Speaker 1: Yes, a question. Do you guys like to answer? Question?
Speaker 1: For a while back, I visited my alma mater. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about my first alma mater, Wood Acres Elementary School
Speaker 1: in Bethesda, Maryland. I am Mr Rock. I went to
Speaker 1: this school. When I first came to Wood Acres in
Speaker 1: the third grade, I wasn't Mo. I was Maurice Rocca Maurice,
Speaker 1: a name which felt hopelessly out of style. I was
Speaker 1: the only Maurice in the whole school. But maybe the
Speaker 1: name has a better rep Now, Okay, I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: each of you question, and that's what I've come back
Speaker 1: to find out. I started off slowly, though, asking about
Speaker 1: other names which peaked long ago. When I say the
Speaker 1: name Mildred, what do you think of um London? I
Speaker 1: think of an old British person? Yeah, agreed me to. Okay,
Speaker 1: what about what about the name thought an old lady?
Speaker 1: That's fat? I agree? I agree, I agree here, I
Speaker 1: must confess I get what they're saying. In the twenty
Speaker 1: one century, names like Mildred and Bertha conture certain images.
Speaker 1: Is it the is it the fun? I think that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Just all together? Yeah? What about the name Todd A
Speaker 1: tall person that plays golf, kind of like um middle
Speaker 1: age like in his forties, calf um brown hair. I
Speaker 1: think they're kind of weird to finally I mustered the
Speaker 1: courage to ask them about my name. What do you
Speaker 1: think of the name Maurice? I think of like an
Speaker 1: old French dude, like a young person who travels a lot.
Speaker 1: Maybe doesn't have a home, on the run from the law.
Speaker 1: Why is he Maybe he just kind of like stays
Speaker 1: in hotels and just goes everywhere, like some like singer.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's like they're not really known. Yeah, they're like
Speaker 1: a local kind of person, but they still change, they
Speaker 1: move a lot. I don't really not really known a
Speaker 1: local kind of person out But it turns out there
Speaker 1: is a traveling singer named Maurice van Hoap, and Maurice
Speaker 1: is also a portly frenchman in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
Speaker 1: Help don't help me, I need to help, But the
Speaker 1: name Maurice maybe permanently on the way out. We Maurice's
Speaker 1: reached the height of our popularity in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: when 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: It makes a name pretty in popular to one generation
Speaker 1: and unique or downright ugly to the next. From CBS
Speaker 1: Sunday Morning and I Heart, I'm Maurice Rocca and this
Speaker 1: is mobituaries. This mobent the death of a name. I
Speaker 1: knew a kid in elementary school named Jeff Heebner. He
Speaker 1: was friendly, he was good at soccer, he was cool.
Speaker 1: He could introduce himself with confidence because he was a Jeff.
Speaker 1: He 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? They're was the Maurice
Speaker 1: from that Steve Miller band song The Joker Speak, And
Speaker 1: that was kind of cool. But that was canceled out
Speaker 1: by French entertainer Maurice Chevalier. I'm a little girl of
Speaker 1: five or six or seven. I can't rasister join yourself
Speaker 1: that song he sang in Gigi Ken Folly, little girl.
Speaker 1: I can't believe he hasn't been canceled for that, but
Speaker 1: that was pretty much it. I was born Maurice Albert Rocca.
Speaker 1: My mother tells me my father was the one who
Speaker 1: really wanted to name me Maurice. She would have preferred Gabriel.
Speaker 1: My father is no longer living, so I can't know
Speaker 1: for sure, but I think he wanted something on the
Speaker 1: gentler side, since Rocca can sound brusque. But I didn't
Speaker 1: like it. At one point, I thought maybe I should
Speaker 1: go by al. I mean, which are being crazy? I mean, like,
Speaker 1: when I think about it, I'm not crazy. It just
Speaker 1: would it sounded sounded odd al Roca. I talked to
Speaker 1: one of my former teachers about it. That day I
Speaker 1: visited Wood Acres. Her name is Ms Vanisi, and she
Speaker 1: was 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. Now,
Speaker 1: you said you didn't like your name, So were you
Speaker 1: teased in school? You know? I don't know that I
Speaker 1: was ever teased for my name. It just felt so different,
Speaker 1: it felt foreign. Everything changed when I graduated from Wood
Speaker 1: Acres to Pile Middle School, and oddly enough. It was
Speaker 1: thanks to the aptly named Jeff Heebner. I know him,
Speaker 1: I mean I remember him. He was very blond, very blond.
