Speaker 1: Yes, I would like to ask you a question. Did
Speaker 1: you guys like to answer questions for us? A while back,
Speaker 1: I visited my alma mater. I'm talking about my first
Speaker 1: alma mater, Wood Acres Elementary School in Bethesda, Maryland. Him
Speaker 1: mister Raka, I went to this school. When I first
Speaker 1: came to wood Acres in the third grade, I wasn't Mo.
Speaker 1: I was Maurice Raka. Maurice, a name which felt hopelessly
Speaker 1: out of style. I was the only Maurice in the
Speaker 1: whole school. But maybe the name has a better rep Now, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask each of you question, and that's what
Speaker 1: I've come back to find out. I started off slowly, though,
Speaker 1: asking about other names which peaked long ago.
Speaker 2: When I say the name Mildred, what do you think of.
Speaker 3: London?
Speaker 1: I think of an old British person.
Speaker 2: All yeah, yeah, I agreed, me too. Okay, what about
Speaker 2: what about the name Tha?
Speaker 1: An old lady?
Speaker 2: That's fat?
Speaker 4: I agree?
Speaker 3: I agree, I agree.
Speaker 2: It is unmity here.
Speaker 1: I must confess. I get what they're saying. In the
Speaker 1: twenty first century, names like Mildred and Bertha conjure certain images.
Speaker 2: Is it the er? Is it the thaw.
Speaker 1: I think that, yeah, all of it just all together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about the name.
Speaker 3: Todd A tall person that plays golf kind of I'm
Speaker 3: like middle aged, like in his forties, tall brown hair.
Speaker 2: I think they're kind of weird.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a tar that's a tall.
Speaker 1: That's finally I mustered the courage to ask them about
Speaker 1: my name.
Speaker 2: What do you think of the name Maurice?
Speaker 3: I think of like an old French dude, like a
Speaker 3: young person who travels a lot, maybe doesn't.
Speaker 2: Have a home, see on the run from the law.
Speaker 3: Why is he Maybe he just kind of like stays
Speaker 3: in hotels and just goes everywhere.
Speaker 2: Like some like singer.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's like they're not really known.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like a local kind of person, but they
Speaker 3: still chase, they move a lot.
Speaker 1: Not really known, a local kind of person out But
Speaker 1: it turns out there is a traveling singer named Maurice
Speaker 1: van Hokee travel and Maurice is also a portly frenchman
Speaker 1: in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Help don't help me
Speaker 1: for Ree's wait, I need to help. But the name
Speaker 1: Maurice maybe permanently on the way out. We Maurice's reached
Speaker 1: the height of our popularity in the nineteen twenties, when
Speaker 1: there were an average of about sixteen hundred born annually.
Speaker 1: Now just a few hundred come into the world each year.
Speaker 1: What makes a name rise and fall in the ranks?
Speaker 1: But makes a name pretty and popular to one generation
Speaker 1: and unique or downright ugly to the next. From CBS
Speaker 1: Sunday Morning and iHeart I'm Maurice Raka and this is mobituaries.
Speaker 1: This moment the death of a name. I knew a
Speaker 1: kid in elementary school named Jeff Heebner. He was friendly,
Speaker 1: he was good at soccer, he was cool. He could
Speaker 1: introduce himself with confidence. Because he was a Jeff. He
Speaker 1: perfectly embodied his own name. I, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: always felt awkward telling people my name. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: because growing up I knew of only three other Maurice's.
Speaker 1: There was children's book author Maurice Sendak, who wrote the
Speaker 1: classic Where the Wild Things Are. Was the Maurice from
Speaker 1: that Steve Miller band song The Joker.
Speaker 2: Becoming Maice I speak of.
Speaker 1: That was kind of cool, but that was canceled out
Speaker 1: by French entertainer Maurice Chevalier. I m I see a
Speaker 1: little girl of five or six or seven.
Speaker 2: I can't resist the joy or.
Speaker 1: Spell that song he sang in Gigi Thick Kevin fall
Speaker 1: a little girl. I can't believe he hasn't been canceled
Speaker 1: for that, But that was pretty much it. I was
Speaker 1: born Maurice Albert Raca. My mother tells me my father
Speaker 1: was the one who really wanted to name me Maurice.
Speaker 1: She would have preferred Gabriel. My father is no longer living,
Speaker 1: so I can't know for sure, but I think he
Speaker 1: wanted something on the gentler side, since Raca can sound brusque.
Speaker 2: But I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: At one point I thought maybe I should go by
Speaker 1: al I mean, which had been crazy. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: when I think about it, I'm not crazy. It just
Speaker 1: would have sounded odd al Raca. I talked to one
Speaker 1: of my former teachers about it. That day I visited
Speaker 1: wood Acres. Her name is Miss Venisi, and she was
Speaker 1: one of my all time favorites. She was patient, kind,
Speaker 1: and impossibly glamorous. More about that in a bit. Turns
Speaker 1: out she could have made a pretty decent therapist too.
Speaker 3: Now you said you didn't like your name, so were
Speaker 3: you teased in school?
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I was ever teased for my name.
