told me, and so that became his middle name.

It wasn’t until a few months after his birth that my wife’s dad asked me about where the name came from.

Surprised, I told him that he took the family name of Aston. “You know, after his great grandad?!”

“Oh,” he replied. “But that wasn’t his name. That was his nickname. His mates called him Aston because he was the only Aston Villa supporter in the West End of Newcastle!”

In my book that makes his middle name even better.

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From the footnote of a 1941 Time article about Wyllis Cooper (born Willis Cooper), creator of the late ’40s radio show Quiet, Please!:

He changed his name from Willis to Wyllis to please his wife’s numerological inclinations.

(Incidentally, “Willis” reduces to 3, whereas “Wyllis” reduces to 1.)

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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.

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From the 2004 book I’m a Believer: My Life of Monkees, Music, and Madness by Micky 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.

(Micky’s eldest daughter, born in 1969, was named Ami Bluebell.)

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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.)

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From a 2013 article about Oklahoma baby names in The Tulsa World:

Jeremiah and Carrie Rosson of Kellyville chose the name Elijah Gust for their 17-month-old because of its biblical roots and because the weather-influenced middle name paired well with their four-year-old son Josiah Thunder’s name.

“There is a verse in the 2 Kings that says Elijah was swept up in a gust,” Jeremiah Rosson said of the inspiration for their younger son’s name.

(Hundreds of baby boys in the U.S. have been named Thunder, btw.)

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From the book Radio Shangri-La: What I Discovered on my Accidental Journey to the Happiest Kingdom on Earth (2010) by Lisa Napoli:

If you walked into any village in all of Bhutan and shouted “Karma,” a quarter of the heads would turn. There are only about fifty names in the whole country … There are no familial surnames, and most names are unisex. So it is entirely possible that a family could be made up of a mother named Karma Wangdi and a father named Karma Lhamo, a child named Karma Choden, and another named Lhamo Wangdi.

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From an Instagram post by Irish television presenter Lisa Cannon:

I always feel oddly yet loosely connected to [the late Lisa Marie Presley] as I was an only child too and was named after her… Lisa Sara Marie Cannon – Lisa Marie because my father like the rest of the world was an Elvis fan and my middle name Sara after Bob Dylan’s Wife. My father at the time was a budding Rock Journalist for Hot Press Magazine & the NME in London so music of all genres was always playing in our home. When people ask you the origin of your name or who your named after it was always “Elvis’ daughter & Bob Dylan’s Wife” which always got a smile.

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From a recent article about YouTube influencers The Newbys:

Tiny traveller Crusoe Newby is less than two years old — but has already tottered his way around 24 different countries.

[…]

Named after fictional castaway Robinson Crusoe, the hero of the 18th century novel by Daniel Defoe, he had travelled to 11 countries while still in the womb. But his official tally of 24 have all been racked up since his birth. His adventure started when Tara and John decided to sell their Bristol home and convert a £3,000 van to travel the globe in May 2020.

[…]

“Robinson Crusoe is John’s favourite book of all time because it inspired him as a young boy to think of a life of adventure.”

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From the 2020 obituary of Dana Marie Ek in Fauquier Now:

Dana was born on October 19, 1995, in Astoria, Oregon. She was named after the Dana Glacier — located deep in the wilds of the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area, because her father thought it was the most beautiful place on heaven or earth.

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From a 2007 article called “You Are What Your Name Says You Are” in the New York Times:

Sociologists like Mr. Besnard observed that first names [in France] were often quick markers of social and educational status. As another Libération reader, an elementary school teacher, pointed out: “I can often guess the ‘profile’ of a child thanks to the first name. A ‘Maxime,’ a ‘Louise,’ a ‘Kevin,’ a ‘Lolita.’ It’s sad, but that’s how it often works.” That is, Maxime and Louise probably have wealthy parents, while Kevin and Lolita are more likely to have a working- or lower-middle-class background.

