Loretta Lynn named her baby after Patsy Cline

Country singer Loretta Lynn (1932-2022)
Loretta Lynn

In mid-1961, up-and-coming country singer Loretta Lynn moved to Nashville and met established country singer Patsy Cline.

Cline quickly became both a friend and a mentor to Lynn. In her 1976 memoir, Lynn explained:

She taught me a lot of things about show business, like how to go on to a stage and how to get off. She even bought me a lot of clothes. Many times when she bought something for herself, she would buy me the same thing. […] She even bought curtains and drapes for my house because I was too broke to buy them.

In March of 1963, at the height of her career, Patsy Cline died in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee.

The following year, Loretta Lynn and her husband welcomed their last two children — twin girls. One was named Peggy Jean after Lynn’s sister Peggy Sue, the other was named Patsy Eileen after Patsy Cline.

I named my daughter after Patsy. That’s how much she meant to me. When I had my twins the year after Patsy died, I named them Peggy and Patsy. If only Patsy had been there for that. She’d have liked it.

Loretta Lynn’s four older children were named Betty Sue, Jack Benny, Ernest Ray, and Clara Marie.

P.S. Patsy Cline’s birth name was Virginia Patterson Hensley.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from LorettaLynn1960s (public domain)

How did Loretta Lynn get her name?

Country singer Loretta Lynn (1932-2022)
Loretta Lynn

Country music singer Loretta Lynn (originally Loretta Webb) was born in rural Kentucky in 1932.

Why was she given the name Loretta? Here’s how she told the story in her 1976 memoir:

We just had this one-room cabin they made from logs, with the cracks filled with moss and clay. The wind used to whistle in so bad, Mommy would paper the walls with pages from her Sears and Roebuck catalog and movie magazines. I remember I could see pictures of Hitler, Clark Gable, and that Russian man — Stalin, is that his name? (…) Mommy never went to the movies, but she always liked pictures of Loretta Young and Claudette Colbert. Right over my crib she pasted pictures of them two stars. That’s how I got my name. Lots of times I wonder if I would have made it in country music if I was named Claudette.

Loretta Lynn was the second of eight children; she had an older brother named Melvin and six younger siblings named Herman, Willie, Donald, Peggy Sue, Betty, and Brenda Gail (later known as Crystal Gayle).

P.S. Actress Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in 1913. Her stage name was chosen by fellow actress Colleen Moore, who named her “after the most beautiful doll I had ever had. Loretta.”

Sources:

  • Loretta Lynn – Wikipedia
  • Lynn, Loretta, and George Vecsey. Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1976.
  • Moore, Colleen. Silent Star. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1968.

Image: Adapted from LorettaLynn1960s (public domain)

Baby born in Wyoming, named Wyoming

Wyoming B. Paris (1906-2001)
Wyoming B. Paris (circa 1920)

In the early 1900s, dozens of Jewish families living in crowded cities in the eastern U.S. attempted to resettle on the high plains of eastern Wyoming.

Among the first of the homesteaders were Ukrainian immigrants Samuel and Rachel Paris, who left Pittsburgh with their six children to establish a sheep ranch outside of Torrington, Wyoming, in 1906.

Later the same year, the Parises welcomed their seventh child — a baby boy. He was the first Jewish baby born in the state of Wyoming, which had been admitted to the union in 1890.

What was he named?

Wyoming Benjamin Paris.

Wyoming-the-baby didn’t live in Wyoming-the-state for very long, though, because the Paris family returned to Pittsburgh in the 1910s. (Most of the other Jewish settlers eventually gave up and moved elsewhere as well.)

But Wyoming “Wy” Paris did go on to become a star semi-pro basketball player in the 1920s and ’30s. In fact, he was inducted into the Western Pennsylvania Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1990.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Enoch Rauh Club 1919-20 (public domain) via Historic Pittsburgh

Baby name story: Nash

1940s Nash automobile
1940s Nash automobile

A couple of weeks ago, the 49th annual Early Tin Dusters car show — which features vintage vehicles from the 1940s and earlier — was held in Quincy, Illinois.

One of the event’s organizers, Nash Simmons, has been attending the show his entire life. He was even born on a Tin Dusters weekend.

During a recent interview, Simmons mentioned that the vintage car he’s currently working on is the very one that he was named after — a 1934 Nash.

(Wisconsin-based Nash Motors manufactured cars from the 1910s to the 1950s.)

Sources:

Image: Adapted from 1946 Nash 4-Door Sedan by Tequask under CC BY-SA 4.0.