Speaker 1: It just felt so different, it felt foreign. Everything changed
Speaker 1: when I graduated from Wood Acres to Pile Middle School,
Speaker 1: and oddly enough, it was thanks to the aptly named
Speaker 1: Jeff Heebner.
Speaker 3: I know him, I mean, I remember him. He was
Speaker 3: very blonde, very blonde.
Speaker 1: And when I went to Pile, it's kind of scary
Speaker 1: all the elementary schools feeding into the big junior high
Speaker 1: and the fizz ed teacher there of the first days
Speaker 1: did roll call and said, you know, when I get
Speaker 1: to your name, if you have a name you prefer
Speaker 1: you as, I'll write it in the in the book.
Speaker 2: And then she said Maurice Rock.
Speaker 1: I said here, and then Jeff Heapner said, he's not Maurice,
Speaker 1: He's Mo. And that's kind of how I got my.
Speaker 3: I was going to ask you, so Jeff just came
Speaker 3: out with it and you preferred it obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of I liked that.
Speaker 1: It was easy, yeah, and it kind of popped. But
Speaker 1: now I love when people call me Maurice. So you
Speaker 1: have to call me for this episode.
Speaker 2: I'm Maurice.
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure and what to call you, whether I
Speaker 3: should call you, Maurice Amo.
Speaker 1: And if there's anyone who would understand this kind of
Speaker 1: confusion over one's own name, it's Miss Vanisi, Mildred Vanisi.
Speaker 1: Despite what those kids said earlier, Mildred Venisi is not British,
Speaker 1: but the granddaughter of Italian immigrants.
Speaker 3: And there was a custom I doubt if it's still
Speaker 3: in existence, that the firstborn I was the firstborn is
Speaker 3: named either for the father's mother or the father's father,
Speaker 3: of course, dependent upon the sex. My grandmother's name was Camella,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure that my parents, being first generation, wanted
Speaker 3: an anglicized name. Kamella's were called Milly. Millie is Mildred.
Speaker 1: Growing up, Miss Venisi didn't know any other Mildred's and
Speaker 1: she didn't really like her name. Lucky for her, she
Speaker 1: too got a nickname that eventually stuck.
Speaker 3: Somewhere along the line. I started being called Milly. Not
Speaker 3: by family, my mother and father. I was still Mildred,
Speaker 3: but my generation, my friends started calling me that. My
Speaker 3: sisters call me Milly, and so now I introduced myself
Speaker 3: that way. It just happened, just happened. I think the
Speaker 3: name Millie flows better. It's a little more musical than Mildred.
Speaker 3: I just think Mildred is harsh.
Speaker 1: She's not thoroughly modern Mildred.
Speaker 3: No, right, that wouldn't sound good. That just would not
Speaker 3: sound good.
Speaker 1: I also never thought Mildred was an appropriate moniker for
Speaker 1: Miss Venisi, with her luxuriant mane of dark curly hair,
Speaker 1: her Jackie O sunglasses, her Jordash jeans or were they
Speaker 1: Gloria Vanderbilt?
Speaker 6: Look?
Speaker 1: All I know is that no other teacher looked like
Speaker 1: she just walked off the setup and Aaron spelling nighttime soap. Honestly,
Speaker 1: Miss VANSI was so fabulous I could barely contain myself.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you'll remember, so if you don't,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a confession.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 1: But I remember in fifth grade waiting outside the all
Speaker 1: Purpose room for lunch. But when you walked by, I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: what's shake and Millie? He wheeled around. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think you said something like, did you ever call me
Speaker 1: that again? I, Miss Venisi, I probably did.
Speaker 3: Teach.
Speaker 1: The name Mildred reached its peak in nineteen twenty, when
Speaker 1: more than eighteen thousand babies were named Mildred. It was
Speaker 1: the sixth most popular girls name that year popular enough
Speaker 1: that there are a number of notable Mildreds throughout history.
Speaker 1: Mildred J. Hill was the composer of Good Morning to All,
Speaker 1: the melody of which became the Happy Birthday Song.
Speaker 3: And then that movie Mildred Piers with Germany Crawft that
Speaker 3: must have been in the forties.
Speaker 6: Now I'm sure of one thing, at least, I want
Speaker 6: my daughter back.
Speaker 1: Mildred Gillers an American who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Germany
Speaker 1: during World War Two, also known as Axis Sally. She
Speaker 1: was indicted after the war in charge with trees and Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's not a good Mildred.
Speaker 3: That's not a good Mildred. But I think I've heard
Speaker 3: of Axis Sally.
Speaker 1: But after hitting its popularity peak in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: Mildred slowly slid down the list of the thousand most
Speaker 1: popular names. In twenty seventeen, only eighty three newborn girls
Speaker 1: were named Mildred in the US. Recent users on one
Speaker 1: baby naming website dismissed the name as sounding too much
Speaker 1: like Mildew wrote another makes me think of dreading something.
Speaker 3: I was the only Mildred in all my years at
Speaker 3: school there was a period of time when a lot
Speaker 3: of girls are named Karen, and there was another period
Speaker 3: of time where a lot of girls name Janet. I
Speaker 3: don't know, but I just think that names have cycles,
Speaker 3: and maybe something triggers.