Indeed, bourgeois French parents are unlikely to give their children “Anglo-Saxon” names; Jennifer was the most popular name for girls from 1984 to 1986, but it’s a safe bet few Jennifers came from well-educated families. (The craze is commonly explained by the success of the TV series “Hart to Hart” in France at that time — Jennifer Hart was one of the title characters — while “Beverly Hills, 90210,” featuring a popular character named Dylan McKay, is sometimes blamed for the explosion of Dylans a few years later.)

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From the book I Speak of the City: Mexico City at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (2015) by Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo:

Babies were baptized with new and strange names, particularly in the 1920s, names taken from the titles of various socialist experiments (for instance, in Tabasco with Garrido Canaval, who established socialist baptisms), and as a result of the emergence of the radio and the indigenist turn of the city’s language. Masiosare became a boy’s name (derived from a stanza of the national anthem: “Mas si osare un extraño enemigo…”), but also Alcazelser (after the popularity of Alka-Seltzer), Xochitl, Tenoch, Cuauhtémoc, Tonatihu (the biblically named Lázaro Cárdenas named his son Cuauhtémoc).

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From the 2013 essay “I Was Born with a Stage Name” by musician Fay Funk:

I was born with a stage name, given to me by a mother who insisted on giving both of her daughters creative names that no one else in had. My name has two sources: the first is the 1988 winner of the Miss America Pageant, Kaye Lani Rae Rafko. For reasons I’ll never understand, my mom loves beauty pageants, and she thought Kaye Lani was the most beautiful name she had ever heard. But she also wanted alliteration in my name, and with a last name of Funk that meant she needed an F. That’s where the second source of my name comes from: 1930’s star of King Kong, actress Fay Wray. Fay gave my mom the alliteration she desired, and Wray fit poetically with the original inspiration for my name. So I became Faylani Rae.

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From the book Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood (2004) by Robert S. Birchard:

DeMille interviewed Gloria Stuart for the part of the high school girl [in This Day and Age], Gay Merrick, and said she was “extremely enthusiastic,” and he also considered Paramount contract player Grace Bradley, but ultimately he selected a former model who called herself Mari Colman. In April 1933 Colman won a Paramount screen test in a New York beauty competition, and DeMille was apparently delighted by the innocent image she projected.

In a comic sequence in David O. Selznick’s 1937 production of A Star Is Born, the studio’s latest discovery, Esther Blodgett, is given a new name more in keeping with her status as a movie starlet. As This Day and Age was getting ready to roll, Mari Colman was subjected to the same treatment as DeMille and Paramount tested long lists of potential screen names. Among the suggestions were Betty Barnes, Doris Bruce, Alice Harper, Grace Gardner, Chloris Deane, and Marie Blaire. Colman herself suggested Pamela Drake or Erin Drake. On May 15, Jack Cooper wrote DeMille that he had tried several names on seventeen people. Eleven voted for the name Doris Manning; the other six held out for Doris Drake. Somehow, the name ultimately bestowed upon her was Judith Allen. DeMille and Paramount had high hopes for Allen, and she was even seen around town in the company of Gary Cooper, one of the studio’s biggest stars.

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From a recent Palladium-Time article about 19th-century medical doctor Algernon Sidney Coe:

Born on a farm on Sept. 18, 1828, in Norway, New York, Algernon Sidney Coe defied all expectations to become a respected and admired physician in Oswego City.

Coe, the son of Ira Coe, a War of 1812 veteran, and Elizabeth Norton, was named after Algernon Sidney who was executed in 1683 in England for his outspoken views on freedom of speech. Sidney was considered a martyr by American thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

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From the 2015 essay “What’s in a Necronym?” by Jeannie Vanasco:

I remember the day I first learned about her. I was eight. My father was in his chair, holding a small white box. As my mother explained that he had a dead daughter named Jeanne, pronounced the same as my name, “without an i,” he opened the box and looked away. Inside was a medal Jeanne had received from a church “for being a good person,” my mother said. My father said nothing. I said nothing. I stared at the medal.

