How popular is the baby name Lester in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Lester.
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New Zealand’s national rugby team, the All Blacks, recently welcomed a player named Leicester Fainga’anuku. (His first name is pronounced LEH-stir, just like “Lester.”)
Fainga’anuku was born in Tonga and grew up in New Zealand, but was named after a city in England.
Why?
Because, right around the time he was born, his father — a member of Tonga’s national rugby team — was abroad in England, playing in the 1999 Rugby World Cup. Specifically, Tonga was playing a match against Italy [vid] and unexpectedly won. As Leicester Fainga’anuku put it:
It was Leicester Stadium. They won by a dropped goal, three points and I think they were partying hard.
The Dolores-like baby name Dellora appeared in the U.S. data for a total of six years, seeing peak usage in 1922:
1925: unlisted
1924: 8 baby girls named Dellora
1923: 13 baby girls named Dellora
1922: 14 baby girls named Dellora
1921: 7 baby girls named Dellora
1920: unlisted
1919: 7 baby girls named Dellora
1918: 5 baby girls named Dellora
1917: unlisted
Much of this usage is attributable to heiress Dellora Angell of St. Charles, Illinois.
Her name first started popping up in the newspapers in late 1918, upon the death of her maternal aunt, Dellora Gates. Aunt Dellora was the widow of wealthy industrialist John W. Gates, and she left the bulk of the Gates fortune to her last two close relatives: her brother Edward, and her teenage niece/namesake Dellora (the daughter of her deceased sister Lavern).
In the early 1920s, the newspapers began linking young Dellora to various suitors (e.g., a Brazilian physician named Vantini, an oil man named Campbell).
In late 1922, she finally got engaged to a childhood friend from St. Charles named Lester Norris, described as a “poor artist and son of the village undertaker.” (He was a newspaper cartoonist; he later became a businessman.)
They had a small wedding in March of 1923. After that, they rented a modest apartment in St. Charles, where Dellora “began housekeeping, doing her own cooking and sewing, and having a lot of fun doing it.”
For several years the newspapers continued to report on Dellora’s growing family, and her unusual decision to live so simply:
The richest young woman in the world, who, from the number of her millions, and her youth and beauty, one would expect to find wintering at Cannes, moving with the seasons from one smart watering place to another and filling her wardrobe with Parisian gowns and jewels, lives quietly in a Middle Western town, wears gingham dresses, as she does own housework, and looks after her two babies herself.
(They went on to have a total of five children: Lavern, Lester*, Joann, Robert, and John.)
In the meanwhile, Dellora and Lester (and Dellora’s uncle, Edward) quietly gave back to the community of St. Charles. They funded/created a theater, a municipal center, a hospital (named “Delnor,” a contraction of Dellora Norris), a hotel, a community center, and made numerous other contributions and donations to schools, churches, and so forth. Today, Dellora’s name lives on in the name of the Dellora A. Norris Cultural Arts Center.
What are your thoughts on baby name Dellora? Would you consider using it on a modern baby?
Sources:
“J. W. Gates’s Widow Dies at Age of 63.” New York Tribune 29 Nov. 1918: 12.
“The Gates Heiress and Her “Love-In-a-Cottage”.” Ogden Standard Examiner 26 Jul. 1925: 22.
Szymczak, Patricia M. “The Legacy.” Chicago Tribune 15 Jan. 1989.
*In July of 1925, it was reported that baby Lester, born in April, was still nameless and “in lieu of a permanent name” was being called Skeezix after the comic strip character (see Clovia).
“Everly” is hot…”Beverly” is not. It’s a one-letter difference between fashionable and fusty.
If you’re sensitive to style, you’ll prefer Everly. It fits with today’s trends far better than Beverly does.
But if you’re someone who isn’t concerned about style, or prefers to go against style, then you may not automatically go for Everly. In fact, you may be more attracted to Beverly because it’s the choice that most modern parents would avoid.
If you’ve ever thought about intentionally giving your baby a dated name (like Debbie, Grover, Marcia, or Vernon) for the sake of uniqueness within his/her peer group — if you have no problem sacrificing style for distinctiveness — then this list is for you.
Years ago, the concept of “contrarian” baby names came up in the comments of a post about Lois. Ever since then, creating a collection of uncool/contrarian baby names has been on my to-do list.
Finally, last month, I experimented with various formulas for pulling unstylish baby names out of the SSA dataset. Keeping the great-grandparent rule in mind, I aimed for names that would have been fashionable among the grandparents of today’s babies. The names below are the best results I got.
Interestingly, thirteen of the names above — Bobbie, Cary, Dale, Jackie, Jimmie, Jody, Kerry, Kim, Lynn, Robin, Sandy, Tracey, Tracy — managed to make both lists.
Now some questions for you…
Do you like any of these names? Would you be willing to use any of them on a modern-day baby? Why or why not?
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