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Rick's May Tirade
The Museum of Discarded Names
Out of all the two million baby boys born in the United States last
year -- amid all those freshly minted Codys and Kyles and Zacharys
-- do you suppose a single howling infant claimed the name of Mortimer? I ask
you this in all seriousness, because I fear that some of our most venerable
and wholesome monikers are headed for extinction. Just one Mortimer
popping fully-formed into any maternity ward would reassure me that
all is not lost.
For that matter, where are all the farm-fresh Wilburs and Wilmers,
the cardigan-clad Edwins and Edgars? Have aristocratic old English
names like Clifford and Clarence reached the end of the road, their
refined syllables too fusty for our hardened sensibilities?
What of Orville, Grover, Vernon, Luther, Clyde, Chester and other
once-favored relics of our grandfathers' time? Don't we need them to
name a future generation of crusty old men?
Granted, a few hoary appellations like Eustace, Egbert, Osgood
and Millard are probably better off euthanized and forgotten; only a
borderline-sadistic parent would bestow a burden like Cuthbert on an
unsuspecting infant, no matter how saintly his Anglo-Saxon namesake
might have been. Other bygone boys' names like Alphonse, Angus and
Algernon are sprightly and eccentric enough to be missed, at least
by those of us who enjoy sprightly and eccentric names.
Our colossal indifference to the glories of Greece and Rome has
doomed old standards like Homer, Horace, Augustus and Virgil to the
sunless gloom of Hades, probably for all time. Among the missing,
too, are amiable antiques like Rufus and Rudolph, Elmer and Elwood,
Clem and Kermit. The sidewalks of New York used to teem with little
Biffs and Busters, Moes and Leos -- all of them gone with the old
Dodgers and Giants. Victor has been vanquished; Phineas has fled;
Casper is a mere ghost. Whatever became of Hubert, as Tom Lehrer
once sang? Gone to graveyards, every one.
Not all the news is gloomy. Even in this age of disbelief, sturdy
biblical names like Joshua, Jared, Noah, Nathaniel, Ethan, Caleb and
Elijah are back in favor after having virtually disappeared from our
republic following the Civil War; they're like wide, rough-hewn floorboards, and
apparently we prefer them to the lacquered parquet of Victorian
favorites like Claude and Ambrose. But the list of Top 100 Names
recently released by the Social Security Administration also
includes more than its share of trendy boutique labels like Tyler, Brandon, Hunter, Kyle, Cody, Cole, Bryce and Dakota.
The surging popularity of Tyler mystifies me; if parents wanted to
name their boy after a mediocre president, why is nobody choosing
Van Buren, Fillmore, Buchanan, Taft or Coolidge? And why so many
Dakotas when we don't see any Idahos, Montanas or Wyomings fumbling
with Lego blocks at the local day-care center? Before long, if the
current trends continue, we'll have more Dakotas than actual
RESIDENTS of the Dakotas.
Before I move on to the girls, I should mention that despite the
mass-extinction of all the hapless Clydes and Mortimers, parents
have been conscientiously preserving time-honored names like
Michael, Matthew, Nicholas, Andrew and William. But I have to wonder
if favorite old nicknames like Mickey, Matty, Nick, Andy and Billy
have already climbed aboard the Extinction Express. Over at the mall
I hear too many mothers summoning their sons by their full given
names; I suppose Andrew sounds more like a future CEO than
Andy.
Girls' names have shifted with the fashions since the godfearing
days when half the Protestant female population was christened Anne,
Elizabeth or Sarah. I'm not surprised by the incursion of Ashleys,
Samanthas, Nicoles and Courtneys into the Top 100. I AM astonished
that unpretentious Hannah made it to the top spot, and that number three went to
the upstart Madison. (Madison? At least the girls are being named
after blue-chip presidents.) Probably a good three-quarters of the
currently favored girls’ names would have been undreamed-of in my
fourth-grade class at Woodrow Wilson School, back in 1959. I never
knew a single Brianna or Kayla, for example, nor did I ever cross
paths with a Taylor, Alyssa, Destiny, Morgan, Mackenzie, Hailey,
Sierra or Cheyenne -- and here they are, more popular by far than
Mary and Margaret.
The ubiquitous Barbaras, Lindas, Glorias and Nancys of my youth were nowhere to be found on the list, having
faded out of the Top 100 in a little over a generation.
Well-mannered Alice and mirthful Sally have been snubbed off the
map; on the other hand, I'm
surprised and heartened by the rise of soulful Emily to number
two. I've always liked Rachel and Rebecca, and they've been on the
rebound as well. Even bespectacled Abigail, hair pulled back in a
tight and homely bun, has unaccountably soared to number 15 on the
list, four places ahead of that perennially popular ponytailed
cheerleader, Jennifer.
But the floral-patterned girls' names of a hundred years ago have
gone the way of the Clydes and Clarences: you can scan the Top 100 in vain for any sign of Rose or Violet, Iris or Daisy, Lily or
Petunia. The only flower among them is the exotic imported Jasmine,
a name virtually unknown among Christian women when flower-names
were the rage.
Vanished, too, are the plainspoken, heart-of-gold Mabels,
Marjories, Wilmas, Josephines, Irmas and Ethels of a dying
generation. They could never have survived in the age of
caper-encrusted tuna sashimi with drizzled leek sauce, and we’ll
miss them.