[…]

Parsed from the Greek, necronym literally translates as “death name.” It usually means a name shared with a dead sibling. Until the late nineteenth century, necronyms were not uncommon among Americans and Europeans. If a child died in infancy, his or her name was often given to the next child, a natural consequence of high birth rates and high infant mortality rates.

(Another necronym: Notwithstanding Griswold, born in 1764, was named for her deceased older sister.)

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From the Thomas Alva Edison, Jr. page of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park website:

Thomas Alva, Junior, was born on January 10, 1876. Since his sister Marion was nicknamed “Dot,” he was nicknamed “Dash.”

[…]

After selling the use of his name to advertise “quack” medicines and dubious inventions, his father asked Tom Junior to change his name. This he did, briefly going by the name of Thomas Willard.

(The nicknames “Dot” and “Dash” are references to Morse Code.)

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From a 2013 article about Christmas Day babies in Liverpool:

Weighing in at 6lb 14oz Kirra Smith was born at 5.09am to the delight of […] mum Claire, 42, and dad Richard, 46, from Neston.

[…]

Kirra’s unusual name was inspired by Kirra Beach on Australia’s Gold Coast where Richard likes to surf when visiting Claire’s ex-pat mum Triana, 65, who flew over to be at the birth.

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From a PBS NewsHour interview with a man named Normandy Villa, Jr.:

To understand what’s going on here, you should know two things: first, even though the family comes from Colombia, Normandy is named after one of the more important moments in American history:

NORMANDY VILLA: “The Battle of Normandy in France, in 1941 was the beginning of the liberation of Europe, and my grandfather saw that as such a powerful moment in history, that he wanted to have his family carry a name that referred to a new dawn. And so, the first born in the family received the name Normandy.”

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From an NPR review of Joan Didion’s book Blue Nights (2011):

Just after they adopted Quintana Roo (they’d seen the name on a map of Mexico, liked it, and chosen it) the writer says she acted as if she’d gotten a doll to dress up, not a real baby.

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From the lighthearted obituary of Lindy Gene Rollins (1928-2022) in the Amarillo Globe-News:

He had a lifelong obsession with airplanes which should not be a surprise since he was named after Charles Lindbergh (Lucky Lindy) the first U.S. pilot credited with making a solo, nonstop transatlantic flight. Lindy went on to take flying lessons after he retired as a diesel mechanic. Thankfully, he was not granted his pilot’s license due to his age and the medications he was on. No one in the family would have been brave enough to ride in an airplane he was piloting anyway!

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From Ed Sikov’s 2007 book Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis (spotted while doing research for the Stanley Ann post):

Manly names for women were all the rage [in Hollywood movies] in 1941: Hedy Lamarr was a Johnny and a Marvin that year, and the eponymous heroines of Frank Borzage’s Seven Sweethearts were called Victor, Albert, Reggie, Peter, Billie, George, and most outrageous of all, Cornelius.

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From an article about how Storm Barra (which hit the UK and Ireland in December of 2021) came to be named after BBC Northern Ireland weatherman Barra Best:

‘What happened was the head of Irish weather service Met Eireann called me in August and asked me where my name was from and I thought it was a bit strange, I didn’t know why she was asking,’ [Barra Best] told the BBC’s Evening Extra programme.

‘It comes from the south-west of Ireland from Finbarr, St Finbarr in Co Cork and it’s derived from that.’

He continued: ‘She said oh that’s fine, that’s fine. I asked why did you want to know and she said oh you’ll find out in about a month.

‘Of course the email came out and the list of names were announced and she had decided to put my name in there.’

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From an article about the increasing popularity of Maori baby names in New Zealand, published in The Guardian (found via Clare’s tweet):

Damaris Coulter of Ngati Kahu descent and Dale Dice of Ngati Hine, Te Aupouri and Nga Puhi [descent] […] [gave] their one-year-old daughter Hinekorako just one name, as was usual pre-colonisation.

