Celebrity baby name: Jaden Gil

A couple of decades ago, tennis champions (and married couple) Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf welcomed two children, Jaden Gil (b. 2001) and Jaz Elle (b. 2003).

I didn’t realize until doing research for yesterday’s post on Andre Agassi that Jaden’s middle name, Gil, honors Las Vegas strength and conditioning trainer Gil Reyes, who was a crucial part of Agassi’s late-career comeback.

Here’s a heartwarming passage about the name from Agassi’s autobiography Open (2009):

I bring Stefanie to Gil’s gym, under the guise of a workout. She’s beaming, because she knows why we’re really here.

Gil asks Stefanie if she’s feeling all right, if she’d like something to drink, if she’d like to sit. He guides her to an exercise cycle and she mounts sidesaddle. She studies the shelf Gil has built along one wall, to hold the trophies from my slams, including those I’ve had replaced since my post-Friends tantrum.

I fiddle with a stretching cord and then say: So, uhh, Gil, listen. We’ve picked out a name for our son.

Aw. What is it?

Jaden.

I like that, Gil says, smiling, nodding. Yes I do. I like that.

And — we also think we’ve got the perfect middle name.

What’s that?

Gil.

He stares.

I say, Jaden Gil Agassi. If he grows up to be half the man you are, he’ll be phenomenally successful, and if I can be half the father you’ve been to me, I’ll have surpassed my own standards.

Stefanie is crying. My eyes are filled with tears. Gil is standing ten feet away, in front of the leg extension machine. He has his trademark pencil behind his ear, his glasses on the end of his nose, his da Vinci notebook open. He reaches me in three steps and folds me in his arms.

These days, Jaden Gil doesn’t play tennis, but he does play baseball.

Where did the baby name Agassi come from in 1992?

Tennis player Andre Agassi
Andre Agassi

The rare name Agassi has appeared just once in the U.S. baby name data:

  • 1994: unlisted
  • 1993: unlisted
  • 1992: 6 baby boys named Agassi [debut]
  • 1991: unlisted
  • 1990: unlisted

The source?

Flashy American tennis player Andre Agassi, who was hard to miss with his color-coordinated outfits and signature mullet. (Agassi is pronounced AG-uh-see; the first syllable rhymes with “flag.”)

His professional career lasted more than two decades, but 1992 was the year he finally won his first Grand Slam title. Specifically, it was a win at Wimbledon — an emotional one at that, following seven failed attempts and then a three-year boycott of the event (because Agassi disliked Wimbledon’s traditionalism and all-white dress code).

Agassi went on to win seven more Grand Slam titles (four of them in 1999, for a Career Grand Slam).

So where does the surname Agassi come from?

Agassi’s father, Emanoul Aghasi, was born and raised in Iran, but his family was Armenian. The family surname was originally Aghassian, but the distinctively Armenian suffix -ian had been dropped several generations earlier to avoid persecution. The root of the surname is the Turkish word agha, meaning “lord, master, gentleman.”

Upon immigrating to the U.S. in the early 1950s, Emanoul Aghasi changed his name to Mike Agassi. (He chose “Mike” because it “sounded American” and was easy to spell.) He spent a decade in Chicago, where he married and started a family, then relocated to Las Vegas in the early 1960s. In 1970, he welcomed his youngest child, a son:

My father named me Andre Kirk Agassi, after his bosses at the casino. I ask my mother why my father named me after his bosses. Were they friends? Did he admire them? Did he owe them money? She doesn’t know. And it’s not the kind of question you can ask my father directly. You can’t ask my father anything directly.

I’m not sure who “Andre” was, but “Kirk” was American businessman Kerkor “Kirk” Kerkorian, who was also of Armenian descent, coincidentally. (“Kerkor” is an Armenian version of Grigor, which is a form of Gregory.)

Getting back to the name Agassi, though…what do you think of “Agassi” as a first name? (Do you like it more or less than the name Andre?)

Sources:

Image: Clipping from the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine (13 Jul. 1992)

Baby name story: James Nicholas Gregory

On November 16, 1959, the home of Vincent and Josephine Jennings of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was consumed by fire.

Vincent, Josephine and their five daughters escaped without injury, but the family’s three sons — James (age 8), Nicholas (7), and Gregory (5) — did not survive.

On March 28, 1960, Mrs. Jennings gave birth to her ninth and last baby — a boy.

He was named James Nicholas Gregory Jennings.

(The Jennings’ daughters were named Mary, Connie, Dorothy, Patty, and Rosie.)

Sources:

  • “New Baby Named for Three Lost in Fire.” Warren Times-Mirror 29 Mar. 1960: 8.
  • Josephine Jennings Obituary (orig. pub. in the East Valley Tribune)
  • “Police Remove Their Hats.” East Liverpool Review 16 Nov. 1959: 1.

Baby name story: Dania

Dania Beach
Dania Beach

In the fall of 1976, Los Angeles couple Kenneth and Kathryn Champlin visited south Florida.

The following spring, they welcomed a baby girl.

“Remember that little city we drove through?” Champlin asked his wife. She did. And they are now parents of Dania Ann Champlin.

The director of Dania’s Chamber of Commerce responded: “This is an honor…I know they wouldn’t have named her Fort Lauderdale.”

So how did the city of Dania (pronounced DAYN-yah) get its name?

Initially, the settlement was known as Modello, because it was platted in the late 1800s by a civil engineer working for the Model Land Company (of which “Modello” is a contraction). But early settlers — primarily Danish immigrants recruited from northern states (Illinois and Wisconsin) — chose to change the name to Dania when the town was incorporated in November of 1904.

The city has since lengthened its name to Dania Beach, but many still refer to it simply as “Dania.”

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Dania Beach Pier Aerial by formulanone under CC BY-SA 2.0.