It paints me to see people make such lame puns.

Can we build it? YES WE CAN!.

(Bob the Builder, for those of you without 4 year olds to run the dvd player).

The Dutch for sure invented the basic mechanisms of Free Market Capitalism as we've known in recently: the Bubble, and the Collapse of the Bubble. Tulip shares, anyone?

I'm a visual-pun person. Well, I'm also a verbal-pun person. But visual puns tickle me particularly.

Amen, brother! They were doing the same things all through the parade. I wanted to hear the music.

Also awesome: Aretha Franklin's hat, and the brave, brave work of whoever it was who was doing her close captioning while she scatted.

I missed the music while I was watching it live.

If I'd heard the first 30 seconds cold I'd have thought "Vaughan Williams". Though as soon as the "gift" tune comes in its obvious what we are listening to. Very lovely. I think I'm about to play it again...

http://producten.hema.nl/

HELL, YEAH! I mean, that was the main feature I was looking forward to when digital television came in. For the Olympics, but so much else. Haven't found an example of it yet. You'd think there'd be a huge demand, and not that hard to do — even if it hurt the poor widdle commentators' egos.</hobbyhorse>
Returning this thread to normal transmission <g>

And, yes, there is a version with Barack Obama on TouTube.

Ironically we actually can't, as the local Gamma burned down last year.

I think Martin is referring to my local Gamma (I can't either, in other words) in Amsterdam Noord. I remember seeing the pillar of smoke from that fire from my office. It was very dramatic, and smelled somewhat toxic.

I think they keep sending the flyers in the hope that we will be keen enough to go to a less local branch. At least once they even offered a discount to compensate for the travel costs.

Not that I need anything from them.

There's a saying about how good composers borrow and great composers steal. I suppose I think Williams didn't hide the loot very well and will have to give it back.

What's wrong with Holland that so many of their gradnmas spontaneously combust? It's outrageous! Can't they do som...
("Serge, it's gamma.)
Oh.
Nevermind.

Doc Bruce Banner,
Belted by gamma rays,
Turned into the Hulk.
Ain't he unglamo-rays!
Wreckin' the town
With the power of a bull,
Ain't no monster clown
Who is that lovable?
It's ever lovin' Hulk! HULK!! HULK!!

To turn, turn will be our delight
Til by turning, turning we come round right.

This verse is a dance instruction, but to me it prefaced the themes in President Obama's speech quite well -- keep trying, and eventually things will come 'round. Most of the ceremony held together thematically: President Obama's speech referenced 1 Corinthians, and so did Elizabeth Alexander's poem. It was so refreshing to see principles of composition brought back to the executive branch.

It's refreshing to see principles of any sort.

C. Wingate, #44: Quite a bit of it sounded Vaughan Williams-ish to me. I suppose it might sound trite to someone who doesn't like the "Simple Gifts" theme -- but I do, and I thought it was a lovely performance too.

And re #45: Are you talking about the "Doxology" section of his Psalm 100? Because if you are, then I have to disagree. Yes, he used the traditional church melody -- but the harmonic structure is completely different, and has thoroughly spoiled me for any lesser setting ever again. I sang that piece with my college choir, and to this day I remember how amazed and delighted I was when we hit the end of the first line, and then again at the end of the second -- because I'd scanned it and seen that it was the standard church melody (sung in unison), but hadn't paid any attention to the accompaniment. After that I was expecting it to be different, so it didn't hit me quite as hard on the 3rd and 4th lines.

Chris, I really don't like your use of the phrase "ripped off". However, so be it. It's of little consequence overall that we disagree about this.

Second Audio Program technology is already supported even in analog television transmissions. PBS uses it to verbally describe performances (ballet, for example) for visually impaired viewers.

Also, themes for Lost In Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants (all titles in the Irwin Allen oeuvre).

For some conductors of my acquaintance, that sort of thing would just be asking for trouble.

No-one explaining who's mother has just recovered from cancer, or triple-Axel turns, or the effect of new developments in golf clubs, or that this is only the third time a left-handed twin batsman has faced a left-handed bowler at the MCG in a Test match, etc? That's a really lovely idea.

Troublingly, lately they've been dropping product placements into the commercial commentary (including betting odds offered by a sponsor), so I can see very high resistance to enabling its removal on commercial broadcasters.

I'm very fond of The Old Hundredth, tune and words, but my preferred wording for the first line is "All creatures that on Earth do dwell". Am I not a Speculative Fiction reader? (OK, we should work out one for beyond Earth too.) Must look up your different versions. *Is glad Hector Berlioz isn't around mustering "all available trumpets"* Incidents of Jericho- or Samson-like proportions could ensue (views with alarm).

Sorry; rambling. Not sleeping well in the heat. Bedsit hasn't cross-ventilation, and is right under sun-soaked roof. I'll apply more cold water and attempt dormition once more.

Ah, the happy memories of leisurely Sunday afternoons spent watching Ice Cricket...

No doubt followed by evenings spent arguing over how many Triple Axels should have been awarded that over*? Did the silly mid-on commit a Quadruple Salchow? And did the sweepers come in contact with their stones**?

*Any errors in terminology will be immediately blamed on lack of sleep.
**Not touching that one.

In some ways, it felt fannish--intelligent people talking about a subject they knew well.