Hinekorako’s name came to Dice as he was navigating a waka, a large traditional Maori sailing vessel, from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands back to Aotearoa. “It was coming up to midnight. We came into a little storm. The temperature had dropped … there was thunder … Once we got through the storm we all turned around and just behind us there was this massive white rainbow … It was a lunar rainbow.”

“I told our navigator about it and he goes’ “oh yeah, that’s a tohu (sign), that’s Hinekorako’.” In myth, Hinekorako is also a taniwha (a water spirit), who lives between the spirit and living worlds. Dice wrote the name in his diary and decided that night, were he to ever have a daughter, she would be named Hinekorako.

(According to Encyclopedia Mythica, Hine-korako is “the personification of the lunar bow or halo.”)

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From a 1989 Los Angeles Times article called “Names in the News“:

Mark Calcavecchia, who won the British open last month, withdrew from the PGA Championship, which starts Thursday in suburban Chicago, because his wife gave birth to their first child — a seven-pound, six-ounce daughter named Britney Jo.

(To clarify: The baby, born two weeks after the British Open, was named Britney to commemorate the victory.)

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From a 2016 article about Pokémon baby names:

I cross-referenced the Social Security Administration’s annual baby name records with all 151 original pocket monsters back through 1995, the year the Pokémon franchise was created. Five species of Pokémon have proven to be appealing baby names for U.S. parents: Tangela, Abra, Paras, Onix, and Eevee.

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From a handwritten letter sent to Rocky Mountain National Park from “Shawn in Texas”:

My wife and I got to take our baby boy named Kenai (named after Kenai Fjords National Park) on his first National Park trip to Rocky Mountain National Park just right before the fires. This was a special trip for us seeing that this would make his first adventure before the many to come.

(The baby name Kenai has become increasingly popular recently. I don’t know what year this particular baby was born, but over 10% of the Kenais born in 2019 were also from Texas.)

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From a New York Times article about parents looking for “positive” baby names:

Some parents-to-be have been so distracted by the pandemic that they’ve skipped the deliberation and quickly picked a name. Amanda Austin of Erie, Pa., owner of an e-commerce store specializing in dollhouse miniatures, came up with her daughter’s name on a whim. “It was in March, when the whole world was shutting down,” she said. “Covid terrified me. My husband and his dad own a construction company and Pennsylvania had banned construction work.”

The name “Annette” popped suddenly into her mind. “I shared it with my husband and he loved it,” Austin said. “His reaction is a far cry from my other daughter’s naming process, where we went back and forth for months. I think we had so much going on with the pandemic that we didn’t have the mental bandwidth to dig deeper.” The name also reminded the couple of the 1950s, a “less complicated” time.

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From a 2017 article about the off-Broadway play They Promised Her the Moon (which tells the story of pilot Geraldyn “Jerrie” Cobb, the first American woman to test for space flight):

“I immediately fell in love with the story,” the show’s director and producer, Valentina Fratti, told Space.com. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t know about Jerrie Cobb.” 

Fratti had been named for the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, but hadn’t known about the “almost first,” her American counterpart. 

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From Sanjana Ramachandran’s recent essay “The Namesakes“:

Shanaya Patel’s story, in more ways than one, encapsulated an India opening up to the world. In March 2000, Shanaya’s parents were at a café in Vadodara, Gujarat, when some Shania Twain tunes came on: she was also the artist who had been playing when her father saw her mother for the first time, “during their whole arranged-marriage-thing.” Finally, after eight months of “baby” and “munna,” Shanaya’s parents had found a name for her.

But “to make it different,” Shanaya’s parents changed the spelling of her name slightly. “Before me, all my cousins were named from this or that religious book,” she said. “When my parents didn’t want to go down that road, the elders were all ‘How can you do this!’—but my parents fought for it. There was a small controversy in the family.”

(Her essay also inspired me to write this post about the name Sanjana!)

