Time for another batch of name quotes!
From a 2004 interview with Bob Dylan, as recorded in the 2018 book Dylan on Dylan by Jeff Burger (found via Abby’s Instagram post – thanks!):
Bradley: So you didn’t see yourself as Robert Zimmerman?
Dylan: No, for some reason I never did.
Bradley: Even before you started performing?
Dylan: Nah, even then. Some people get born with the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens.
Bradley: Tell me how you decided on Bob Dylan?
Dylan: You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.
From an article about the Dunkin’ Donuts drink named after Charli D’Amelio:
“The Charli,” which debuted Sept. 2, is a new Dunkin’ drink based on the go-to order of 16-year-old Charli D’Amelio, who is currently the most followed person on TikTok with 84.8 million followers. D’Amelio, a Connecticut native, has regularly expressed her love both for Dunkin’ and her signature dance moves.
From an article about a mom who changed her baby’s name from Ottilie to Margot:
As for [mom Carri] Kessler, when all was said and done, she went back to the original Ottilie who had inspired the choice and asked what the name had been like for her.
“She was like, ‘Yeah my name has been really character-building,'” Kessler says. “And I was like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?!’ I feel like life is character-building. She doesn’t need a character-building name as well.”
[One of Carri’s friends now calls her daughter Nottilie, short for “Not Ottilie.”]
From Chrissy Teigen’s Instagram post about the loss of her third baby:
We never decide on our babies’ names until the last possible moment after they’re born, just before we leave the hospital. But we, for some reason, had started to call this little guy in my belly Jack. So he will always be Jack to us. Jack worked so hard to be a part of our little family, and he will be, forever.
From an article about how the name Karen has become a handicap in dating, according to the dating app Wingman:
Women named Karen say their love lives have taken a hit since the name became synonymous with pushy, entitled middle-aged women — and more recently, racist ones who target people of color.
[…]
According to the app’s data, women named Karen have received 31 per cent fewer matches this year compared to last, and messages sent by women named Karen got 1/3 fewer responses than last year.
Overall, Karens have seen a 45 per cent drop in engagement.
Women with other spellings of the name — Karin, Carin, Caren — have seen a smaller drop, 22 per cent, but a drop all the same.
From an article in The Economist about the unusual names of Tabasco, Mexico (found via A Mitchell’s tweet – thanks!):
[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.
From a newspaper article about soccer player Diego Maradona’s influence on baby names in Naples in July of 1984, soon after he’d joined S.S.C. Napoli:
Maternity hospitals reported another 30 new-born babies named Diego Armando, raising the count to 140 so far.
[Maradona died in late November. Last Friday, the Naples city council unanimously voted to change the name of the city’s stadium from “Stadio San Paolo” to “Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.” (CBS Sports)]