More cake, anyone?

The sense of, "ooh look at that name," is mild amusement, not real horror. If the names were things like, "Squid", or "Fauntleroy," "Chomondsley", etc.; which tend to be be familial, I'd not see it quite the same.

When I was working S1 for an artillery unit one of my duties was to keep the Line of Duty Investigation log (reports of accidents the Army was required to pay for), there was a kid who got himself dinged up quite regularly, Algernon P. Quattlebaum.

That was a name.

As for unusual names, I may be as much a comics fan as Nicholas Cage is, but I'd never call any son of mine Kal El. Then again 'Cage' isn't Nick's real patronym, but is taken from another comic-book character.

Quattlebaum

Meanwhile, I was watching North by Northwest recently, and I realized that being called 'Emile' is a source of hilarity in an anglophone context.

What do girl names 'Murielle' and 'Chantal' sound like in English? The latter probably no so bad because, when I mentionned it to a co-worker, he decided that this would be his newborn daughter's name.

Also, my Mom used to "collect" funny-in-context names -- not so much the intrinsically silly ones, but ones like "Dr. Hertz".

* Even the 4-year-old was following intently, though she declared the climax was "too scary". I have to say, the narration was good -- I could understand it easily, despite a hearing loss that makes many recordings an exercise in frustration.

(as a piece of trvia, Meredith Wilson is

And Hermione Fernandina Gingold was, in Bell, Book and Candle an old witch called Bianca de Passe. Not that weird a name, true, but, phonetically, it's close to the French expression that translates as "past it".

I've also come across a Euphemia (which makes me wonder, is David Goldfarb around, and if so would he mind telling us what phemia is, and what's so good about it).

Chantal makes me think of 70s Marxist political theory, Chantal Mouffe having co-written a piece with Ernesto Laclau.

Names like "Hermione" did not sound anything like I'd naturally pronounce them!

yes, & when listening to lois mcmaster bujold's curse of chalion on audiobook, i wished she hadn't named her hero something that could be pronounced so close to "casserole."

think of the audiobook, fantasy authors!

I recall that one had to click on the villain's name several times before the voice would assent to pronounce as written, instead of as a homophone of "He Who Must Not Be Named".

I suppose it could have been worse: Debbie (short for Aldebaran)? Merope? Taygeta? Wolf 359? V* V1099 Tau? Zubenhakrabi?

After that what need for more children?

I don't know what they would have named a boy.

My guess would be Sterling Yorito.

Last time we'd picked Broccoli after I found it on a list of flower names for boys, but looking at that US Census site, nobody in the country is actually named that. Which makes me wonder about the compiler of said list. (Seriously, though, Brock - it's an excellent name. But, ok, no, we weren't actually going to use it. We did have the whole family convinced that we were, which is much more entertaining than actually going through with the scheme.)

We already have excellent girl names in the family history - Calpurnia (Purnie!) and Eguenia spring to mind. But as far as men go, the only interesting ones are things like Washed-In-The-Blood-Of-The-Lamb Smythe, and those don't work in these modern times. (Too long for databases, email becomes inconvenient...)

I think 'Serge' has a certain ring to it.
("With a 'clonk!' in it.")
I heard that.

Already on the list of definite no's - anything John-, James-, Steve-, Robert-, Charles- or Tom- related (we know too many people with those names); also anything with an "aden" sound in it (the male version of "Madison" a few years ago).

See? That rules out like 90% of guy names right there. Girls get much more leeway in having interesting and euphonious names. (My parents had the same problem. The only name they'd come up with was "Dempsey", after the Dumpster company, so it's a good thing I wasn't a boy.)

Why Jonathan? For me anyway, that name evokes quiet strength, because of this. Also, your son could abbreviate it to Nathan.

a sort of "aden"ish name, but not, & also pleasantly old-fashioned, is "avery." i dunno if that one's come back into style, but it sounds like it ought. also "caleb."

hmm. all my weirdass secretly favourite boy names are jewish (for my heritage) or japanese (for my husband's). like, i thought hiroki was a great name for a boy, but "heroes" has ruined boys named hiro forever.

my other favourite japanese boy's name i would never get away with is "kaneda," like in akira. i have joked that i would name a son kaneda israel (yes, "israel" is a traditional jewish boy's name).

my favourite hebrew boy's name i would never get away with is aviron, or possibly avi-ron. i made it up, but "av" (meaning father) & "ron" (meaning happy) are both popular building blocks for israeli names. so it could mean something like "my father's happiness," but it also sounds like the word for "airplane" (although spelled differently).

Rowan
Oake
Ashe
Thorne
Alexander/Alexei/Alexias/Alessandro
Kevin
Ciaran/Kieran (I think it means "twilight")
Christopher (a name that means the world to me)

If you want more unusual names (and don't worry about the kid being teased for his name in grade school, that will happen no matter what you name him), you can try some of these:

Theremin
Stradivarius (you could call him Strad)
Hephaistion
Patroklos

Besides, think of the confusion! "Are you Hawaiian?" "Nope." "Then why. . .?" "My parents liked it!" "Oh."

They omit the last six letters. I can't understand that level of stupidity. They leave out the last two syllables when speaking it, too. Can you believe the godsdamned GALL?