Speaker 1: It, as she so often was when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: Mildred Venisi is right.
Speaker 2: Coming up.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk with linguist John mcwardo about what
Speaker 1: makes names pretty, prickly or popular. But first in in
Speaker 1: memoriam for another name that left us, Hortense. We hardly
Speaker 1: knew you. Despite your French origins. Your name lacked the crisp,
Speaker 1: bright bubbliness of champagne and the addictive qualities of your
Speaker 1: country's cheeses. Disney must have had a thing for you,
Speaker 1: because Hortense McDuck is Donald Duck's mother. Donald gets an
Speaker 1: ostrich named Hortense, and his uncle Scrooge McDuck named his
Speaker 1: horse Hortense Alas Disney was never going to create a
Speaker 1: princess Hortense as a name, You're just not pretty. You
Speaker 1: barely cracked the top four hundred names in the US
Speaker 1: around the turn of the twentieth century, and you slid
Speaker 1: off the top one thousand after nineteen forty one. Now,
Speaker 1: ordensia does have a nice frame to it. It's the
Speaker 1: Spanish version of hortense or densia also means hydrangia. To
Speaker 1: be clear, I'm not suggesting anyone named their daughter hydrangea hortense.
Speaker 1: You are strictly past tense, gone, and yes forgotten. To
Speaker 1: understand better why names come and go, I talked with
Speaker 1: an expert, Columbia University Associates Professor of Comparative literature and
Speaker 1: linguist John mcward. How did you become a John?
Speaker 5: I'm John Hamilton mcwarter the fifth, and John Hamilton mccuorter
Speaker 5: the first was a slave, So I was named because
Speaker 5: of that relentless succession and the idea that you don't
Speaker 5: break it. And as a matter of fact, I know
Speaker 5: if my father hadn't been John Hamilton mcquarter the fourth,
Speaker 5: I would be named Bruce. That's what my mother would
Speaker 5: have chosen. And I would have named my son John,
Speaker 5: except he's a girl, and so the name had to
Speaker 5: stop with my two girls. So she has my middle.
Speaker 1: Name, Johanna. In Italian, you'd have Johnny and Johanna in
Speaker 1: English Johnette, none of them. That just sounds like a
Speaker 1: tiny little bathroom. We live in an efficiency. We only
Speaker 1: have room for a John after John mcwarter was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty five, when John was the second most
Speaker 1: popular name in the country, and the name John isn't
Speaker 1: going away. It's still in the top thirty names for
Speaker 1: boys in the US. But if you go back in
Speaker 1: time to the early twentieth century, John was far and
Speaker 1: away the number one boy's name. America was producing John's
Speaker 1: in mass quantities. It was like the model t of names.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you were born in that era, it
Speaker 1: was really common for you to have a name that
Speaker 1: was in the top ten. People just seemed to want
Speaker 1: to fit in.
Speaker 5: You go back to that time and there is a
Speaker 5: sense of what a normal American person is that would
Speaker 5: strike us today as almost bizarrely homogenous. And that's not
Speaker 5: to say that there weren't some ripples going on around
Speaker 5: the edges, but there was a certain sense that America was,
Speaker 5: you know, turkey and apple pie, and that's what one was.
Speaker 5: One was very, very very white.
Speaker 1: Well that's so interesting because aren't there those are competing impulses, right.
Speaker 1: I want my child to have a name that makes
Speaker 1: him or her special. I also want my child to
Speaker 1: have a name that makes him or her fit in.
Speaker 2: And that right.
Speaker 5: So and back then, no special. I mean, if you
Speaker 5: think of somebody naming their child in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 5: most people did not want something that would make the
Speaker 5: child feel special, or it would be something going on
Speaker 5: with the middle name, something that was less known. You
Speaker 5: might play with it.
Speaker 1: Even when I was in school in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: I remember the popular names were really popular. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in junior high I was drowning in Jennifer's.
Speaker 5: Oh, they were everywhere. That's right.
Speaker 1: What was going on?
Speaker 5: Jennifers and Jenny's.
Speaker 1: That's right, there's so many Jennifers. Oh, it was a
Speaker 1: tsunami of them in school.
Speaker 2: Seven Jennifers.
Speaker 1: But the days of a few names dominating are over.
Speaker 1: At its peak, a full five percent of all newborn
Speaker 1: male babies were named John one in twenty Fast forward
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty one, and the top names for females
Speaker 1: and males, Olivia and Liam, made up only around one
Speaker 1: percent of babies born that year. In other words, the
Speaker 1: most popular names are less popular. Parents today shoot for originality.
Speaker 5: There's a sense that if you're going to name a child.
Speaker 5: You spontaneously reach out and you think, how can we
Speaker 5: have a little bit of fun with this, so you
Speaker 5: don't want to torture your child. I once knew this
Speaker 5: poor little boy. His parents had named him Rotunda Thanksgiving Jones. Oh,
Speaker 5: and it was because he was born when John F.
Speaker 5: Kennedy was laid out in the rotunda, and they named
Speaker 5: him Thanksgiving just because, and of course he was made
Speaker 5: fun of.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a song, and have forgotten Gershwin musical.