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 fizzed teacher there and 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: I got us. I'll write it in the in the book.
Speaker 1: And then she said Maurice rock I said here, and
Speaker 1: then Jeff Heepner said, he's not Maurice, He's Mo. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of how I got my started. I was
Speaker 1: going to ask you, so Jeff just came out with it,
Speaker 1: and you preferred it, obviously. Yeah, I kind of liked that.
Speaker 1: It was easy. Yeah, kind of popped. But now I
Speaker 1: love when people call me Maurice. So you have to
Speaker 1: call for this episode, I'm Maurice. I wasn't sure and
Speaker 1: what just call you? Whether I should call you Maurice.
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 Vanisi is not British,
Speaker 1: but the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, and there was a
Speaker 1: custom I doubt if it's still in existence, that the
Speaker 1: firstborn I was the firstborn is named either for the father,
Speaker 1: mother by the father's father. Of course, depended upon the sex.
Speaker 1: My grandmother's name was Camela, and I'm sure that my parents,
Speaker 1: being first generation, wanted an anglicized name. Camela's were called Millie.
Speaker 1: Millie is Mildred. Growing up, Ms Venisi didn't know any
Speaker 1: other Mildred's and she didn't really like her name. Lucky
Speaker 1: for her, she too got a nickname that eventually stuck.
Speaker 1: Somewhere along the line. I started being called Millie. Not
Speaker 1: by family, my mother and father. I was still Mildred,
Speaker 1: but my generation, my friends started calling me that. My
Speaker 1: sisters called me Millie, and so now I introduced myself
Speaker 1: that way. It happened, just sort of happened. I think
Speaker 1: the name Millie flows better. It's a little more musical
Speaker 1: than Mildred. I just think Mildred is She's not thoroughly
Speaker 1: modern Mildred and that wouldn't sound good. That just wouldn't
Speaker 1: sound good. I also never thought Mildred was an appropriate
Speaker 1: moniker for Miss Vanisi, with her luxuriant mane of dark
Speaker 1: curly hair, her Jackie Oh sunglasses, her Georga's jeans or
Speaker 1: were they Gloria Vanderbilt? Look? All I know is that
Speaker 1: no other teacher looked like she just walked off the
Speaker 1: setup and Aaron spelling nighttime soap. Honestly, Miss Vanisi was
Speaker 1: so fabulous I could barely contain myself. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you'll remember, so if you don't, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a confession. I guess. But I remember in fifth
Speaker 1: grade waiting outside the All Purpose Room for lunch. But
Speaker 1: when you walked by, I said, Hey, what shaken, Millie?
Speaker 1: You wheeled around and and I think you said something like,
Speaker 1: don't you ever call me that again? I Miss Vanisi?
Speaker 1: I probably did, tim teacher. The name Mildred reached its
Speaker 1: peak in n when more than eighteen thousand babies were
Speaker 1: named Mildred. It was the sixth most popular girl's name
Speaker 1: that year, popular enough that there are a number of
Speaker 1: notable Mildred's throughout history. Mildred J. Hill was the composer
Speaker 1: of Good Morning to All, the melody of which became
Speaker 1: the Happy Birthday song. And then that movie Mildred Pierce
Speaker 1: with Jeremy Crawford that must have been in the forties.
Speaker 1: Now I'm sure of one thing, at least, I want
Speaker 1: my daughter back. Mildred Giller's an American who broadcast Nazi
Speaker 1: propaganda from Germany during World War Two, also known as
Speaker 1: Axis Sally. She was indicted after the war and charged
Speaker 1: with trees and Okay, so that's not a good Mildred.
Speaker 1: That's not a good Mildred. But I think I've heard
Speaker 1: of access Sally. But after hitting its popularity peak in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, Mildred slowly slid down the list
Speaker 1: of the thousand most popular names. In only eighty three
Speaker 1: newborn girls were named Mildred in the US. Recent users
Speaker 1: on one baby naming website dismissed the name as sounding
Speaker 1: too much like Mildew wrote another makes me think of
Speaker 1: dreading something I was the only milled with in all
Speaker 1: my years at school. There was a period of time
Speaker 1: when a lot of girls were named Karen, and there
Speaker 1: was another period of time or a lot of girls
Speaker 1: named Janet. I don't know, but I just think that
Speaker 1: names have cycles, and maybe something triggers it. She so
Speaker 1: often was when I was growing up. Mildred Venisi is
Speaker 1: right coming up. I'm going to talk with linguistic John
Speaker 1: mcwardur about what makes names pretty, prickly or popular. But
Speaker 1: first in memorium for another name that left us, Hortense.
