Baby born inside WWII Anderson air raid shelter, named Anderson

Family inside Anderson air raid shelter
Family inside Anderson air raid shelter

On the night of August 28, 1940, German planes dropped bombs over London and other places in Britain. The air raid started around 9 pm and lasted for more than seven hours.

During the early hours of August 29th, a woman identified as Mrs. Plume gave birth to a 7-pound baby boy inside an Anderson air raid shelter buried in the back garden of a house in North London.

[He] was the first baby to be born in a shelter. He has been named John Anderson Plume, after Sir John Anderson, Minister for Home Security, after whom Anderson shelters are called.

The birth took place on a blanket-covered wooden bench by the light of a motor-cycle head lamp.

Source: “Many Areas Attacked by German Raiders.” Argus [Melbourne] 30 Aug. 1940: 1.

Image: Screenshot of Your Anderson Shelter This Winter (1940) by British Pathé

Baby name story: Atom Bomb

The baby boy born on January 1 to Jessica Killian and Randy “Earl” Sain of Gaston County, North Carolina, was unique in several ways:

  • He was the first baby born in the county in 2019,
  • He was born in the passenger seat of a Chevrolet Cruze (that was cruising toward the hospital at the time), and
  • His name is Atom Bomb Sain.

Why “Atom Bomb”? Because the baby’s nickname in utero was “A Bomb,” and the couple ended up “decid[ing] that if the child was a boy, he would be named Atom Bomb.” The mother later confirmed that the baby “really did come out like a bomb.”

That fact aside…”Atom Bomb”?

I can understand why a modern parent might prefer Atom to Adam. But the middle name “Bomb”? That takes the combo to a whole new level. (The pairing is weirdly on-trend, though, given the rise of weaponry baby names like Cannon, Gunner, Pistol, Shooter, Trigger, Rocket, Arrow, etc.)

What are your thoughts on this one?

Source: North Carolina county’s first 2019 baby named ‘Atom Bomb’, born on interstate

Baby name story: Alie

The Long Island Expressway (LIE)
The Long Island Expressway (LIE)

In December of 2018, a baby girl was born in a minivan parked on the side of the Long Island Expressway.

Her parents, Maria and Ivan Albarracin of Queens, had been trying to reach Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. When they realized they wouldn’t make it, they pulled over (near the entrance of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel) and Maria gave birth to a 9-pound baby girl.

They’d been planning to name her Aurora, but her roadside arrival inspired them to instead choose the name Alie — a nod to the Long Island Expressway, which is often referred to by the acronym “L.I.E.”

Sources:

Image: Adapted from View east along Interstate 495 by Famartin under CC BY-SA 4.0.

[Latest update: Mar. 2025]

Baby name story: Irawati

Indian sociologist Irawati Karve (1905-1970)
Irawati Karve

Pioneering Indian anthropologist/sociologist Irawati Karve taught primarily at Deccan College (in the Maharashtrian city of Pune) from 1939 until her death in 1970.

How did she come to have her unusual first name?

Irawati Karve was born to a family of wealthy Chitpavan Brahmins in Burma in 1905. To her father, Ganesh Hari Karmarkar, an employee at the Burma Cotton Company, the landscape of that country was so important that he named his daughter after the lifeline of the nation, the Irrawaddy River.

The name of the river may be derived from the Sanskrit term airavati, meaning “elephant river.”

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Irawati Karve by Devanshi Rao under CC BY-SA 4.0.