Speaker 5: That's because there were songs like that Rotunda Thanksgiving. Gents,
Speaker 5: you can and this guy really had that name. It's
Speaker 5: a tragic thing, but you want your child to be
Speaker 5: somewhat different, probably not too different, but I think most
Speaker 5: people think not the average thing, unless it's named after
Speaker 5: a grandparent or a father or something like that.
Speaker 1: John mcwarter says that trend towards uniqueness and away from
Speaker 1: uniformity tracks with broader changes in American society.
Speaker 5: I think it's very much a spirit of individuality, and
Speaker 5: of course many people would say that the spirit of
Speaker 5: individuality is part of what being an American is. But
Speaker 5: there's an extreme that happens, and I think it happens
Speaker 5: after the nineteen sixties, with the sense of what was
Speaker 5: called the Me generation in the seventies, and then the
Speaker 5: greater respect for and awareness of the diversity of americannesses
Speaker 5: that you get that really becomes default starting in the eighties.
Speaker 5: That's when a certain browning of the culture happens. Think
Speaker 5: about nineteen eighty four is when The Cosby Show becomes
Speaker 5: a big hit. Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss
Speaker 5: America and I new Miss America.
Speaker 2: There's Mavnasillams.
Speaker 5: Beverly Hills. Cop is almost the biggest selling movie in
Speaker 5: the country. You know, this is the cleanest and nicest
Speaker 5: police card ever been.
Speaker 4: In in my life.
Speaker 5: That's only eighty four and that's just black diversity. I
Speaker 5: think we've become much more comfortable with America not just
Speaker 5: being my three sons starting in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: As a part of that change, there's a shift in
Speaker 1: naming traditions, especially among Black Americans. Nineteen eighty is a
Speaker 1: particularly interesting year for naming kids. That year, sixty percent
Speaker 1: of black girls are given a unique name, one that
Speaker 1: no one else has. Mcwarterur points out that after the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties, afrocentrism gained traction
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 5: So once you get past integration as the watch cry,
Speaker 5: and there's a certain kind of in some ways healthy
Speaker 5: separatism that's afoot, then it becomes natural to be comfortable
Speaker 5: making up a name. And so what happens, frankly is
Speaker 5: I've often thought that black girls in particular tend to
Speaker 5: have more interesting names because it's considered okay to just
Speaker 5: make it up. And what you get are all of
Speaker 5: these beautiful African style names for people born in the
Speaker 5: United States. And it's all rather pretty, but it really explodes,
Speaker 5: especially with the sense of Africa and the African heritage
Speaker 5: rising in the nineteen seventies. That's when you get little
Speaker 5: girls named Mikiba.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to impress you right now and tell you,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry if it sounds boastful. In college, I
Speaker 1: was in a production of Little Shop of Horrors with
Speaker 1: Katanji Brown now Katanji Brown Jackson. I was Seymour, thank
Speaker 1: you very much. She was run at and she was fantastic.
Speaker 1: She was fantastically you notice, yeah, and she yeah, she
Speaker 1: was not Crystal. I'm suddenly forging thelast one's name. But anyways,
Speaker 1: did improv comedy together? But her name, I know you've
Speaker 1: written about her name improv. H Wow, she thinks really funny?
Speaker 5: Is she funny? She is?
Speaker 2: I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: We will because we are going to make sure that
Speaker 1: hearings are now you know, the simulcast on Comedy Central.
Speaker 1: I because she's that funny.
Speaker 5: I want to know that about her. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 5: perfect example that her name is Katanji. If she were
Speaker 5: a generation older, her name would probably be Carolyn. But
Speaker 5: now it is Katanji Brown Jackson. And that's ordinary starting
Speaker 5: especially with women of her generation. It's nice to see.
Speaker 5: I mean, Katanji is a much more interesting name than Carolyn.
Speaker 1: But one group of people, we expect original names from celebrities.
Speaker 1: It's practically a rite of passage. The first time I
Speaker 1: can remember this happening is in two thousand and four
Speaker 1: when Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin named their daughter Apple.
Speaker 1: At the time it was weird. Now totally normal. Kylie
Speaker 1: Jenner has a daughter named Stormy, and it's not with
Speaker 1: a y, it's with an eye at the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Elon Musk has won that somebody can pronounce it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of symbols. I think by the way I
Speaker 1: looked it up, it's pronounced x ash a twelve.
Speaker 5: All of that is because they are public figures, and
Speaker 5: so for them, naming is a public act. And if
Speaker 5: it's going to be a public act, then you want
Speaker 5: to do something that's going to stand out rather than
Speaker 5: something that's going to bore people. If somebody like Gwyneth
Speaker 5: Paltrow sets off a tradition, next thing, you know, everybody's
Speaker 5: doing it.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of a celebrity contagion in a way.
Speaker 5: I think I would put it just that way. What
Speaker 5: Jay Z and Beyonce Blue Ivy. That's really beautiful, but
Speaker 5: it's not African. It's not the usual tradition. That's something
Speaker 5: they came up with all by themselves, as people who
Speaker 5: knew that everybody was watching them having that child. So
Speaker 5: that's where you get that tradition. And that seems to
Speaker 5: actually cut across races with celebrities too. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 5: a show. It's a it's a kind of display, And
Speaker 5: I don't mean that in a bad way.