My family has a surplus of little boys at the moment, so I sometimes feel as though I've spent the last 8 years coming up with boy names.

In my experience, it's nice to have a name that's actually a name but is uncommon enough to mean that you're often the only one.

(where did Met come from?)

oh, that reminds me of another unique-baby-names thought i had. since monet was a trendy girl's name for a bit, i always thought it would be funny if someone named a boy manet.

but for twentieth-century-painter-surnames that would make cute baby names, my two semi-serious nominations would be magritte & matisse. like, magritte, you could pass off as a variant of margaret.

Works fine. :-)

And miriam beetle, "Caleb" is back in style, with such fascinating phonetic spellings as "Kaylub" spotted in the wild.

I've always liked "Lennon" for a boy's name. But last-namey first-names are trendy these days, which may be a point against it.

I also like Andrew and Nicholas. You have a choice of nicknames with those.

Aaron
Bryan (I prefer the "y" spelling)
Carl
David, or Davis (I have a friend whose son is named Davis, but it was a family name)
Edward
Finn
Gene
Harrison (shortens nicely to Harry, and gives him something to aspire to)
Ian
Kyle
Liam
Matthew
Nelson
Oliver
Paul
Quinn
Richard
Stanley
Timothy
I don't think there's a single male name that begins with U!
Victor
Wayne
Xander (yes, that's cheating, but Xavier is too outré)
Y and Z seem also to be bereft of appellations.

You might consider alternate cultural spellings of common names, too.

Also, IIRC, it was one of the names Endora used for Samantha's husband Darrin, when she wanted to insult him by refusing to use his real name (which was all the time).

And oh, do I know about the spelling thing. I could spell "Meadors" before I knew what spelling was, because I honestly thought my mother's last name was "Meadors. M-E-A-D-O-R-S." My first name is spelled oddly too, which leads to the "Cat" shortening, because most people can figure that one out. (Also, it's what my gramma did, and I'm named after her, so why not?)

My father was Gilcin Finley, so it could have been worse.

I'm gonna point my husband to this thread and see what he doesn't veto. If it's a boy, I'm starting to think we're gonna name him "Male Child" and let him change it when he's old enough to care. (Part of the problem is that we picked the World's Best Name for our daughter, and now everything else pales in comparison.)

What about Zachary for Z?

I've only ever had Kevin trouble once, and I don't even remember who it was with. In fact, I'd forgotten about it until you mentioned it, although I do remember that trying to correct it was a bit of a losing battle. I wonder if it's a common problem.

Everyone thinks they can spell both my given name and my surname, and mostly they get one out of two right.

Of course, it's always fun to ransack the mythologies of your forebears (and many Biblical names never go out of style), or you could draw from your common interests. (Hey... author's names?) And of course, there's going to be a lot of kids named "Obama" this year! ;-)

Xopher @#124: I used to know a transsexual who was originally named Christopher, but usually went by Chris. When making the social transition, xe initially tried changing it to Christine, but found that having the same nickname was interfering with getting people to switch pronouns.

I can't think of any names right now. Or, to be honest, I can't think right now, as the unofficial flu still has me in its grippe.

Boy's Names: A quick mental skim through my SF & F bookshelf for names (with variants) not already given –

Alastair, Aldous/Aldus, Alfred, Anthony/Antony, Arthur, Blake, Brad/Brady, Bradley, Conan, Ellis, Frederic[k], George, Gibson, Harold/Harry/Harrison, Hugo, Isaac, Joseph, Jules, Kurt, Neal/Neil, Nikto, Philip, Ray/Raymond, Reynold, Roger, Roy, Tarrant, Travis, Tyrell (I pronounce this like Tirrell), William, Winston

Boy's Names: A quick mental skim through my SF & F bookshelf for names (with variants) not already given –

Alastair, Aldous/Aldus, Alfred, Anthony/Antony, Arthur, Blake, Brad/Brady, Bradley, Conan, Ellis, Frederic[k], George, Gibson, Harold/Harry/Harrison, Hugo, Isaac, Joseph, Jules, Kurt, Neal/Neil, Nikto, Patrick, Philip, Ray/Raymond, Reynold, Roger, Roy, Tarrant, Travis, Tyrell (I pronounce this like Tirrell), William, Winston

Uriah is Right Out.

My favorite boy names include:
Simon
Arthur
Timothy
Jerome
Edmund
Paul
Walter

Please don't saddle a child with a name that will get them beaten up every day on the playground.

Names, huh.

I was the first Shalanna I'd ever heard of. We thought we'd be the only one--that we'd invented the name. But now there are several grown-up Shalanna/Shalana women out there--Google them. One is a lawyer, one is a singer. They're around 25 years old or so. Interestingly enough, I got on CompuServe with the screen name "Shalanna" around 1984, and ran a FidoNet BBS as sysop-ette from 1986-1991. So perhaps they came up with the name independently, or maybe. . . . *grin*

However, it IS a pain to hafta spell it for everyone, and tell people that it rhymes with "Madonna" and "I wanna" instead of sounding like "Sha-na-na."

