How popular is the baby name Thurgood in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Thurgood.
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A century and a half ago, Elliott and Alice Branch of Martinsville, Indiana, welcomed four babies, two girls and two boys:
Olive L. Branch (b. 1869)
Leafy Dell Branch (b. 1871)
Emmett Forest Branch (b. 1874)
Frank Oak Branch (b. 1878)
According to a newspaper article from 1903, the Branch family was “one of the oldest and best” in Indiana’s Morgan County, but “the names of the children of this branch of Branches the oddest.”
Their mother, who was of a poetic turn, was responsible for the names, Forest, Oak, Leafy Dell and Olive.
Emmett Forest Branch went on to spend three terms in the Indiana House of Representatives (during the first decade of the 1900s) and serve briefly as the governor of Indiana (from April of 1924 to January of 1925).
P.S. Speaking of “olive branch,” did you know that the maternal grandfather of Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall was named Isaiah Olive Branch Williams?
Looking for baby names that feature the letter-pair OO?
I’ve collected oodles of OO names for you in this post!
Before we get to the names, though, let’s get one big question out of the way…
What sound does OO make?
In today’s English, OO commonly makes the sound you hear in the words boot, food, and moon. But it can also make other sounds, such as the ones you hear in the words blood, or door, or good.
Why all this diversity?
A lot of it has to do with the Great Vowel Shift, which lasted from the late 14th century until about 1700. The GVS was a major factor in the transition from Middle English to Modern English.
In Middle English, OO tended to make a “long o” sound. (As one of my sources explained, “scribes often indicated a long vowel sound by doubling the vowel letter.”) So, in Middle English, the words boot, food, and moon sounded more like “boat,” “foad,” and “moan.”
During the Great Vowel Shift, the pronunciation of most long vowel sounds inexplicably shifted “upward” in the mouth, and the words boot, food, and moon acquired their present-day pronunciations.
But it’s not quite as simple as that. Because some words underwent multiple pronunciation changes during the GVS, while others didn’t undergo any change at all.
And this resulted in OO having a variety of pronunciations in Modern English.
Now, back to the names!
Names with OO
Below are dozens of names that feature the letter-pair OO. Most of these names come directly from the U.S. SSA’s baby name data.
A number of the above represent transferred usage of various English surnames — particularly those that contain words like “wood,” “good,” and “brook.”
Speaking of surnames (and surnames being used as first names), did you know that five U.S. presidents had OO-names? Weirdly, all five served during the first half of the 20th century:
These baby names are one-hit wonders in the U.S. baby name data. That is, they’ve only popped up once, ever, in the entire dataset of U.S. baby names (which accounts for all names given to at least 5 U.S. babies per year since 1880).
There are thousands of one-hit wonders in the dataset, but the names below have interesting stories behind their single appearance, so these are the one-hits I’m writing specific posts about. Just click on a name to read more.
As I discover (and write about) more one-hit wonders in the data, I’ll add the names/links to this page. In the meanwhile, do you have any favorite one-hit wonder baby names?
The sudden appearance of Tondalaya in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1950s had me stumped for a long time.
1957: unlisted
1956: unlisted
1955: 11 baby girls named Tondalaya [debut]
1954: unlisted
1953: unlisted
Why? Because “Tondalaya” was so suspiciously close to “Tondelayo,” the name of a character from the 1942 movie White Cargo. The character was a mixed-race African character played by Hedy Lamarr.
But the spelling didn’t match, and the timing was way off.
Finally, years later, I happened to find the link between these two things: a photo in a 1955 issue of Jet magazine that featured an 11-year-old girl named Tondalaya. Here’s what the caption said:
Paroled after five years imprisonment for disobeying Army orders while a lieutenant in Korea, Leon A. Gilbert is reunited with his wife, Kay, son Leon, and daughter Tondalaya at Los Angeles’ International Airport.
(Further research revealed that her name was actually spelled “Tondalayo.”)
So that solved the mystery of the name, but…who was Leon Gilbert?
Up until mid-1950, he was a decorated WWII veteran serving with the 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea.
But on July 31, he refused an order and was arrested on the spot.
Seems like an appropriate outcome for a disobedient soldier during wartime…until you consider that the 24th was an all-black unit, that the 24th’s commanders were all white, and that this particular order amounted to a multi-man suicide mission. (The order would have had Gilbert leading about a dozen men back to a location that had been abandoned due to heavy enemy fire.)
Leon Gilbert was court-martialed. At the trial, which lasted about four hours, no witnesses were called on Gilbert’s behalf, medical reports indicating that he suffered from acute stress reaction were ignored, and the defense attorney didn’t bother to make a closing statement. Leon Gilbert was convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad.
Back home, the case was being followed closely by the press — particularly by the black press. The sentence angered many Americans, and “petitions calling for [Gilbert’s] freedom were sent to Washington from around the country.”
An investigation carried out by NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall found that Gilbert was one of “many blacks and no white troops who had been charged with misconduct in the presence of the enemy.” He also said that “[i]t seems apparent that some of [the black soldiers] are being made scapegoats for the failures of higher personnel.”
In late November, President Harry Truman commuted the death sentence to 20 years in prison.
Ultimately — as mentioned in the photo caption — Leon Gilbert served five years in a military prison before he was released on parole in 1955.
P.S. White Cargo was based on play of the same name from the 1920s. In the play, the character’s name was spelled “Tondeleyo.” The play was based on the novel Hell’s Playground (1912) by Ida Vera Simonton, but Tondeleyo did not appear in the novel. Playwright Leon Gordon created (and named) Tondeleyo by combining the attributes/histories of two of the book’s female characters, Ndio and Elinda.
Images: Clipping from Jet magazine (5 May 1955), screenshot of the trailer for White Cargo
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