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About the “naming” of a Native American man who was discovered in California in 1911, from a 1996 UC Berkeley news release:

Under pressure from reporters who wanted to know the stranger’s name, [anthropologist] Alfred Kroeber called him “Ishi,” which means “man” in Yana. Ishi never uttered his real name.

“A California Indian almost never speaks his own name,” wrote Kroeber’s wife, “using it but rarely with those who already know it, and he would never tell it in reply to a direct question.”

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From a 2008 CNN article about unusual names:

“At times, for the sake of avoiding an uncomfortable conversation or throwing someone off guard, I answer to the names of ‘Mary’ or ‘Kelly’,” says Bluzette Martin of West Allis, Wisconsin. At restaurants, “the thought of putting an employee through the pain of guessing how to spell and pronounce ‘Bluzette’ just isn’t worth it to me.”

Martin was named after “Bluzette,” an up-tempo jazz waltz written by Jean “Toots” Thielemans. Despite her daily problems with this name, it certainly has its perks, like when she met Thielemans in 1987 at a club in Los Angeles. “When I met [him], he thanked my mother,” she says.

(Here’s “Bluesette” (vid) by Thielemans, who was Belgian.)

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A name story from the 2022 Washington Post article “What’s in a name?” by John Kelly:

When Barbara Zigli was young, she never bothered to ask her parents why they named her Barbara. Much later, she learned that Saint Barbara is the patron saint of miners.

“My mother’s father was a coal miner, so I asked her if that was why they named me Barbara,” wrote Barbara, of Arlington.

There was a long pause, then Barbara’s mother said, “Uh, yeah, that’s it.”

Barbara was immediately suspicious. “No, really, mom,” she demanded. “Why did you name me Barbara?”

“Promise me you won’t get mad,” Barbara’s mother said. “You’re named after Miss Barbara on [the TV show] ‘Romper Room.'”

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A name story from the 2022 Washington Post article “Playing the name game” by John Kelly:

Aleta Embrey’s older brother loves to say that her name came from the funny papers. And it did, specifically “Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur,” which still runs in The Washington Post.

“Queen Aleta of the Misty Isles is a major figure in the comic strip,” Aleta wrote. “My dad liked the name.”

It is a lovely name, much better than being named, say, “Olive Oyl.”

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From a 1942 item in Time magazine about ‘Roberto’ being used as a fascist greeting:

Last week the authorities ordered 18 Italian-Americans excluded from the San Francisco military area as dangerous to security — the first such action against white citizens. The wonder was that it was not done earlier: everybody heard about the goings on in the North Beach Italian colony. Fascists there used to say RoBerTo as a greeting — Ro for Rome, Ber for Berlin, To for Tokyo. Italy sent teachers, books and medals for the Italian schools. Mussolini won a popularity contest hands down over Franklin Roosevelt.

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From an AP news story about the origin of Armand Hammer’s name:

Industrialist Armand Hammer often said he was named after Armand Duval, the hero in Alexandre Dumas’ play “Camille.”

But he conceded later that his father, a socialist, also had in mind the arm-and-hammer symbol of the Socialist Labor Party.

For years, people erroneously thought Hammer was connected to the company that makes Arm & Hammer baking soda.

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From an essay about Island Cemetery (on Block Island, in Rhode Island) by Martha Ball:

The cemetery, our own City on a Hill, has always been a place of enchantment, holding stones lacking uniformity even within the same lot, bearing names alien to our time; Philamon Galusha, Icivilli, Darius. It is enhanced by an awareness of the sheer physical accomplishment it embodies, a steep slope terraced long before we had today’s array of earth moving equipment.

(Looking over the other names at Island Cemetery, I saw all the expected Biblical entries (Peleg, Obed, Barzilla; Zilpah, Huldah, Hepzebah), plenty of fanciful feminines (Lucretia, Cordelia, Sophronia), and a few references to current events: a Martin VanBuren born in 1839, a Cassius Clay born in 1854, an Elsworth (middle name) born in 1861, an Ambrose Everett born in 1862, and a Ulysses born in 1868.)