#94 ::: Fragano *and* #79 ::: Serge:
Chantal? I have a cousin named Chantal. She pronounces it "shaun-tall." That's probably the French way, n'est-ce pas? My aunt named her after Sandra Dee's character in the Bobby Darin/Sandra Dee film _If A Man Answers_, based on a book by Winifred Wolfe that you can't find anywhere. (We used to have the book in our local library, but now they sell off any books that are not checked out during the previous year to make room for the 23 copies of current best-sellers.)

Chantal has always had to spell her name for people. It's a flamin' pain. But anyhow, it does mean that you are usually the only Shalanna or Chantal in the class or on that floor of the building. *GRIN*

Teaching public school enables one to hear all manner of unusual names. Don't even get me started on Oranjello and his twin Lemonjello. *aack* I hope that is a teachers' urban legend, but I fear it is rooted in truth, as so many teachers swear they've met these guys.

Quite apart from my being certain that's not the case, I wonder why you chose that selection (I know how they came to the selection they did, A star, and the moon; then the sun and the earth. That they were euphonius was part of it too. I also know an Aria Dawn)?

Rikibeth: That's one of my favorite names of angels.

And more contributorially, have Cat et al checked out NameVoyager? Put in a name and it will show you how common it's been over time, and perhaps save your kid from being the 5th Jacob in his class.

That's the one where Gidget falls in the Time Tunnel, then Moondoggie's surfboard crashes into the Titanic, making it sink at the very moment when Tony and Doug... What? Oh. Nevermind... Yes, the pronouciation is close to what you describe. And, yes, beautiful as I consider the name, it's one of those that condemns its wearer to the Spelling Curse.

but that's the OBSCURE archangel and nobody would believe it was a boy's name.

the son of occasional makinglight commenters naomi libick & alter s. reiss is named uriel. but they live in israel, where it's not at all uncommon. (for english speakers, the girly -el suffix seems to be less of a problem than the initial u. people try to put a y-sound on the front of it, like "urinal.")

earl,

Please don't saddle a child with a name that will get them beaten up every day on the playground.

as others have pointed out, it's no good trying to determine what will & won't get a kid teased. i knew of a guy named zero spero (i found one, googling just now, whose birthyear seems about right). he was very well liked.

I named my daughter Ellery, after my mother's twin, but it's normally a boy's name. (Somehow it ended up becoming a girl's name on my mother's side of the family.) It's a legitimate name, but quite obscure. Right now I believe the best known Ellery is Ellery Eskelin, a free jazz saxophonist.

If you want to find traditional, generally recognizable, but less common names, you can always just sit down with an Old Testament and start looking for something that doesn't make you either go "Yeah, every other kid is named David" or "That is too bizarre." That will give you a long list of names like Adam, Isaac, Zachary, Jed, Ezekiel (Zeke), Elijah, and plenty of others. I'd avoid Cain, though.

In my grade school there were 52 Jennifers, but I was the only Carrie. We did have a couple of Karens, but no other Carries. The name had a slight surge in popularity about the time I was born, but it seems it was only a slight surge.

Teaching public school enables one to hear all manner of unusual names.

An acquaintance of mine who's a pediatrician swears he once had his nurse come into the exam room, hand him a file, and say, "It's pronounced 'shih-thii-ed'." Looked at the file, and yes, "Shithead".

Your Honor, the defense rests.

I willfully misinterpreted Maia and Sola as anime references, then googlesmurfed for an appropriately linked name in that sphere.

miriam beetle #168: as others have pointed out, it's no good trying to determine what will & won't get a kid teased. i knew of a guy named zero spero (i found one, googling just now, whose birthyear seems about right). he was very well liked.

And here we're dabbling our toes into the wading pool of anecdotal evidence. I think the "infinite cruelty of peers" trumps "savvy kids don't let themselves be victims."

The Jennifers all made fun of her, but THEY LEARNED THEIR LESSON.

Now that I understand it, it's a pretty good joke. I don't the think the frog was more than wounded in the explanation.

Nope, both names are out there. American blacks in particular often have kind of "arbitrary" names. (I've seen "Adequate" as a given name.) I've heard this is a holdover from slave times, when the slaves weren't allowed surnames.

The most sensible advice, which various people have given above, is: Don't succumb to current fads! (My niece and nephew by marriage, Ashley and Jason, are victims of that parental tendency.)

I like my grandmother's name (Mildred), but I don't think I'd give it to a daughter, because the full name isn't likely to play well, and the only nicknames I can think of are things like Mille, and Edie, and the like; which feel limiting too (as in cute, and so diminishing).

On the subject of peculiar name choices, I had a claim on a small child named Toyota Chevette (I will allow all of you all to imagine the comments on that one), as well as claims on two older women, from different parts of the state, whose parents had named them "Orangietta"--one used the full version, the other abbreviated it to "Orangie"--in both cases, the emphasis was on the second syllable. I don't know if the families were originally from New Jersey or adherents of the House of Orange-Nassau, or if their mothers had both had cravings for that fruit during pregnancy. I have to say that, at least in Tennessee, all races manage to come up with unique and interesting names for their children--names that, in many cases, no one who leans to good sense rather than their tendency to dramatic flair would use.

My own family has gotten carried away over the years: my grandmother's middle name was "Bashie"--she was named for an old lady who was a friend of her mother's, known to as all Miss Bashie, and actually named Bathsheba; my father's middle name, supposedly in honor of a well-known trial lawyer in the southern US, was Hamlet.