Speaker 1: We hardly knew you despite your French origins. Your name
Speaker 1: lacked the crisp, bright bubbliness of champagne and the addictive
Speaker 1: qualities of your country's cheeses. Disney must have had a
Speaker 1: thing for you, because Hortense mcdock is Donald Duck's mother.
Speaker 1: Donald gets an ostrich named Hortense, and his uncle Scrooge
Speaker 1: McDuck named his horse Hortense. Alas, Disney was never going
Speaker 1: to create a princess Hortense as a name. You're just
Speaker 1: not pretty. You barely cracked the top four hundred names
Speaker 1: in the US around the turn of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and you slid off the top one thousand after Now,
Speaker 1: Ordensia does have a nice ring to it. It's the
Speaker 1: Spanish version of Hortense or Dnsia also means Hydraine job.
Speaker 1: To be clear, I'm not suggesting anyone named their daughter
Speaker 1: Hydraine jaw Hortense. You are strictly a past, tense, gone,
Speaker 1: and yes forgotten. To understand better why names come and go,
Speaker 1: I talked with an expert, Columbia University Associate Professor of
Speaker 1: Comparative Literature and linguished John mcwardo, How did you become
Speaker 1: a John? I'm John Hamilton's mcwardo the fifth and John
Speaker 1: Hamilton mcquarter the first was a slave. So I was
Speaker 1: named because of that relentless succession and the idea that
Speaker 1: you don't break it. And as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I know if my father hadn't been John Hamilton quarter
Speaker 1: the fourth, I would be named Bruce. That's what my
Speaker 1: mother would have chosen. And I would have named my
Speaker 1: son John, except he's a girl, and so the name
Speaker 1: had to stop with my two girls. So she has
Speaker 1: my middle name Johnna. In Italian, you've had Johnny and
Speaker 1: Jihanna in English Johnette, none of them. That just sounds
Speaker 1: like a tiny little bathroom. We live in an efficiency.
Speaker 1: We only have room for a John. A. Mcward was
Speaker 1: born in n when John was the second most popular
Speaker 1: name in the country, and the name John isn't going away.
Speaker 1: It's still in the top thirty names for boys in
Speaker 1: the US. But if you go back in time to
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, John was far and away the
Speaker 1: number one boy's name. America was producing John's in mass quantities.
Speaker 1: It was like the model t of names. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you were born in that era, it was really
Speaker 1: common for you to have a name that was in
Speaker 1: the top ten. People just seemed to want to fit in.
Speaker 1: You go back to that time and there is a
Speaker 1: sense of what a normal American person is that would
Speaker 1: strike us today as almost bizarrely homogeneous. And that's not
Speaker 1: to say that there weren't some ripples going on around
Speaker 1: the edges, but there was a certain sense that America was,
Speaker 1: you know, turkey and apple pie, and that's what one was.
Speaker 1: One was very, very very white. Well that's so interesting
Speaker 1: because aren't that those are competing impulses, right. I want
Speaker 1: my child to have a name that makes him or
Speaker 1: her special. I also want my child to have a
Speaker 1: name that makes him or her fit in and and
Speaker 1: so and back then no special. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think of somebody naming their child in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: most people did not want something that would make the
Speaker 1: child feel special, or it would be something going on
Speaker 1: with the middle name, something that was less known, you
Speaker 1: might play with it. Even when I was in school
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties, I remember the popular names
Speaker 1: were really popular. I mean in junior high I was
Speaker 1: drowning in Jennifer's. Oh, they were everywhere. That's right. What
Speaker 1: was going on? Jennifer? And that's right, there's so many Jennifers.
Speaker 1: It's just it was a tsunami of them school 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 and the top names for females and males, Olivia
Speaker 1: and Liam, made up only around one percent of babies
Speaker 1: born that year. In other words, the most popular names
Speaker 1: are less popular. Parents today shoot for originality. There's a
Speaker 1: sense that if you're going to name a child, you
Speaker 1: spontaneously reach out and you think, how can we have
Speaker 1: a little bit of fun with this, and you don't
Speaker 1: want to torture your child. I once knew this poor
Speaker 1: little boy. His parents had named him Rotunda Thanksgiving Jones,
Speaker 1: and it was because he was born when John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy was laid out in the rotunda and they named
Speaker 1: him Thanksgiving just because, and of course he was made
Speaker 1: fun of. It sounds like a song and I've forgotten
Speaker 1: Gershwin musical because therefore sounds like that Rotunda Thanksgiving you
Speaker 1: can and this guy really had made and so it
Speaker 1: was a tragic thing. But you want your child to
Speaker 1: be somewhat different, probably not too different, but I think
Speaker 1: most people think not the average thing, unless it's named
Speaker 1: after 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. I think
Speaker 1: it's very much a spirit of individuality, and of course
Speaker 1: many people would say that the spirit of individuality is
Speaker 1: part of what being an American is. But there's an
Speaker 1: extreme that happens, and I think it happens after the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties with the sense of what was called the
Speaker 1: Me generation in the seventies, and then the greater respect
Speaker 1: for and awareness of the diversity of American nous is
Speaker 1: that you get that really becomes default starting in the eighties.