Speaker 1: Most parents aren't going to resort to their kids after
Speaker 1: a combination of math aircraft and Elvin symbols representing artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: which is what Musk's baby's name represents. But throughout history,
Speaker 1: parents have often taken naming cues from pop culture. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to quiz you on it right now. Actually
Speaker 1: it's really fun, so I'll start off really easy. Shirley
Speaker 1: saw a dramatic spike between nineteen thirty two and nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five because of I wish mother.
Speaker 5: Hair of Little Shirley Temple. And if you think about it,
Speaker 5: nobody is named Shirley before then, and then all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, everybody's grandmother is named Shirley by the late
Speaker 5: twentieth century, and now the name is impossible. Meet little Shirley.
Speaker 1: Never Michelle entered the top twenty in nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: because that was the same year.
Speaker 5: It has to be because of that song.
Speaker 4: My Bell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Beatles song.
Speaker 5: Nobody is named Michelle. Maybe in France ants you're just
Speaker 5: kind of guessing, but not here, I mean you Michelle's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got a lot of Michelle's running around, women
Speaker 1: named Michelle.
Speaker 5: Women, but not here, not before then.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see what you're saying, Like, there's.
Speaker 5: No first lady named Michelle. Right, and if you think
Speaker 5: about it, Michelle there was no first lady name Michelle
Speaker 5: good point right, only only after and she's named around that.
Speaker 1: Time Michelle Polk.
Speaker 5: No Michelle Quincatams, Michelle quin No suffragette named Michelle, you
Speaker 5: know that's that's right, it's Michelle Katie's.
Speaker 1: The name Layelah first appeared in the top one thousand
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 5: No, why then.
Speaker 1: Eric Clapton song Whoops, Yeah, I'm.
Speaker 5: Not as good at modern pop.
Speaker 2: Now, that's fine.
Speaker 1: I love that you and I have the same definition
Speaker 1: of modern pop. Nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 5: Everything ends.
Speaker 1: So this is a trick question. Rosanna shot up in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two because of that Toto song, Right, yes,
Speaker 1: I interviewed Patricia Arquette. That song was named after her sister,
Speaker 1: also an actress, But Patricia pointed out to me that
Speaker 1: her sister's name is really pronounced Rosanna.
Speaker 3: I'm Rosanna Arquette, and.
Speaker 1: I'm so they got the pronunciation of her name wrong.
Speaker 6: Hi, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear, Hi, Ronald Reagan, do
Speaker 6: solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of
Speaker 6: President of the United States at Iowa Faith.
Speaker 1: After Reagan became president in the eighties, the name Reagan,
Speaker 1: not Ronald as much, but the name Reagan surged in popularity,
Speaker 1: landing in the top one hundred by twenty twelve. Now
Speaker 1: here's what I think is fascinating is that Republican parents
Speaker 1: were more likely to pick the name Reagan for their
Speaker 1: kid if they lived in a district that was purple,
Speaker 1: that was sort of evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 1: Then you make a statement exactly, then if they weren't
Speaker 1: a deep red Republican enclave.
Speaker 5: Right, then they don't need to stand out, They don't
Speaker 5: need to stake their individuality exactly. And of course they
Speaker 5: weren't thinking of this consciously. So much goes on subconsciously.
Speaker 5: I doubt any of those families said, so many people
Speaker 5: around here vote Democratic, that let's name her Reagan. It
Speaker 5: was just part of the warp and wolf of their
Speaker 5: psychology because of sensing themselves as a minority or as
Speaker 5: not more than half of their district. Well, that's fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you're in a purple district and you name
Speaker 1: your kid Reagan, do you plant the kid on the
Speaker 1: front lawn during election time.
Speaker 5: That's right, mommy, how long do I have to stand here?
Speaker 1: Spend some time with the Social Security Administration's baby named database,
Speaker 1: and you'll see a sort of pendulum swing over the
Speaker 1: last century, especially among girls. Half of the most popular girls'
Speaker 1: names started with vowels in the eighteen eighties. Then we're
Speaker 1: all consonants. By nineteen fifty, Anna and Emma became Patricia
Speaker 1: and Deborah. Now vowels are back in a big way.
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder why.
Speaker 5: Certainly in terms of how we perceive beauty, at least
Speaker 5: in English and in related languages, vowels are beautiful because
Speaker 5: they involve no obstruction of the airflow. Stop sounds such
Speaker 5: as those are the ugliest sounds because you have to stop.
Speaker 5: Those are the ones that you're calling the jabbing sounds.
Speaker 5: Then there's everything in between, so you get a buzz
Speaker 5: at least you get a hiss, and then with yeah,
Speaker 5: whoa those might as well be vowels. So having more
Speaker 5: vowels now could have something to do with people looking
Speaker 5: for a certain mollifluousness in names. Now why people would
Speaker 5: have valued it more during the McKinley administration than during
Speaker 5: the Coolidge administers. I have no idea. I get the
Speaker 5: feeling that is random.