Oh, and one final word of advice, from one of the old doctors I work with, a retired ob-gyn. Never ask an intern, resident, or medical student to name your child when you either don't have a name ready or can't decide. They are not reliable, and you will regret it. Ask the nurses what their father's/mother's name was, or ask an agreeeable-looking person in the waiting room or other nearby spot. Better to name your child for a stranger than have them deal the rest of their lives with the consequences of trainee doctor humor, which goes well beyond the boy named Sue pale.
In hospitals run by the Roman Catholic church, the result for undecided parents who appealed to the staff used to be the saint of the day, and the results could be either quite safe or very strange. My cousin went to school with twins named Cosma and Damiana; I know of someone from Canada named Michel Tous-anges.

Boys names I haven't seen mentioned yet:
Christoph
Fergus
August/Augustus/Augustine
Anselm
Tycho

Jamaican women born around the turn of the last century had a distressing tendency, for some reason, to be named for the then Queen of the Netherlands. I've no idea why. 'Wilhelmina' tended to be shortened to 'Wilhel', and there were a few old 'Miss Wilhels' around in the 1970s.

This is not as bad as the tendency in Jamaica in the 1950s and 1960s to name children after cosmetic products. I've known several women named Icilda (after a face cream), and even a man named Ambie after a skin-lightening cream, poor chap. (I will pass in silence over my own name, inflicted upon me by a father who had no thought for what idiot clerical workers would do to it over the years.)

I used, by the way, to know a John Hamlet.

Clifton, #169: Ellery Queen, surely?

David, #176: I once knew a woman who joked that she and her brother had both been given "black names" even though they were white. Now, her brother's name was Cleon; I'll give her that, although to me it reads as much "Southern rural white" as "black". But her name? Was Denise. No odd spellings or internal capitalization, just a perfectly ordinary mainstream-culture American name. I guess she considered any name starting with "De" to be "black" by definition. Go figure.

KeithS @ 126 - that's excactly what I want! It should be a name, but not EVERYONE's name. And you can't ever 100% win the spelling game - but at least your parents didn't go with Ceith. (It'd solve the i before e part, but...)

EClaire @ 129 - Edward is posh? Really? I know a guy who claims his name is actually Edamame, because he thinks "Edward" is so boring. (We know a lot of Eds, too.) Graeme is a good name. Or at least it looks cool. But I don't know how to pronounce it.

Lee @ 136 - Apparently you think like my inlaws - you've got my husband's and his brother's names on your list. Come to think of it, they picked good boy names - I should see what they think.

Rob Rusick @ 140 - I know two Darwins! (Both in their early 60s... I wonder if it was a thing around then?) Hm, if I wanted to avoid the controversy, I guess I could go with Planck... (Brock Planck! Yes! Er, no...) Avogadro? Fresnel? Why don't physicists have better names? (Tesla! Kelvin's actually kind of nice, but too close to Kevin... Polycarp? Seriously? Oh, I see it's a saint's name. Well, that'd take care of the scientific AND religious communities, but then I'd have named a child Polycarp, and, well, no. Even if it is spelled like it sounds.)

David Harmon @ 153 - I like stealing from the grandparents' generation - our girl name is taken from one of each of our great-aunts. But all the men in that generation were named some variation of John or Robert. (Or Gilcin, but the less said about that the better.) We already named our cat Terry, unfortunately.

Clifton Royston @ 169 - Ellery Queen! (Am I the only person who had a gramma with very limited reading material?)

Can't use Nic(h/k)olas or Elijah, either - both of those are coming into vogue enough that our daughter knows bunches of them (and is related to a couple). I mean, that's a game you can't totally win either - the kiddo is 5, and we know many many 2-year-olds with her name now. But at least we were first!

I didn't realize Uriel was obscure - but I still don't think I'd name a kid that. I've always been fond of Eleazar as far as OT names go, and hey, he was the son of Aaron, but it totally fails the spelling test. (Even if Eli is a good short name.)

Worrying about the kid getting teased? No. I mean, short of naming him "Poopyhead Stinkypants," nothing you do is going to make a difference one way or another. When I was little, my parents called me "Katy," which should be pretty tease-proof - except that some company came up with the idea of "Katie the Cleaning Lady" and a long series of popular commercials based on her. My parents' fault? Certainly not. But there was a lot of teasing nonetheless. (I spent a solid year being angry that they hadn't named me "Princess Sunflower," so I'm not going to worry about the kid liking their name, either.)

Clearly her brother should have been called Denephew.

Is this where I go Mwa ha ha?

Chad. Perfectly good biblical name.

Last week my SO and I were sitting on a plane waiting to take off, when a flight attendant came on the PA looking for missing passengers. One of the names made us both chuckle:

Iona Trailer

My SO felt bad about laughing, and punched me when I pointed out what would happen if she married someone named Park.

"It was really hot!"

Names which, as a member of my generation and social class, I wish people would have used with more discretion and attention to commoness:

Sage
Raven
Dylan

In fact I put down Freakonomics in the bookstore precisely because it stated the Lemonjello/Oranjello story as fact (citing no evidence, of course).

/curmedgeonly

I don't like my first name all that much, but it has the singular advantage that nobody ever, ever misspells it - except, admittedly, by appending an extra three letters that I never use.