Speaker 1: That's when a certain browning of the culture happens. Think
Speaker 1: about four is when the Cosby Show becomes a big hit.
Speaker 1: Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America and Miss America.
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills Cop is almost the biggest selling movie in
Speaker 1: the country. You know, this is the clinnest and nicest
Speaker 1: police car I've ever been in my life. That's and
Speaker 1: that's just black diversity. I think we become much more
Speaker 1: comfortable with America not just being my three sons starting
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. As a part of that change,
Speaker 1: there's a shift in naming traditions, especially among Black Americans.
Speaker 1: Eight is a particularly interesting year for naming kids. That year,
Speaker 1: sixty of black girls are given a unique name, one
Speaker 1: that no one else has. Mcward points out that after
Speaker 1: the Civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties, afrocentrism gained
Speaker 1: traction in the seventies and eighties. So once you get
Speaker 1: past integration as the watch cry, and there's a certain
Speaker 1: kind of in some ways healthy separatism that's afoot, then
Speaker 1: it becomes natural to be comfortable making up a name.
Speaker 1: And so what happens, frankly is I've often thought that
Speaker 1: black girls in particular tend to have more interesting names
Speaker 1: because it's considered okay to just make it up and
Speaker 1: what you get are all of these beautiful African style
Speaker 1: names for people born in the United States. And it's
Speaker 1: all rather pretty, but it really explodes, especially with the
Speaker 1: sense of Africa and the African heritage rising in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. That's when you get little girls named Mikiba. Well,
Speaker 1: 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 a Little Shop of Horrors
Speaker 1: with Katangi Brown now Jackson, I would Seymour, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. She one of she was run at and
Speaker 1: she was fantastic. She was fantastically Yeah, and she yea Crystal.
Speaker 1: I'm suddenly forgetting glass of one's name. But anyway, she
Speaker 1: was gonna into improv comedy together. But her name, I
Speaker 1: know you've written about improv. Wow, she thinks really funny?
Speaker 1: Is she funny? She is? I'm telling you we will
Speaker 1: because we are going to make sure that hearings are now,
Speaker 1: you know, simulcast on Comedy Central. I think she's that funny.
Speaker 1: I want to know that about her. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: perfect example that her name is Katanji. If she were
Speaker 1: a generation older, her name would probably be Caroline, but
Speaker 1: now it is Katanji Brown Jackson, and that's ordinary starting
Speaker 1: especially with women of her generation. It's nice to see.
Speaker 1: I mean, Katanji is a much more interesting name than Caroline.
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 four, when
Speaker 1: Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin named their daughter Apple. At
Speaker 1: the time it was weird. Now totally normal. Kylie Jenner
Speaker 1: has a daughter named Stormy, and it's not it's not
Speaker 1: with a y, it's with an eye at the end.
Speaker 1: And Elon Musk has one that can pronounce it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of symbols. I think by the way I looked
Speaker 1: it up, it's pronounced x ash a twelve. All of
Speaker 1: that is because they are public figures, and so for them,
Speaker 1: naming is a public act. And if it's going to
Speaker 1: be a public act, then you want to do something
Speaker 1: that's gonna stand out rather than something that's gonna bore people.
Speaker 1: If somebody, like when Paltrow sets off a tradition, next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody's doing it. So it's sort of a
Speaker 1: celebrity contagion. And I think I would put it just
Speaker 1: that way. What Jay Z and Beyonce blew Ivy. That's
Speaker 1: really beautiful, but it's not African. It's not the usual tradition.
Speaker 1: That's something they came up with all by themselves as
Speaker 1: people who knew that everybody was watching them having that child.
