Baby born in Britain, named after royal horse

Diamond Jubilee
Diamond Jubilee

British diplomat Charles Hardinge (who served as Viceroy of India from 1910 to 1916) and his wife Winifred had a total of three children:

  • Edward, b. 1892
  • Alexander, b. 1894
  • Diamond, b. 1900

Their oldest was named after Edward, the Prince of Wales (who, in 1901, became King Edward VII).

Their middle child was named after Alexandra, the Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra).

And their youngest? She wasn’t named after a royal person, but after a royal person’s horse: Diamond Jubilee, who was owned by the Prince of Wales and won the Epsom Derby about a week before she was born. (Diamond Jubilee was foaled in 1897 — the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.)

Sources:

Image: Diamond Jubilee from The New Book of the Horse (1911) by Charles Richardson

Baby born to Governor of South Australia, named Adelaide

Annabel Mary Adelaide Norrie, youngest child of Gov. Willoughby Norrie, in late 1946
Annabel Mary Adelaide Norrie

In mid-1944, Willoughby Norrie — who’d served as an officer in the British Army for more than three decades, and fought in both World Wars — was appointed Governor of South Australia. (Australia was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire at that time.)

Later the same year, he relocated his family and staff to the South Australian capital of Adelaide.

In December of 1945, Norrie and his second wife, Patricia, welcomed a baby girl.

Her name?

Annabel Mary Adelaide — third given name in honor of the city of Adelaide (which was also her birthplace, of course).

The city had been named in 1836 after Queen Adelaide, the German-born wife of King William IV.

(Norrie also had five older children: Diana, Rosemary, George, Guy, and Sarah.)

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Annabel Norrie (State Library of South Australia)

Baby name story: Madawaska

"And Every Soul Was Saved" (1889) by Thomas M. M. Hemy
Painting by Thomas M. M. Hemy

Here’s an interesting coincidence: A few years ago, I added the above image (a portion of a painting by Englishman Thomas M. M. Hemy) to a blog post about a baby named after the ship she was born on. Recently, I discovered that the artist’s full name is Thomas Maria Madawaska Hemy, and that “Madawaska” refers to the name of the ship he was born on!

His parents, Henri and Margaret Hemy, moved the family to Australia temporarily in the 1850s. On their way south aboard the Madawaska in 1852, they welcomed their sixth son, Thomas. Curiously, he was born “near the Brazilian coast.” (During the age of sail, routes weren’t as direct as they are today because sailors needed to utilize the prevailing winds.)

The Madawaska was a barque built in Quebec in 1847. “Madawaska” is the original name of the upper St. John River Valley, on the Canada-U.S. border. Several places in that region retain the name, including a county in New Brunswick and a town in northern Maine.

The etymology of Madawaska is unknown, but one theory holds that it derives from an Algonquin word meaning “place of the porcupine.”

Thomas M. M. Hemy — whose older brothers Charles Napier Hemy and Bernard Benedict Hemy were also marine artists — passed his unique middle name down to at least one of his children, daughter Eve Madawaska Hemy (b. 1880).

Sources:

Image: Portion of And Every Soul Was Saved (1889) by Thomas M. M. Hemy

Where did the baby name Kennan come from in 1952?

American diplomat George F. Kennan (1904-2005)
George F. Kennan

The name Kennan popped up in the U.S. baby name data for the first time 1952:

  • 1954: 11 baby boys named Kennan
  • 1953: 6 baby boys named Kennan
  • 1952: 8 baby boys named Kennan [debut]
  • 1951: unlisted
  • 1950: unlisted

If there’s a reason — and typically there’s a reason — my guess is George F. Kennan, the Russian-speaking diplomat nominated by President Truman in February of 1952 to be the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR.

He started the job in May, but didn’t last long.

Why? Because, in mid-September, while addressing the press in Berlin, Kennan “compared life in the Moscow Embassy with his internment by the Nazis at Bad Nauheim.”

Stalin wasn’t pleased.

In early October, the USSR accused Kennan of making “slanderous attacks hostile to the Soviet Union in a rude violation of generally recognized norms of international law.” He was declared a persona non grata and refused re-admittance into the country.

George Kennan making headlines throughout the year — not to mention the similarity of his surname to the then-trendy baby names Kenneth and Kevin — is likely what influenced a handful of expectant parents to name their sons Kennan in 1952.

What are your thoughts on Kennan as a first name?

P.S. Keenan’s father had a cool name: Kossuth Kent Kennan. He was born in Milwaukee in 1851, the year Hungarian freedom fighter Lajos Kossuth visited the city during a tour of the United States. (Lajos is the Hungarian form of Louis.)

P.P.S. In March of 1967, George Kennan was asked “to go to Switzerland on a secret mission to establish the bona fides of a woman who had defected from the Soviet Union and claimed to be the daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.” The next month, news broke of Svetlana’s defection to the U.S.…

Sources:

Image: George F. Kennan (LOC)