Speaker 1: Statistical flutter mc water says that over time, fashions change gradually,
Speaker 1: and something you once found repellent you now find irresistible.
Speaker 5: You know how, today, if you have a dinner party,
Speaker 5: every second time you have brussel sprouts, probably with bacon
Speaker 5: or something like that, imagine how unthinkable that was. Say,
Speaker 5: even as recently as twenty five years ago, you didn't
Speaker 5: give people you liked brussel sprouts.
Speaker 1: You did not russels sprouts or were synonymous with something
Speaker 1: that was visible torture.
Speaker 5: Torture, Yeah, I mean little cabbages. They sucked, and so
Speaker 5: you wouldn't give them to anybody. And you don't even
Speaker 5: have to dress them up that much now we're used
Speaker 5: to them. That's partly fashion. I don't think that the
Speaker 5: Brussels sprout's lobby created this. Sometime early in the George W.
Speaker 5: Bush administration.
Speaker 1: One recent trend boys' names ending in a certain consonant.
Speaker 1: What is this with all these boys today? Baby boys
Speaker 1: having an N at the end of their We've got
Speaker 1: all these logans, Masons, Ethan's, Jackson's.
Speaker 5: We subconsciously associate that un with a kind of a
Speaker 5: gracious masculinity. It's what you want to name your little boy.
Speaker 1: As opposed to Jack, which is always too severe.
Speaker 5: Jack might be a bully. Yeah, not only old fashioned,
Speaker 5: but Jack Jack's people up. You know, Ethan has conversations.
Speaker 1: You imagine Ethan is open to change, like he's right, right.
Speaker 5: He reasons right. Ethan reasons as opposed to Jack, who
Speaker 5: just sits yeah.
Speaker 1: But even names that hit that right mix of vowels
Speaker 1: and and just right, ones that are pined after in
Speaker 1: song or become famous in the names of movie characters
Speaker 1: or the actors who play them. Well, just like we
Speaker 1: as a society can birth the name, we can also
Speaker 1: let it die. But first another in memoriam for sid
Speaker 1: stan irv Cy, Shelley, and Morty. No, they weren't the
Speaker 1: original white staff at the Carnegie Deli. In the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, Sidney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon, and Morton were
Speaker 1: all popular baby boy names with WASP that is, White
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon Protestant parents. Then in the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: many American Jewish parents began choosing these names for their
Speaker 1: baby boys to help them fit in. But America's wasps
Speaker 1: apparently felt stung and took flight from these names. Soon enough, Sidney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon,
Speaker 1: and Morton were seen as stereotypically Jewish, and their assimilation
Speaker 1: value greatly diminished. As documented by sociologist Stanley Lieberson, American
Speaker 1: Jews eventually abandoned the names as well. Incidentally, another name
Speaker 1: in that category was Morris, a sort of cousin to Maurice,
Speaker 1: but at least Morris was the name of a terrifically
Speaker 1: droll tabby who used to sell cat food on TV commercials.
Speaker 6: Nine Live Seafood Pladder anchors away.
Speaker 1: Pop culture and big news events can correlate with names surging,
Speaker 1: even when those events are disasters. After Hurricane Katrina, names
Speaker 1: that began with the letter K actually jumped by nine percent,
Speaker 1: according to an analysis by professors at Wharton Business School.
Speaker 1: The sheer repetition of the name Katrina, it seems, had
Speaker 1: a subliminal effect that K sound got stuck in people's heads.
Speaker 1: But the name Katrina itself, well, Katrina had been a
Speaker 1: pretty popular name and even broke the top one hundred
Speaker 1: for a while in the late seventies and eighties. After
Speaker 1: the storm, though the name quickly fell out of fashion
Speaker 1: and in twenty thirteen dropped out of the top one
Speaker 1: thousand entirely. Indeed, history can be a name killer as well.
Speaker 1: The name Isis saw a burst of popularity in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies thanks to a Saturday Morning superhero of
Speaker 1: the same name, and.
Speaker 6: Found she was heir to the sacrets of Isis.
Speaker 1: And so it has since fallen out of favor with
Speaker 1: the rise of the Islamic State, which I find reassuring.
Speaker 1: But Bertha toppled from a much greater height. In nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: mothers birthed more than five thousand Berthas. Try saying that
Speaker 1: five times fast. So what happened to Bertha? Well, Bertha
Speaker 1: was the name of a German heiress to krupp Ag,
Speaker 1: a German weapons manufacturer, and during World War One the
Speaker 1: company began making heavy guns. Those guns were dubbed big
Speaker 1: Berthas by the Germans. The Allies then this nickname that
Speaker 1: was being called the Big Bertha, and they began using
Speaker 1: it for all heavy artillery, so it suddenly became synonymous
Speaker 1: with big heavy portly right.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, So the next thing you know, Bertha is overweight.
Speaker 5: Is it's associated with being large?
Speaker 1: That's linguished John mcwater again. But is there also something
Speaker 1: about just the sound of it birth thought? I mean it,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of girth birth.
Speaker 5: The error is not pretty because it's not as open
Speaker 5: as other vowel sounds. The thuh is a little unpleasant,
Speaker 5: and it begins with a stop consonant. But er, I
Speaker 5: mean it's it's nasty in that way. But then, especially
Speaker 5: just because it was associated with something that was portly.