Speaker 1: So that's where you get that tradition, and that seems
Speaker 1: to actually cut across races with celebrities too. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a show, it's a it's a kind of display.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that in a bad way. Most
Speaker 1: parents aren't going to resort to naming 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 five because of of Little
Speaker 1: Shirley Temple, And if you think about it, nobody is
Speaker 1: named Shirley before then, and then all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: Everybody's grandmother is named Shirley by the late twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and now the name is impossible, Meet little Shirley. Never
Speaker 1: Michelle entered the top twenty in nineteen sixty five, because
Speaker 1: that was the same year. It has to be because
Speaker 1: of that song, the Beatles song nobody is named Michelle.
Speaker 1: Maybe in Frances you're just kind of guessing, but not here,
Speaker 1: I mean new Michelle's. We've got a lot of Michelle's
Speaker 1: running around, women named Michelle women, but not here, not
Speaker 1: before then. What you're saying like, there's no first lady
Speaker 1: named Michelle, And if you think about it, there was
Speaker 1: a first lady to Michelle. Good point right, only only
Speaker 1: after and she's named around that time. Michelle Polk. No
Speaker 1: Michelle Quinciata, no suffragette named Michelle. You know that's that's right,
Speaker 1: it's Michelle kt S. The name Layla first appeared in
Speaker 1: the top one thousand in nineteen seventy two. No, why
Speaker 1: that Eric Clapton song. Yeah, I'm not as good at
Speaker 1: modern pop. It's fine. I love that you and I
Speaker 1: have the same definition of modern pop. Nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: Everything ends. This is a strict question. Rosanna shot up
Speaker 1: in two because of that Toto song. Right. Yes, I
Speaker 1: interviewed Patricia Arquat 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 Rosanna Arquette, and
Speaker 1: I'm so they got the pronunciation of her name wrong.
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly
Speaker 1: swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President
Speaker 1: of the United States that iowa faith After Reagan became
Speaker 1: president in the eighties, the name Reagan not not Ronald
Speaker 1: as much, but the name Reagan surged in popularity, landing
Speaker 1: in the top one hundred by two thousand 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 that was sort of evenly split between Democrats
Speaker 1: and Republicans. Then make a statement exactly, then, if they
Speaker 1: weren't a deep red Republican enclave, right, then they don't
Speaker 1: need to stand out, they don't need to stake their
Speaker 1: individuality exactly, And of course they weren't thinking of this consciously.
Speaker 1: So much goes on subconsciously. I doubt any of those
Speaker 1: families said so many people around here vote Democratic, that
Speaker 1: let's name her Reagan. It was just part of the
Speaker 1: warp and wolf of their psychology because of sensing themselves
Speaker 1: as a minority or as not more than half of
Speaker 1: their district. Well, that's fascinating. Yeah. And if you're in
Speaker 1: a purple district and you name your kid Reagan, do
Speaker 1: you plant the kid on the front lawn during election time?
Speaker 1: That's right, mommy? How long do I understand here? Spend
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: girls names started with vowels in the eighteen eighties. Then
Speaker 1: we're all consonants. By nifty Anna and Emma became Patricia
Speaker 1: and Deborah. Now vowels are back in a big way.
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder why. Certainly, in terms of how
Speaker 1: we perceive beauty, at least in English and in related languages,
Speaker 1: vowels are beautiful because they involve no obstruction of the airflow.
Speaker 1: Stop sounds such as put cut, but those are the
Speaker 1: ugliest sounds because you have to stop. Those are the
Speaker 1: ones that you're calling the jabbing sounds. Then there's everything
Speaker 1: in between, so you get a buzz at least you
Speaker 1: get a hiss, and then with yeah, whollo. Those might
Speaker 1: as well be vowels. So having more vowels now could
Speaker 1: have something to do with people looking for a certain
Speaker 1: mallifluous nous in names now why people would have valued
Speaker 1: it more during the McKinley administration than during the cool
Speaker 1: edge administer straation. I have no idea. I get the
Speaker 1: feeling that is random statistical flutter. Mick Warter says that
Speaker 1: over time, fashions change gradually, and something you once found
Speaker 1: repellent you now find irresistible. You know how today, if
Speaker 1: you have a dinner party every every second time you
Speaker 1: have Brussels sprouts, probably with bacon or something like that,
Speaker 1: imagine how unthinkable that was. Say, even as recently as
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago, you didn't give people you liked
Speaker 1: brussel sprous, did not russell sprouts or were synonymous with
Speaker 1: something that was basical torture. Torture, Yeah, I mean little cabbages.
Speaker 1: They sucked, and so you wouldn't give them to anybody,
Speaker 1: And you don't even have to dress them up that much.
