Baby born in Australia, named after Melbourne Cup winner (1934)

horse

In 1934, the winner of Australia’s prestigious annual horse race, the Melbourne Cup, was a horse named Peter Pan (ridden by a jockey named David Hugh “Darby” Munro).

On the day of the race, a baby boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. Frank Maloney of Meekatharra — an outback town in Western Australia.

The baby’s name? Peter Pan.

P.S. Two other Australian babies named for Melbourne Cup winners are Wotan and Patrona.

Source: “Baby Named After Cup Winner.” Daily Advertiser 8 Nov. 1934: 8.

Image: Adapted from Dealer’s pic without lead rope by Cjambla under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Baby name story: Ossawa

American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)
Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner, who was born in Pittsburgh in 1859, became the first African-American artist to achieve international recognition.

Where did the painter’s unusual middle name come from?

His parents, Benjamin and Sarah Tanner, coined it to commemorate the 1856 Battle of Osawatomie, during which white abolitionist John Brown tried to defend the Kansas town of Osawatomie from pro-slavery “border ruffians.”

John Brown’s heroic struggle symbolized for black people their quest for freedom. Thus, for Benjamin and Sarah, Ossawa embodied the hope for emancipation.

The town’s name is a portmanteau of the names of two nearby streams: the Osage River and Pottawatomie Creek. The streams, in turn, were named after two local Native American tribes: the Osage and the Potawatomi.

Henry Ossawa Tanner later passed the name down to his son, Jesse Ossawa Tanner, who was born in 1903.

Sources:

Image: Henry Ossawa Tanner

Baby born during eclipse, named Sol Celeste

The April 8, 2024, solar eclipse as seen from Dallas, Texas.
The solar eclipse as seen from Dallas, Texas

Alicia Alvarez of Fort Worth, Texas, gave birth to a baby girl on April 8, 2024 — more than a week ahead of her due date, and about a half an hour before the start of the solar eclipse.

As it happens, she and her husband Carlos have a four-year-old daughter, Luna Laura, whose first name means “moon” in Spanish. So, for their second daughter, they were already considering the celestially themed first name Sol (Spanish for “sun”).

Alicia said:

“I loved how the sun and the moon sounded together. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s [a] perfect name.’ And then just to have her during the eclipse was, like, obviously not planned.”

In fact, maybe it was eclipse that inspired the couple to opt for two celestial names in combination: Sol Celeste. (Celeste is based on the Latin word caelestis, meaning “of the heavens, celestial.”)

Sources:

Image: Adapted from 2024 Total Solar Eclipse (NHQ202404080103) (NASA/Keegan Barber)

Where did the baby name Condoleezza come from in 2005?

American political scientist Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice

The curious name Condoleezza was a one-hit wonder in the U.S. baby name data in 2005:

  • 2007: unlisted
  • 2006: unlisted
  • 2005: 5 baby girls named Condoleezza [debut]
  • 2004: unlisted
  • 2003: unlisted

Where did it come from?

Condoleezza (pronounced kon-dah-LEE-zah) Rice, who, in January of 2005, was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State under George W. Bush. She was the first African-American woman to hold the position.

(The two previous office-holders, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell, were the first woman and the first African-American secretaries of state, respectively.)

Condoleezza “Condi” Rice was born in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, in 1954. How did she come to have her unusual first name? Here’s how she told the story in her 2012 memoir:

[Mother] wanted a name that would be unique and musical. Looking to Italian musical terms for inspiration, she at first settled on Andantino. But realizing that it translated as “moving slowly,” she decided that she didn’t like the implications for that name. Allegro was worse because it translated as “fast,” and no mother in 1954 wanted her daughter to be thought of as “fast.” Finally she found the musical terms con dolce and con dolcezza, meaning “with sweetness.” Deciding that an English speaker would never recognize the hard c, saying “dolci” instead of “dolche,” my mother doctored the term. She settled on Condoleezza.

Just last month, Condoleezza Rice mentioned in a tweet that she’d met one of her namesakes, Duke University student Condoleezza Dorvil:

What are your thoughts on the name Condoleezza?

P.S. When Condoleezza Rice was a student at the University of Denver during the 1970s, her mentor was professor Josef Korbel — a Czech-American political scientist who just so happened to be the father of Madeleine Albright (who was born in Prague in 1937).

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Image: Adapted from Condoleezza Rice (public domain)