White-gloved, blue-haired Mildred, Millicent, Edna, Harriet, Florence
and Henrietta, those impeccably attired members of the ladies’
auxiliary from across town, have probably attended their last
afternoon tea. Their even more spinsterly cousins, Eunice, Prudence,
Agnes, Hortense and Elvira -- the female equivalents of Eustace and
Cuthbert -- have blessedly gone to pasture; we may have acquired a
taste for the domestic architecture of the Victorians, but we still tend to
recoil at the dowdiness of their furnishings, mental and otherwise.
Unfortunately we've lost some beauties as well: where are the
darkly doleful Dolores, the noble Eleanor, faithful Penelope,
sweet-eyed Emmeline, gentle Gwendolyn of the long and flowing
tresses? Gone, alas, with the Lucretias and Letitias, the Winifreds
and Wilhelminas. Too often, on the altar of change, the good dies
along with the ludicrous.
I'd like to start a museum of discarded names. I believe that our
given names reflect who we are and who we used to be, and that the
comparisons and contrasts would be instructive for anyone with
an inquiring mind. We’d see that thunderous ancient empires like
Assyria and Egypt have left scarcely a ripple in our name pool, while
the relatively powerless Hebrews and Celts, like minuscule mammals
scurrying amid the carcasses of the last dinosaurs, have propagated
their names unto the generations. Try to find a single Ramses or
Tiglath-Pileser today among all the thriving Davids, Daniels, Sarahs,
Seans and Megans.
At the museum we’d see that the knightly heritage of medieval
Christendom flourished for a time and finally sank toward the
western horizon, taking with it the gallant names of Tristram and
Percival, Roland and Godfrey. A few kingly appellations like William
and Richard still reign, but Arthur and Alfred have lately been
unseated from their thrones.
We’d also observe the demise of names that conveyed portly
respectability during the American Gilded Age: Schuyler, Theobald, Thurston,
Thornton -- starchy men, all of them, full of pomp and ceremony
and upper-bourgeois rectitude. Today we want our sons to be lean,
potent and maneuverable, all the better to scramble for advantageous
niches in their high-energy, upwardly mobile lifestyles and
cutthroat careers. We prefer strutting roosters to overstuffed
capons.
Among our daughters we desire no plump Berthas, downscale La
Vernes, prim Claras or dainty Priscillas; we prefer that their names sound
vaguely like designer labels: Lauren, Ashley, Brooke, Taylor, Paige,
Courtney. Or we dispense with money and opt for spunk and spirit:
Jenna, Kylie, Kelsey, Jada. (Jada? That’s no mistake -- there she
is at number 79, just ahead of Mia, Bailey and Christina.)
We’d observe that we no longer name our sons after illustrious
bygone men of intellect and imagination: Milton, Newton, Franklin,
Irving and Byron have lately been gathering the dust of the ages.
Today, if we pay tribute to anyone, we tend to bow at the still-warm
feet of Dylan.
It’s odd, too, that a handful of great historic names have
perpetuated themselves through time while others never made the cut.
So we’ve had innumerable Alexanders and Antonys -- but outside of
Greece you can look in vain for a living Socrates, Plato or
Archimedes. Why don’t we ever dub our kids Spartacus or Cleopatra?
I understand why we rarely name our offspring after certified biblical villains like
Cain, Goliath or Salome, but whatever happened to a good man like
Job in the annals of popular nomenclature? After all, the most
inspiring life is
a righteous triumph over suffering. In a way, I can’t think of a more
suitable name to bestow upon a newborn Earthling; even mispronounced
with a short O, Job suggests a lifetime of drudgery and hardship to
be overcome.
The aesthetics of a name can influence its popularity or lack
thereof. Aside from his boils and other afflictions, Job simply
lacks the visual and aural music of a Justin or Cameron. Our taste
in names mutates like our taste in music and clothing; today we
reject names that remind us of mawkish ballads or high celluloid
collars or oppressively ornate wallpaper. We live in a
stripped-down, sexualized age that snickers cruelly at hopeless
celibates like Myron and Gertrude. Nicole and Melissa have soared to
the upper tier on the wings of their innate beauty and sex appeal,
though that theory is powerless to explain why Abigail has vaulted
to number 15.
The music of the past rarely penetrates our fretful souls.
Hundreds upon hundreds of perfectly euphonious names now languish
in dust and neglect, victims of surly fashion and historical
shortsightedness: Ishmael, Octavian, Leander and Xenophon. Sappho, Cassandra,
Guinevere, Callisto and Dulcinea.
All of them deserve a place of honor in my museum. Clarence and
Quentin, Lucille and Verna and Millicent: fear not, you have a home
with me. Hubert and Beulah, you come, too; for that matter, let me
welcome Xerxes, Nefertiti, Rapunzel, Hippolyta, Thisbe,
Nebuchadnezzar, Ethelbald and Shemp. Your names will stay safely
enshrined in perpetuity. It could be that, within two or three
generations, you'll be rediscovered and vaulted to prominence by
socially correct parents who want to give their children the
palpable long-term advantage of a fashionable name.
After all, if Abigail can make it back to the current Top 15, so
can Esther. So can Amos. So can Nahum and Habakkuk. And take heart:
I can assure you that in another fifty years or so, trendy names like
Cody and Kaylee will seem as quaintly amusing as Egbert and Prunella
do now.
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Monthly tirades ©1996-2001 by Rick Bayan. |
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
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