Musical tempo siblings: Allegro, Largo, Lento

Actress Largo Woodruff in the movie "The Funhouse" (1981)
Largo Woodruff in “The Funhouse“

Actress Largo Woodruff, who appeared in several films in the 1980s, was born in New Jersey in 1955.

She was the second of three children. Her older sister was named Allegro, and her younger brother was named Lento.

All three siblings were named after musical tempos by their father Wallace Woodruff, a professional musician and music teacher. The three names/tempos are Italian words that indicate the speed at which a particular piece of music should be played:

  • Allegro means “cheerful” (i.e., play briskly)
  • Largo means “broad” (i.e., play slowly)
  • Lento means “slow”

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also named with music in mind. Her name is based on the musical term con dolcezza, meaning “with sweetness” in Italian.

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Image: Screenshot of The Funhouse

Baby born in taxi, named for driver (1930)

taxis

On December 4, 1930, a baby boy was born in a taxi cab en route to the hospital in Ogden, Utah.

The baby’s parents, Osako and Clarence Uno, both originally from Japan, decided to name him Raymond Sonji Uno — first name in honor of the cab driver, Raymond Harris.

Three days after Raymond’s 11th birthday, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. Tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans were promptly rounded up and sent to internment camps for the remainder of WWII. (The Uno family was imprisoned at Heart Mountain in Wyoming.)

Despite this experience, Raymond Uno joined the U.S. Army and served in the Korean War. He attended both college and law school at the University of Utah. And, in 1976, he became the very first ethnic minority judge in the state of Utah.

P.S. Raymond and his wife Yoshiko had five sons: Tab (b. 1955), Kai, Mark, Sean, and Lance. Tab’s name may have been inspired by Tab Hunter, and Lance’s could have been influenced by the TV show Lancer.

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Image: Adapted from Cinema Shooting by Alex Proimos under CC BY 2.0.

Baseball fan makes bet, names baby after Mookie Betts

Baseball player Mookie Betts
Mookie Betts

In August of 2023, baseball player Mookie Betts of the Los Angeles Dodgers was getting ready to go up to bat when a fan said, “Mook, if you hit a home run I’ll name my daughter, her middle name, Mookie.”

Here’s more of their short conversation (according to a video that Betts posted to Twitter):

And I heard this, and I laughed, and he said he was serious.

So I turned around and said, “Nah, don’t do that bro. Don’t do that.”

He said, “No, I’m going to do it.”

I said, “Your wife wouldn’t like, bro, don’t do that.”

Betts proceeded to “hit a 436-foot blast to left field, his longest home run as a Dodger.”

He circled the bases and, when he returned, he fist-bumped the fan, Giuseppe Mancuso.

And then, like a couple weeks later, I see on Twitter the birth certificate for Francesca Mookie Mancuso. Shout out to you Giuseppe. I can’t wait to meet Francesca.

Mookie Betts’ nickname, which was chosen for him when he was a baby, was inspired by that of basketball player Daron Oshay “Mookie” Blaylock. (Blaylock’s nickname was given to him by his older sisters.)

So what’s Mookie’s real name?

Markus Lynn Betts. He was born in Tennessee in 1992 to sports-loving parents Willie Mark Betts and Diana Benedict, who “borrow[ed] from Willie’s middle name and [Diana’s] middle name” to create “what they hoped would be fortuitous initials: MLB” — the acronym for Major League Baseball, of course.

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Image: Adapted from Mookie Betts (53182259916) by Erik Drost under CC BY 2.0.

Baby born into Hogg family, named Ima

Texas philanthropist Ima Hogg (1882-1975)
Ima Hogg

Arts patron and philanthropist Ima Hogg was born in Mineola, Texas, in 1882.

Her parents were Sarah Ann Stinson and James Stephen Hogg — who became the attorney general of Texas in the late 1880s, then the first native-born governor of Texas in the early 1890s.

Ima’s birth occurred a couple of years after the death of Jim’s older brother, lawyer and writer Thomas Elisha Hogg. Tom had become Jim’s legal guardian (and father figure) in the mid-1860s.

In honor of his late brother, Jim Hogg decided to call his baby girl Ima, which was a name Tom had used for a female character in his Civil War poem The Fate of Marvin (1873). Here’s an excerpt:

A Southern girl, whose winsome grace
And kindly, gentle mien betrayed
A heart more beauteous than her face.
Ah! she was fair: the Southern skies
were typed in Ima’s heavenly eyes; …

(Notably, the poem featured two female characters. The second was Ima’s sister, Lelia.)

Ima Hogg, who had no middle name, later recalled: “Grandfather Stinson lived fifteen miles from Mineola and news traveled slowly. When he learned of his granddaughter’s name he came trotting to town as fast as he could to protest, but it was too late. The christening had taken place and Ima I was to remain.”

Throughout her life, Ima Hogg put a great deal of effort into downplaying her name. She had a “distinctive signature that rendered the first part [of her name] almost illegible,” for instance, and she used either “Miss Hogg” or “I. Hogg” on her personal stationery. Among acquaintances, she was known simply as “Miss Ima.”

In her early 90s, Miss Ima remarked to a friend, “You know, if I had been born in Scotland, my name would probably have been Imogene.”

Not long afterward, she began to call herself Imogene. The whimsical name change was a well-kept secret. Even some of the people closest to her never knew it, but her last passport was issued to Ima Imogene Hogg.

Ima Hogg passed away in 1975. Contrary to persistent rumors, she never had a sister named “Ura.” In fact, she never had any sisters at all — just three brothers: William Clifford, Michael Stephen, and Thomas Elisha. (William’s middle name honored his mother’s half-sister Clifford, who went by “Cliffie.”)

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Image: Adapted from Ima Hogg