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From an article in The Economist about the unusual names of Tabasco, Mexico:

[The unusual names] impressed Amado Nervo, a Mexican poet. In every family “there is a Homer, a Cornelia, a Brutus, a Shalmanasar and a Hera,” he wrote in “The Elysian Fields of Tabasco”, which was published in 1896. Rather than scour the calendar for saints’ names, he wrote, parents of newborns “search for them in ‘The Iliad’, ‘The Aeneid’, the Bible and in the history books”. Andrés Iduarte, a Tabascan essayist of the 20th century, concurred. Tabasco is a place “of Greek names and African soul”, he wrote, endorsing the cliche that the state has similarities with Africa.

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From a 2018 article about the South Korean novel Kim Ji-young, Born in 1982 (2016) in The Korean Herald:

Written by author Cho Nam-ju, the book follows the life of its protagonist, named Kim Ji-young, a South Korean woman born in 1982. Her name, Ji-young, was one of the most common baby names for girls in the country back in the 1980s.

Like her name, her life is far from extraordinary. Like most Korean women born in the ‘80s, she attends university, gets a job, gets married and becomes a stay-at-home mother.

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From the about page of blogger ShezCrafti (a.k.a. Jaime):

I was named after Jaime Sommers, The Bionic Woman. True story. My mom was a huge fan and evidently watched a lot of it while pregnant with me. But these days it’s cooler to tell people I spell it like Jaime Lannister.

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From a 2008 Jezebel post about about celebrity baby names:

To try to find out if celebrity kids can outrun their ridiculous names, MSNBC turns to Peaches Geldof, the celebutante who, in 2006, claimed, “I hate ridiculous names, My weird name has haunted me all my life.” Apparently, Peaches has made peace with her wacky moniker over the past few years, recently telling a reporter “It haunted me in my youth, but now I like it. I always got teased about it at primary school, being named after a fruit. Now people find it appealing. I like my name. I think it’s sexy and unusual.”

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From the 2004 article “A Real Gem: Pop artist Ruby Mazur leads charmed life in LV” in the Las Vegas Sun:

Classic rock is pouring through Mazur’s spacious home, his 250-pound Newfoundland, Zeus, is circling the commotion and the artist’s 16-year-old twin sons, Cezanne and Miro, visiting from Vienna, are glancing over with a smile.

[…]

Now living in the golfing community of Rhodes Ranch, Mazur can sit back and scan his past and future. Two of his children — 18-year-old son Matisse and his daughter, actress and model Monet Mazur — are grown.

[Mazur, whose children are named after four famous artists — just like the Ninja Turtles, coincidentally — designed the cover art for thousands of record albums during the 1970s.]

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A name-change story (contributed by a Texas woman named Melanie) from a recent Washington Post article about changing babies’ names:

We named our second daughter Francisca. We called to tell my parents. My mother, who sounded disappointed, asked, “What was your second choice?” We told her Amelia. Mom told us that Amelia was her mother’s sister’s name. We said that was nice and moved on to calling other relatives. When we called my sister in law and told her we named our daughter Francisca, she said, “That’s funny, I had a dream you named the baby Amelia.” So right then the baby’s name was changed to Amelia.

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From a 2023 article in the Mirror about a woman named Abba after Swedish supergroup Abba:

When I was a child, everyone would question my name and make comments about it. They’d get confused by how it’s spelt – it’s the same as the band.

I’ve never come across anyone else named Abba and I love how unique it is. I always get asked ‘Abba like the band?’ when I say it.

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From the 2024 obituary of Orchard Lynn Utzinger in the Chicago Tribune:

Orchard was born on June 22, 1951, and grew up in Arlington Heights, IL. She was named after Old Orchard Country Club in Mount Prospect, Illinois where her parents met.

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And, finally, a line from a New York Post story about a baby born aboard an airplane in September:

Skylen Kavon-Air Francis, who was named after his airborne arrival, was carried off the plane as everyone clapped and welcomed the new passenger.

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[Latest update: Apr. 2026]