Comings and goings and that which we call a rose

Sally Forth has been getting downright domestic these days, what with Sally's sister about to whelp and Sally not about to let things go, while, meanwhile, daughter Hilary is sorting out some middle-school BFF drama. Fortunately, we can always count on Ted to remain detached.

Not necessarily in a helpful way, but detached nonetheless.

I'm giving up on baby names, much as I have given up on tattoos. I can't even summon up a lot of Andy Rooney over this stuff anymore.

I wrote a Sunday feature (the jump is here) about a quarter century ago about naming conventions, including from (American) and (India) Indian cultures, plus African, plus silly mainstream, which was a fun piece that got a lot of commentary. 

For instance, despite the jokes on the topic, it turns out that Plains people didn't just make up names, though a couple of famous names -- like "American Horse" -- were clearly fairly new. Most, however, were passed down, sometimes given by an uncle to a nephew as a sign of high regard, which meant the uncle then had to take on another name.

Lakota children were given names they often left behind, and then even more casually-given nicknames suited to personal traits: Sitting Bull was named Jumping Badger at birth, but generally known as "Slow" (in the sense of "deliberate") as a kid, before inheriting a powerful name that meant "The (great) Bison Dwells Among Us."

By contrast, an Iroquois expert told me that their names had been passed along for so many centuries that they no longer had day-to-day meanings attached to them and were simply traditional names. In contrast to the Lakota, Iroquois rarely changed their names, but, in a trait I've found among most native people, they also have a tradition of some pretty hard ragging upon each other: 

"Some of the nicknames are funny, and you can't shake'em," (Ray) Fadden laughs. "I know a girl who always tried to get every guy she could, and they called her 'Spider,' because she went after them like a spider after a fly. I laugh every time I hear it, but, when I say 'Spider,' everybody knows who I mean."

In the meantime, within the major culture, naming kids after grandparents or to honor the family's culture, religion or ethnicity had been replaced by giving them names taken from soap operas, and the Kayla explosion could be traced to "Days of Our Lives," while Brittany, Ashley and Nichole began as characters on "The Young and the Restless."

(Note that the original "Kayla" named her own daughter "Katherine Elizabeth.")

Things have become even less systematic since, but I've gotten over it and made a couple of adjustments.

1. Forget spelling. We used to compile a quarterly insert with the honor rolls from our area schools, and I quickly learned that, no matter how unlikely or downright ridiculous it seemed, the school had it spelled right and I was wasting my time calling them to doublecheck.

If these were the kids on the honor roll, either there is no scientific basis for eugenics or no longer any importance in spelling, and the one I could prove most easily was the latter. 

That was also the one that made my brain hurt less, though not by much, and which led to my second conclusion, to wit:

2. As for saddling your kid with a name that won't reflect well, there are so many kids with names previously reserved for golden retrievers that it no longer matters.There was a small fan base that sprung up mostly on college campuses for an NBC producer with the unlikely name of "Bambi Tascarella" a quarter century ago, but it's getting pretty hard to find a truly unlikely name anymore.

About a year after that article appeared, this movie came out. This bit was funny but, then again, it was pretty much a movie about a guy who didn't get it. Don't be that guy.

 

 

Meanwhile, Sally Forth isn't the only strip with an impending arrival:

I mention this primarily to get in the fact that new arrivals won't actually be much of a factor in Doonesbury for a while, since Trudeau is putting the strip into reruns for the summer while he works on another project.

Which is to say that, OMG, we're going to have to get through the next few months with no new Doonesburys and a guest host at the Daily Show.

It's like the cultural equivalent of the sequester.

And, finally, while Sally Forth and Doonesbury are adding to the cast, we've got an update from a strip that has apparently decided it's time to move in That Other Direction:

Here come the tears and the guilt-trip, but the comments over at the Retail site make it seem both Marla and Norm Feuti have made the right move. 

Comments

[Mary in Ohio]

When I was in grade school, there were no Heathers in any of my classes. Ever. In the 31 years I taught grade school, there were no Helens and very few Nancys.

[Craig L]

I still do not understand how Craig was the 50th most popular name the year I was born, but in all my school years, I only had two classmates who were also Craigs. And the name didn't fall out of the Top 100 until 1990, and has dropped in popularity almost every year since, in fact picking up downward momentum when Craigslist hit the web. Not even a turnaround when James Bond had Craig for a last name ("Craig, Daniel Craig").

[Craig L]

"Tribal Naming", when you avoid the cringeworthy Native American references, can be interesting - and fun.

One of the longest running webcomics based on D&D fantasy games "Goblins" http://www.goblinscomic.org/ has a naming convention for its eponymous race of creatures in which a tribe's Fortune Teller would name all the children based on visions about them. This has driven a couple storylines including the naming of the son of an existing tribal chief "Chief" even though the Fortune Teller knew he would not be capable, but otherwise, there would be a civil war among the top warriors. In another case, a goblin named Saves A Fox deliberately killed a fox in order to demonstrate her free will.

But mostly, the naming system resulted in some comical character names among the gremlins, including...
Big Ears
Fumbles
Tempts Fate
Young and Beautiful (who we meet long after she has outlived her name)
To Hit Armour Class Zero (a direct reference to a D&D rule, acronym'd as THAC0)
Complains of Names (obviously)
and
Dies Horribly (ironically still surviving after 8 years in the comic, but still living in a state of constant dread and fear)

(BTW: I do not recommend jumping right into this comic, since its 1000+ page run has led to multiple confusing plot threads, but the art is excellent -this guy can really choreograph a battle scene- and most of the characters very well-written, even when originally defined by a jokey name)