How about Ezekiel (Zeke - and that's the least feminine -el ending I ever saw) or Jeremiah (Jeremy, Jerry, Jer, Jez, or Remy)?

I think he'd probably prefer a Rogue Squadron insignia patch and a starfighter manufactured by Incom Corporation.

I heard "Shithead" from a man who claimed to have met the child. But of course you don't know me. :)

Steve C @#194: I cannot tell you how much it peeves me that the two most famous fictional characters with my name are the one who killed her prom and the one who spent the price of a Manhattan apartment on shoes.

I think the "infinite cruelty of peers" trumps "savvy kids don't let themselves be victims."

i wasn't saying that at all. i was saying that names are a relatively insignificant excuse for kids to get beat up in school (infinite cruelty can work around a "dave"...). i just cited a positive rather than a negative example. see also cat at 186.

I disbelieve the Lemonjello/Oranjello stories, although there were cartoon character twins named Lemongela and Orangela. (Can't remember what the cartoon was, but it was in the past decade or so - clearly based on the story, not vice versa.)

I have known twins named Crystal and Jewel (which was actually ok, since they went by Christie and Julie, and they're fine names by themselves, just a little silly when you knew them together) and Claude and Claudette, which makes me wonder if their parents really couldn't think of ANYthing else.

In support of the Britney effect mentioned above: I knew a kid in junior high whose mother gave him a name no one had ever heard of (at that time, around 1960), so that no one would make fun of him. She named him Kermit. He was a short kid with thick glasses, too.

I heard a story (i.e. grain of salt here) about a mother who named her child Onedar. "OH-ned-ar?" essayed the nurse. "That's WONDER," the mother angrily replied.

My oldest brother is named James Daniel (an apostle and an OT prophet). My next-oldest brother is named William Graham (yes, after HIM). I am named Christopher Jay, after no one in particular (though I have a famous namesake, my parents were unaware of him at the time). Guess where my dad dropped out of the Baptist Church?

Her brother was named Ryan and called Rye, and they had dogs called Gin and Tonic. One senses a theme.

I did personally know twins named Chaz and Charles, and John and Jack.

Do people just come up with one name, and when they find out they're having twins, just apply the name to both kids?

I went to HS with twins named Tim and Tom; and a pair named Renee and Randy. My husband's brother named his oldest daughter Amber Lynn (yes, after the 'movie' star).

Boy names: Roger. Phillip (one or two ls, although that will probably require spelling help). Frederick. Benjamin.

It implies strength, solidity, reliability, and straightforwardness. And it's not an especially dense rock, so the "rock=dumb" idea is downplayed. (Also, it implies the eons of time it takes in forming and metamorphosing sedimentary rocks, but that part does not seem pertinent.) And it's easily spelled!

Related names like Chert or Flint or Gneiss just don't seem as good. Mica is too easily misunderstood as Micah, Feldspar is too odd, and of course things like Garnet or Onyx would be girl's names.

And then more recently - maybe 8 years ago or so I started hearing my name called in the mall (this never happened before) - I'd turn around and it would be some mother chasing her toddler around. Two years ago it hit the top 5 on the Social Security list of given baby names - and they are everywhere!

At least my name was not trendy when I was born, though. My family has a history of doing that with girls names that didn't stay popular, which means that my grandparent's generation included Ruth, Gladys, and my great-aunt, Mildred.

ajay @ #109, if they'd had twins they could have named them Zubenelgenubi and Zubenesschamali. (While Googling for spelling help I found this.

"Goodness, Ma Kettle, you daughter Chaudron is really letting herself go to pots."

My mother was Chris Smith.

Fortunately the fans have gotten older as he has, so that hasn't happened in quite a while.

And I went to school with twins named Wanda Sue and Rhonda Lou (they went by Wanda and Rhonda), and another pair of twins named Neyda (Nay-dah) and Neysa (Nee-sah).

Allan @ #224, if the Obama fans had a girl they could name her Hope.

Allan, there was a '50s B-movie star whose screen name was Acquanetta.

Hmm, that didn't come out right.

ARGH. Neither did that!

Anyway. "Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus. Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis peccatoribus nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae."

From memory. Geez, and I'm not even a Catholic.

Yours is the tripla from "O magnum mysterium," isn't it? I think I recognize it.

I'm quite fond of Bryce, myself.

Adding to the unsolicited advice: One of my graduate advisors suggested that you should name your children something that sounds good after "The Right Honourable". I think Cat probably has this covered, but you do want to give your kids more 'formal' names from which diminutives can be created. My full name is Debbie (my parents were immigrants to the English-speaking world), and I don't have a middle name. I'm constantly telling people things like "Yes, that is my name as it appears in my passport." And when I was a grad student and the Provost addressed me as 'Debra,' I understood the impulse and wasn't about to correct him.

"For the seafood lover in you," as the Red Lobster chain of restaurants used to say.

Aquanetta was a b-rated movie actress (born as Mildred Davenport) in Ozone, Wyoming in 1921. She was nicknamed the "Venezualan Volcano" by Universal Studios.

Ozone?