Speaker 1: I work with a woman who was telling me about
Speaker 1: a person in her neighborhood that she doesn't like, and
Speaker 1: she said, oh, I cut her a wide berth.
Speaker 5: And it's a wide berth. Right. I never thought about that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: And you wonder why that expression catches on? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Boy, I wonder what it would take for Bertha to
Speaker 1: come back, Hi, Bertha, I don't see it. After World
Speaker 1: War One, Bertha faded into obscurity and was off the
Speaker 1: top one thousand list by the mid nineteen eighties. But
Speaker 1: a name doesn't have to become synonymous with military weaponry
Speaker 1: or get added to a terrorist watch list to fade.
Speaker 5: Sometimes names just wear out. They fall out of the
Speaker 5: rotation in the same way you'll find a shirt that
Speaker 5: you really like and it still fits, and it's in
Speaker 5: your closet and you haven't worn it for five years
Speaker 5: for no real reason. A name with ugly sounds can
Speaker 5: last almost a counterintuitively long time. For example, Richard, what
Speaker 5: an ugly name that is? And think about how much
Speaker 5: uglier the nickname is, and how there were, until about
Speaker 5: ten minutes ago, normal male people running around in Anglophone
Speaker 5: America named Dick and nobody bad at a nine. It
Speaker 5: wasn't only Dick sargent at dick yorke. I knew a
Speaker 5: Dick back in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Has anything to do with the wedshed.
Speaker 5: Dick Lincoln, and he was taken seriously as an executive.
Speaker 5: Only with the past generation or two has that stop.
Speaker 5: And not only is dick ridiculous and dick was used
Speaker 5: to mean what it meant long before it went out,
Speaker 5: but dick is an ugly word by these standards.
Speaker 1: Composer Cole Porter would beg to differ many time.
Speaker 6: Time.
Speaker 1: One of the other names I've been pondering is Todd.
Speaker 1: Todd showed up in the thirties and just grew and grew.
Speaker 1: We hit peak Todd in nineteen sixty four. More than
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand were born that year. I used to know
Speaker 1: tons of Todd's, but now I haven't met a baby
Speaker 1: Todd in decades. What do you think the appeal was
Speaker 1: in the first place.
Speaker 5: I think it's partly because ah is the most basic
Speaker 5: sound and humanity. It's the first sound that babies make.
Speaker 5: And then with Todd, what you have is a kind
Speaker 5: of a nice assonance, as it were, because tou and
Speaker 5: duh are the same sound but different. Duah is too,
Speaker 5: with a little bit of belly in it, so you
Speaker 5: don't have to make a change. There was something pleasant
Speaker 5: about Todd. Todd was like a little white potato that's
Speaker 5: one of those little balls and it's boiled just right.
Speaker 1: That's like Todd, like a tater Todd. Yes, I guess
Speaker 1: he would have to be deep fried as well as
Speaker 1: Todd off and a lovely woman named Millie with a
Speaker 1: hairnet giving it to you. Personally. I like Todd, and
Speaker 1: I brought in one of my favorite Todds to defend
Speaker 1: his name, Todd Bridges. Todd Bridges was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, just one year after peak Todd, and when
Speaker 1: he was a teenager, he got a starring role in
Speaker 1: the hit TV show Different Strokes as Willis Jackson, opposite
Speaker 1: Gary Coleman as Arnold.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Phyllis is in.
Speaker 5: Man, Why don't you ask her? How Arnold?
Speaker 4: Are you kidding? So starter?
Speaker 1: She doesn't even known me.
Speaker 4: My mom said that she dreamed my name because there's
Speaker 4: not very many black Todd's. I don't know if you
Speaker 4: know that or not, but there isn't. I think I
Speaker 4: know Todd Gurley, the football player, and that's about it.
Speaker 4: I don't think I know anybody else named Todd.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 1: Even though Todd was near its peak when Bridges was born,
Speaker 1: it was indeed as white as those potatoes.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you what happened, which is really funny.
Speaker 4: One time I got a check somewhere that I was
Speaker 4: living at and it said Todd Bridges and I'm looking,
Speaker 4: I don't know of his company, and it's for a
Speaker 4: couple thousand dollars. I'm like, I know, I say, this
Speaker 4: is not me. So what happened was the postman thought
Speaker 4: it was me, and it was an address down the street,
Speaker 4: and I went down the street and bringing the bell
Speaker 4: and I go, hey, man, is there a Todd Bridges.
Speaker 4: He goes, yeah, it's me, and he goes, oh, hey Todd.
Speaker 4: I go, hey Todd, and I gave him it was his.
Speaker 1: There's another Todd Bridges right down the street.
Speaker 4: It was right down the street fromhere I used to
Speaker 4: live at. Yeah, another guy was a white guy.
Speaker 1: That's kind of crazy. People get their names made fun
Speaker 1: of for all sorts of reasons. Is there anything you
Speaker 1: can do with Todd? Were you ever teased?
Speaker 4: Well, a lot of people thought that Todd was short
Speaker 4: for Theodore, but I'm like, no, that's Ted.