Speaker 1: Now we're used to them. That's partly fashioned. I don't
Speaker 1: think that the Brussels Sprouts lobby created this. Sometime early
Speaker 1: in the George W. Bush administration. One recent trend boys
Speaker 1: names ending in a certain consonant. What is this with
Speaker 1: all these boys today? Baby boys having an end at
Speaker 1: the end of their names. So we've got all these
Speaker 1: logans Mason's, Ethan's, Jackson's. We subconsciously associate that un with
Speaker 1: a kind of a gracious masculinity. It's what you want
Speaker 1: to name your little boy, as opposed to Jack, which
Speaker 1: is a severe Jack as might be a bully. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not only old fashioned, but Jack Jack's people up. You know,
Speaker 1: Ethan has conversations. You imagine Ethan is open to change,
Speaker 1: like right, right, he reasons right, Ethan reasons as opposed
Speaker 1: to Jack, who just sits yeah. But even names that
Speaker 1: hit that right mix of vowels and and just right,
Speaker 1: ones that are pined after in song or become famous
Speaker 1: in the names of movie characters or the actors who
Speaker 1: played them, well, just like we as a society can
Speaker 1: birth the name. We can also let it die. But
Speaker 1: first another in memorium for Sid Stay and Irv sigh,
Speaker 1: Shelley and Morty. No, they weren't the original waite staff
Speaker 1: at the Carnegie Deli. In the late eighteen hundreds, Sydney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon,
Speaker 1: and Morton were all popular baby boy names with WASP
Speaker 1: that is, White Anglo Saxon Protestant parents. Then in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen twenties, many American Jewish parents began choosing these
Speaker 1: names for their baby boys to help them fit in.
Speaker 1: But America's wasps apparently felt stung and took flight from
Speaker 1: these names. Soon enough, Sydney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon, and
Speaker 1: Morton were seen as stereotypically Jewish and their assimilation value
Speaker 1: greatly diminished, as documented by sociologist Stanley Lieberson, American Jews
Speaker 1: eventually abandoned the names as well. Incidentally, another name in
Speaker 1: that category was Morris, a sort of cousin to Maurice.
Speaker 1: But at least Morris was the name of a terrifically
Speaker 1: drolled tabby who used to sell cat food on TV commercials.
Speaker 1: Nine Lives Seafood Pladder anchors away pop culture and big
Speaker 1: news events can correlate with names surging, even when those
Speaker 1: events are disasters. After Hurricane Katrina, names that began with
Speaker 1: the letter K actually jumped by nine according to an
Speaker 1: analysis by professors at Wharton Business School. The sheer repetition
Speaker 1: of the name Katrina, it seems, had a subliminal effect
Speaker 1: that K sound got stuck in people's heads. But the
Speaker 1: name Katrina itself, well, Katrina had been a pretty popular
Speaker 1: name and even broke the top one hundred for a
Speaker 1: while in the late seventies and eighties. After the storm, though,
Speaker 1: the name quickly fell out of fashion and in dropped
Speaker 1: out of the top one thousand entirely. Indeed, history can
Speaker 1: be a name killer as well. The name Isis saw
Speaker 1: a burst of popularity in the early nineteen seventies thanks
Speaker 1: to a Saturday Morning superhero of the same name and
Speaker 1: found she was heir to the sacreds of Isis, and
Speaker 1: so it has since fallen out of favor with the
Speaker 1: rise of the Islamic State, which I find reassuring. But
Speaker 1: Bertha toppled from a much greater height in mother's birth
Speaker 1: to more than five thousand. Bertha's try saying that five
Speaker 1: times fast so what happened to Bertha. Well, Bertha was
Speaker 1: the name of a German heiress to crup a G
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: Bertha's by the Germans. The Allies then learn to this nickname,
Speaker 1: that it was being called the big Bertha, and they
Speaker 1: began using it for all heavy artillery, so it suddenly
Speaker 1: became synonymous with big heavy, portly. Right, yeah, so next
Speaker 1: thing you know Bertha is overweight? Is it's associated with
Speaker 1: being large. That's linguistic John mcwardour again, But is there
Speaker 1: also something about just the sound of it birth thought?