So, the first of these was about one Billy Bradley, who had been valedictorian at her school. She was going on to City College, had been awarded a scolarship, planned to study engineering, was orphaned, nine years before; when her parents died in a fire, lived with her uncle; who was on disability. The scholarship was announced by the principal of the high school (and his name escapes me, though all the rest is fresh in my mind, some 22 years after the assignment).

When we turned it in we were given a list of all the ways in which people bollixed it (me, I managed to get 10 points extra credit, as I caught the highlights and didn't make any of the huge errors).

One of the more famous was, "William Bradley", because, "I thought he'd want his full name, not a nickname, in the paper".

I wonder if this is the first time that both the president and vice-president have been the exact namesakes of their respective fathers? (Barack Hussein Obama II, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.-- actually, I have no idea what any previous exact paternal namesakes would've been, though of course there are the partial namesakes John Quincy Adams and That Other Guy.)

From the Highway site: Carl Fisher (who built the Indianapolis Speedway and later drained the swamp that became Miami Beach)

called his idea the Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway. The gravelled road would cost about ten million dollars, low even for 1912. Communities along the route would provide the equipment and in return would receive free materials and a place along America's first transcontinental highway. The highway would be finished in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and would run from the exposition's host, San Francisco, to New York City.

The Internet can be highly informative; I'd never heard of the Lincoln Highway before. Maps of the route are at the site.

At the time of her graduation, I am sure they were flushed with pride.

"You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Toilette Zone!"

Another opportunity gone down the drain...

Instead of Barackia, they could use Obama. Ends in 'a', obviously a girl's name, right? But I think Magenta is right about Michelle instead.

...until you're too pooped to keep going?

*For now.

Usually I'm quiet as the Sphinx, but some days are sphincter than others. (OK, YOU try to work 'sphincter' into a pun chain!)

Xopher: I sphincter doing a good job. Don't get bogged down in the details.

Obviously, it can only appear at the end....

Would the love child of Martin Short and Liz Story be called Hugo?

Yes. Unfortunately, he ends up Lost.

As for giving kids names that are good for grownups but can be shortened - my father wanted to name me Candy. No, not Candace. Candy. My mother was NOT having it. She told him he could pick any old fashioned name he wanted, and then call me by a nickname, but my birth certificate would not read Candy Huber. So Elizabeth it was, and oddly, I never went by any of the nicknames for it. Also, I don't actually like Eclairs.

Cat: Hey, it doesn't actually have to be a relative of that generation!

Month names: I once met a woman named September. Odd that most month names read as feminine to English-speakers. August might be an exception, but even there, I'd tend to prefer Augustus. Likewise Janus and Julius (the latter being my stepfather's name).

Julie L. #237: Well, that couldn't have happened in my family -- Jews don't name kids after living relatives. The closes we've come was my nephew Stephen, who was born the year after his namesake (my father) died.

I note that Barack just means "blessed" -- I'm sure every tradition/language has something to correspond, though the Latinate version (Beata or Beatrix and variants) is feminine.

Bruce Cohen @#239: I know one couple whose first and last names were such that neither surname nor any hyphenation would go with both first names. They wound up calling for suggestions from the mailing-list I knew them from (and got a perfectly good one!).

Hmm... A lot of elements would make decent names, some in Latin form... Hmm, the "-ium" metals and the halogens mostly read as female to me. Carbon wouldn't be too bad, iron would be Ferris, Cobalt, Nickel, and Copper sound decent, and most of the noble gases would be OK. (Krypton, of course, has been co-opted by pop-culture.) Tungsten fails the spelling test but would otherwise be Ok. Mercury (or Hermes), natch... Bismuth? Resorting to Latin, we could add Argent and Aure(li)us, and tin (stannus) would be Stanley.

"Nickel" and "Copper" both sound like dogs' names to me (cf. "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof": "Honey, why do you give all your children dogs' names?"--the names in question being Trixie, Dixie and Buster, iirc).

And oliviacw @ 217 - I had a grandmother who went by Gladys (first name Mary), with a sister named Mildred. But my great aunt Ruth is on the other side of the family, so I guess we aren't related.

One of my sisters is named "Naida", pronounced the same way as the Neyda you cite. One of my dad's cousins had named her daughter that, and my parents liked the name. But hers was the only uncommon name in our family in our generation.

In my case "Lois" comes from my mom's middle name, which was chosen by her older sisters when Mom was born; in 1918 it was apparently fairly trendy. So it's not true that I'm named for Superman's Significant Other, although my middle name, Aleta, does come from Prince Valiant's S.O. (Again, my folks just liked the name.)

Faren Miller @ 177 noted that her mother's name is Aleta. May I ask how your family pronounces that? Mine says "a-LEH-ta" but I've also heard of at least one Aleta who says "a-LEE-ta."

I sometimes get my first name transmogrified into "Louis" or "Louise" or "Luis". This seems to also be true for other people named Lois, but I only have a small sample for reference since it's no longer a common name. But I do find "like Superman's girlfriend" a useful explanation. If I suspect the person might be familiar with the New
Testament I might mention that "Lois" is in the Bible -- St. Timothy's grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5)-- and is not a variant of Louise, as many people (and even some baby-name books) seem to believe.

I am kind of waiting for "Olive" to spin off of the trendiness of "Olivia." Not only does it also have a comics reference (Popeye's girlfriend), and a Biblical reference (Mount of ...), it's a common name in my family tree. My only still-living aunt is named Olive, apparently chosen because both her parents had sisters named Olive. A few years ago the couple on the TV show named their daughter after one of my other aunts, Mabel.