Speaker 5: That show for Theodore.
Speaker 4: Todd is just Todd.
Speaker 1: Then in the nineteen seventies, Todd fell off the baby naming.
Speaker 4: Cliff oh Man. Todd fell off the Matt dang.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, there were only two hundred and twelve
Speaker 1: baby boys named Todd. And did you ever consider naming
Speaker 1: any of your children Todd?
Speaker 4: No? No. I named my son Spencer, but I spelled
Speaker 4: it differently, Okay, I mean we spelled his SPN C
Speaker 4: I R. And it's been serious.
Speaker 1: Now, why did you do that?
Speaker 4: We just thought it'd make it just original because Spencer
Speaker 4: is out there and it's you know, SBN cer. We
Speaker 4: just wanted to make it original, and it's original.
Speaker 1: Spencer, it totally is. George Carlin had a whole bit
Speaker 1: a routine in two thousand and one where he actually
Speaker 1: made fun of the name Todd.
Speaker 2: He made fun of a number of he really did.
Speaker 4: I didn't see that.
Speaker 5: What did he say?
Speaker 4: And I'm getting.
Speaker 1: Really sick a guy's name Todd?
Speaker 4: You know, Yeah, it's just a goofy.
Speaker 5: It's a goofy fucking name.
Speaker 4: Okay, Hi, what's your name? Todd? Is he still around?
Speaker 1: He is not still around, but great stand.
Speaker 4: He is lucky because I'd have to go choke him
Speaker 4: out messing with my name. It's not a goofy name.
Speaker 4: It's a cool name. It's Todd.
Speaker 1: We end this episode with a nod to Western civilization's
Speaker 1: earliest baby naming book, the Bible. From Adam and Eve
Speaker 1: to Ahab and Jezebel, there are well over a thousand
Speaker 1: different names mentioned between the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament.
Speaker 1: People have been blessing and sometimes saddling their kids with
Speaker 1: the names of patriarchs and prophets patriarchs in magi for
Speaker 1: over one thousand years. The most recently popular baby names
Speaker 1: in the us have included Jonah, Elijah, Naomi, and Noah.
Speaker 1: I was surprised to see that even the name Lazarus
Speaker 1: has risen from the dead. Of course, not every biblical
Speaker 1: name is heaven sent. Judas, if we ignore your history
Speaker 1: for a second, you're not terrible. Your spelling makes sense,
Speaker 1: and you have no off putting hard consonants. Then again,
Speaker 1: your behavior toward Jesus was more.
Speaker 2: Than off putting.
Speaker 1: Your name has been permanently shunned. Earlier biblical outcasts haven't
Speaker 1: fared much better. Sure, there were three hundred Canes born
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, but nearly ten ten times as many
Speaker 1: Abeles were born that year. It doesn't pay to kill
Speaker 1: your brother. Jesus, of course, is a popular name, especially
Speaker 1: as Heesus. But Judas, I don't see you ever cracking
Speaker 1: the top one thousand.
Speaker 5: Come here, little Judas, Yeah, there are more than time
Speaker 5: for your dip.
Speaker 2: They're not.
Speaker 5: Friendless, dateless little boy.
Speaker 1: Esther and Ruth your solid names, if not always easy
Speaker 1: to say. Hey, Esther, meet me at Ruth's Christ's Steakhouse.
Speaker 1: You're the only two women with books of the Bible
Speaker 1: named after you. But after the nineteen thirties, your name's
Speaker 1: made a quick exodus, Yet history shows us that most
Speaker 1: names are cyclical. What's old, sometimes very old is new again. Indeed, Genesis,
Speaker 1: the very first book of the Bible, has seen a
Speaker 1: surge in popularity as a first name since the nineteen nineties. PS.
Speaker 1: If you ever see me out on the street, feel
Speaker 1: free to call me Maurice. I kind of miss it.
Speaker 1: I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May I ask
Speaker 1: you to please rate and review our podcast. You can
Speaker 1: also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Hear all new episodes
Speaker 1: of Mobituaries every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: check out Mobituaries. Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling book, now available in paperback and audiobook.
Speaker 1: It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast. This
Speaker 1: episode of Mobituaries was produced by Jake Harper and Aaron Schrank.
Speaker 1: Our team of producers also includes Wilcoe Martinez Caccero, and
Speaker 1: me Mo Roca. It was edited by Mara Walls and
Speaker 1: engineered by Sam Bear, with fact checking by Naomi Barr.
Speaker 1: Our production company is Neon Humm Media. Our archival producer
Speaker 1: is Jamie Benson. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart.
Speaker 1: Indispensable support from Craig Schwegler, Dustin Gervais, Alan Pang, Reggie
Speaker 1: Bazil and everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Megan Marcus, Alberto Robina and the staff of wood Acres Elementary.
Speaker 1: The inimitable Aaron Schrank is our senior producer. Executive producers
Speaker 1: for Mobituaries include Steve Razis and Morocca. The series is
Speaker 1: created by Yours truly and as always undying gratitude to
Speaker 1: Rand Morrison and John Carp for helping breathe life into
Speaker 1: Mobituaries