Speaker 1: I mean, is it I'm thinking of girth birth. The
Speaker 1: error is not pretty because it's not as open as
Speaker 1: other vowel sounds. Is a little unpleasant, and it begins
Speaker 1: with a stop consonant. But er I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: nasty in that way. But then, especially just because it
Speaker 1: was associated with something that was portly. I work with
Speaker 1: a woman who was telling me about a person in
Speaker 1: her neighborhood that she doesn't like, and she said, ah,
Speaker 1: I cut her a wide berth, and it's a wide
Speaker 1: birth right. I never thought about that, And you wonder
Speaker 1: why that expression catches on. Yeah, boy, I wonder what
Speaker 1: it would take for Bertha to come back. Hi, Bertha,
Speaker 1: I don't see it. After World War One, Bertha faded
Speaker 1: into obscurity and was off the top one thousand list
Speaker 1: by the mid nineteen eighties. But a name doesn't have
Speaker 1: to become synonymous with military weaponry or get added to
Speaker 1: a terrorist watch list to fade. Sometimes names just wear out.
Speaker 1: They fall out of the rotation in the same way
Speaker 1: you'll find a shirt that you really like and it
Speaker 1: still fits, and it's in your closet and you haven't
Speaker 1: worn it for five years for no real reason. A
Speaker 1: name with ugly sounds can last almost a counterintuitively long time.
Speaker 1: For example, Richard, what an ugly name that is? And
Speaker 1: think about how much uglier the nickname is, and how
Speaker 1: there were, until about ten minutes ago, normal male people
Speaker 1: running around in Anglophone America named Dick and nobody battered
Speaker 1: to nine. It wasn't only Dick sartin Dick York. I
Speaker 1: knew a Dick back in the eighties has anything to
Speaker 1: do with the wet That's right. It's Dick Lincoln and
Speaker 1: he was taken seriously as an executive. Only with the
Speaker 1: past generation or two has that stopped. And not only
Speaker 1: is dick ridiculous? And dick was used to mean what
Speaker 1: it meant long before it went out, But dick is
Speaker 1: an ugly word by these standards. Composer Cole Porter would
Speaker 1: beg to Differry Todd. One of the other names I've
Speaker 1: been pondering is Todd. Todd showed up in the thirties
Speaker 1: and just grew and grew. We hit Peeke Todd in
Speaker 1: X four. More than fifteen thousand were born that year.
Speaker 1: I used to know tons of Todd's, but now I
Speaker 1: haven't met a baby Todd in decades. What do you
Speaker 1: think the appeal was in the first place. I think
Speaker 1: it's partly because ah is the most basic sound and humanity.
Speaker 1: It's the first sound that babies make. And then with Todd,
Speaker 1: what you have is a kind of a nice assonance,
Speaker 1: as it were, because too and du are the same
Speaker 1: sound but different. DU is too with a little bit
Speaker 1: of belly in it, so you don't have to make
Speaker 1: a change. There was something pleasant about Todd. Todd was
Speaker 1: like a little white potato. That's one of those little
Speaker 1: balls and it's boiled just right. That's Todd like a
Speaker 1: tater todd Um. Yes, I guess it would have to
Speaker 1: be deepride as well as Todd and a lovely woman
Speaker 1: named Millie with a hairnet giving it to you personally.
Speaker 1: I like Todd, and I brought in one of my
Speaker 1: favorite Todds to defend his name, Todd Bridges. Todd Bridges
Speaker 1: was born in Nive, just one year after Peque Todd,
Speaker 1: and when he was a teenager, he got a starring
Speaker 1: role in the hit TV show Different Strokes as Willis Jackson,
Speaker 1: opposite Gary Coleman as Arnold. Yeah, Phyllis isn't bad. Why
Speaker 1: don't you ask about Arnold? Are you chiding starter? She
Speaker 1: doesn't even know me. My mom said that she dreamed
Speaker 1: my name because there's not very many black Todds. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know that or not, but there isn't.
Speaker 1: I think I know Todd Gurley, the football player, and
Speaker 1: that's about it. I don't think I know anybody else
Speaker 1: named Todd. That's right. Even though Todd was near its
Speaker 1: peak when Bridges was born, it was indeed as white
Speaker 1: as those potatoes. And I'll tell you what what what happened,
Speaker 1: which is really funny. One time I got to check
Speaker 1: somewhere that I was living at and it said Todd
Speaker 1: Bridgies and I'm looking, I don't know of his company,
Speaker 1: and it's for a couple of thousand nolls. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's say this is not me. So
Speaker 1: what happened was the postman thought it was me and
Speaker 1: it was an address down the street. And I went
Speaker 1: down the street and bringing the bell and I go, hey, man,
Speaker 1: is there a Todd Bridges. He goes, yeah, it's me,
Speaker 1: and he goes, oh, hey Todd. I go, hey Todd,
Speaker 1: and I gave him it was his This there's another
Speaker 1: Todd Bridge right down the street. It was right down
Speaker 1: the street when I used to live in Yeah, another
Speaker 1: guy was a white guy. That's kind of crazy. People
Speaker 1: get their names made fun of for all sorts of reasons.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you can do with Todd? Will you
Speaker 1: ever teased? Well? A lot of people thought that Todd
Speaker 1: was short for Theodore, but I'm like, no, that's Ted.