Lois @278 - my favorite boss ever was named Lois. I never heard her complain of people calling her Louise, but then she isn't the type to complain about that sort of thing.

Or, for those fond of classic New Orleans style sandwiches, the macerated version of the young lady's name could be rendered as "Muffuletta".

...and also the name of an honorary reindeer.

A Phoenix TV weatherman/anchorman (good looking in a classy sort of way, so he's moving up in the broadcasting world though he still does some weather) is named Sean but pronounces it as SEEN. Is that how the name is going these days?

Oliviacw - Huh. I doubt we're related, but I have a Ruth/Mildred set in the grandparental generation too. (I have an Aunt Ruth named after the Ruth, but nobody took up the Mildred banner. I do kind of like Millie, but I'd be more likely to give it to a pet than a kid. But she could go by Dred during her rebellious phase, and that would be pretty fantastic.)

The only really interesting names from the other side are August and his brother Joseph Vladamir. (I was hoping for Vladamir as a nephew's name - who's going to stead Vlad's lunch money? Nobody, that's who! But they went with Michael.)

And my grandmother went by Lois, but she signed her paintings with her given name, Anna Louise.

Frosty voice from the phone: "That's ee-vahn."

Yvonne, dammit. Like in Yvonne de Carlo.

* A gazebo error is not knowing how a word is pronounced because you've only seen it in print. An inverse gazebo error is not knowing how a word is spelled because you've only heard people say it.

Not an urban legend, I saw the personnel record with my own eyes: father named Curt, children named Curt Jr., Curtis, Curtessa, and Curtessina.

ObLatinTexts: It just occurs to me after all these years that I only remember Quintus having a sister. Does anyone know what happened to the other kids?

It reminds me of a joke played on me once by my father: he spelt a string of five or six Scottish names which all began with Mac, asked me to pronounce them, and then spelt m-a-c-h-i-n-e and asked me to pronounce it. Got me.

There's a character in James Blish' They Shall Have Stars (by story chronology the first of the "spindizzy" stories) whose name is MacHinery. He's corrupt politician.

"Bidet, bidet, bidet, that's all folks!"

On another topic, my personal gazebo error was with the word "melancholy". I had heard it said, and seen it written, but never connected "mell-anch-oly" with "melon-colly".

Wikipedia says the real Caecilius had two sons - Quintus and Sextus, and suggests the first four sons didn't survive to adulthood.

I don't remember a sister in the Cambridge books - I'm pretty sure our teacher made up one for our all female class. A sister was also invented for the Dr Who episode. And poor Sextus seems to have missed entirely on being fictionalised.

Oddly enough, the only name that was duplicated by marriage was Bernice -- brother Fred married a girl named Bernice, so they pronounced them differently (Fred & BURR-niss; ber-NEESE never married (one of the WWI lost generation)).

"Some just crawled out of my bidet."
- Jason King to Room Service after finding a spy in his hotel bathroom.

On names: Vlad always adds an air of authority (or authoritarianism). I also like girly-girl names that can be shortened to more masculine names if said daughter chooses e.g. Charlotte (Charlie), Francesca (Frankie), Georgina (George etc...). We named ours Charlotte, Maxwell, and Evelyn. All awesome in my unbiased opinion.

(If anyone wants documentary proof of Chaz and Charles and John and Jack, I could theoretically scan the yearbook pages, once I dig them out of the Box of Archives in my old room at my parents' house.)

Going by rusty memories and Google's preview, It looks like we used the Oxford Latin Course rather than the Cambridge one. The Oxford one follows a somewhat fictionalized account of Horace, who is also Quintus, and they gave him a sister. Probably similar reasons why the other kids don't make a showing, though.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled thread drift, as opposed to its complete hijacking.

I felt like a total doofus when I was told (by Ben Stiller, of all people, in a Trek special) that Mr. Atoz, the librarian in "All Our Yesterdays" was so named for A to Z. How did I not realize that?

Is he? Huh. Never realized that.

Serge @309:
[*]

Can't remember where Teresa explained it, but [*] means "explanation please?" It's the ASCII equivalent of a card that got held up at panels at some convention or other.

In other words, where's the footnote?

In your next comment? Please?

Thanks; the names rang no bells for me.

Useful, though, for a test set sometime. (I use lists of names for test sets: the Seven Dwarves, the Nine Walkers, the Nine Princes of Amber, the crew of Serenity, the Endless—that sort of thing).

Scott Carpenter
Virgil 'Gus' Grissom
Alan Sheppard
Gordon Cooper
John Glenn

And here are their wooden counterparts.

Other charecters were Grumio the cook and Clemens the slave.

And somewhere at home I have a scan of a photo of myself, my brother, and John Glenn standing in front of Glenn Elementary school in San Antonio. It was taken in 1964, when I was 11.

L. Frank Baum named Oz after the O-Z file drawer in his office. The idea that it's short for Australia is apocryphal, amusing, and refuted by the books.

(I took me a long time to stop being mad at myself for missing that panel at 1983's worldcon that had Gordo Cooper and Chuck Yeager on it.)

Sigh.