Speaker 1: That's shut for Theodore. Todd is just Todd. Then in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, Todd fell off the baby naming Cliff
Speaker 1: Oh man Todd fell off the map. Dang. In two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, there were only two hundred and twelve baby
Speaker 1: boys named Todd. And did you ever consider naming any
Speaker 1: of your children Todd? No? No, I named my son Spencer,
Speaker 1: but I spell it differently. Okay, we I mean we
Speaker 1: spell his sp n C I R. Now why did
Speaker 1: you do that? We just thought it making this original
Speaker 1: because Spencer is out there and it's you know, sp
Speaker 1: and c R, and we just wanted to make it original.
Speaker 1: And it's original Spencer, It totally is. George Carlin had
Speaker 1: a whole bit a routine in two thousand one where
Speaker 1: he actually made fun of the name Todd. He made
Speaker 1: fun of a number of I didn't see that. What
Speaker 1: he what do he say? And I'm getting really sick
Speaker 1: of guy's name Todd. You know, yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: goofy it's a goofy fucking name. Okay, Hi, what's your name? Todd?
Speaker 1: Is he still around? That? He is not still around?
Speaker 1: But great, stand he is lucky because I have to
Speaker 1: go choke him out mess with my name. It's not
Speaker 1: a goofy name. It's a cool name. It's Todd. We
Speaker 1: end this episode with a nod to Western civilization's earliest
Speaker 1: baby naming book, the Bible. From Adam and Eve to
Speaker 1: Ahab and Jezebel, there are well over a thousand different
Speaker 1: 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, matriarchs and magi for
Speaker 1: over a 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 towards Jesus was more than off putting. Your
Speaker 1: name has been permanently shunned. Earlier biblical outcasts haven't fared
Speaker 1: much better. Sure, there were three hundred Canes born in
Speaker 1: but nearly times as many ables were born that year.
Speaker 1: It doesn't pay to kill your brother. Jesus, of course,
Speaker 1: is a popular name, especially as Jesus, but Judas. I
Speaker 1: don't see you ever cracking the top one thousand. Come here,
Speaker 1: little Judas. Yeah, they're more than time for friendless, dateless
Speaker 1: little boy. Esther and Ruth your solid names, if not
Speaker 1: always easy to say. Hey, Esther, meet me at Ruth's
Speaker 1: Chris Steak House. You're the only two women with books
Speaker 1: of the Bible named after you. But after the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: your name's made a quick exodus. Yet history shows us
Speaker 1: that most names are cyclical. What's old, sometimes very old
Speaker 1: is new again. Indeed, Genesis, the very first book of
Speaker 1: the Bible, has seen a surge in popularity as a
Speaker 1: first name since the nineteen nineties. P s. If you
Speaker 1: ever see me out on the street, feel free to
Speaker 1: call me Maurice. I kind of miss it. I certainly
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask you to
Speaker 1: please rate and review our podcast. You can also follow
Speaker 1: Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Morocca. Here all new episodes of Mobituaries
Speaker 1: every Wednesday. Wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries.
Speaker 1: Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling
Speaker 1: book now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes plenty
Speaker 1: of stories not in the podcast. This episode of Mobituaries
Speaker 1: was produced by Jake Harper and Aaron Shrank. Our team
Speaker 1: of producers also includes Wilcome Martinez Cacceto and me Morocca.
Speaker 1: It was edited by Moral Walls and engineered by Sam Bear,
Speaker 1: with fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is
Speaker 1: Neon Hum Media. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Our
Speaker 1: theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from
Speaker 1: Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Pang, Reggie Basil and everyone
Speaker 1: at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Megan Marcus, Alberto
Speaker 1: Robina and the staff of wood Acres Elementary the inimitable.
Speaker 1: Aaron Shrink is our senior producer. Executive producers for Mobituaries
Speaker 1: include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is created by
Speaker 1: Yours Truly and as always undying gratitude to Rand Morrison
Speaker 1: and John Carp for helping breathe life into Mobituaries. One