October 19, 2022 • 42 mins
What’s in a name…that makes it popular to one generation, and downright ugly to the next? From "Bertha" and "Layla" to "Reagan" and "Katrina," history shows us that politics, pop songs and news events all play roles in sending baby names skyrocketing or plunging in the rankings. Mo (short for "Maurice"!) returns to his elementary school to speak with his fifth grade teacher about his own name then talks to Columbia University linguist John McWhorter and actor Todd Bridges about other names that have seen better days.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yes, a question. Do you guys like to answer? Question?
For a while back, I visited my alma mater. I'm
talking about my first alma mater, Wood Acres Elementary School
in Bethesda, Maryland. I am Mr Rock. I went to
this school. When I first came to Wood Acres in
(00:21):
the third grade, I wasn't Mo. I was Maurice Rocca Maurice,
a name which felt hopelessly out of style. I was
the only Maurice in the whole school. But maybe the
name has a better rep Now, Okay, I'm gonna ask
each of you question, and that's what I've come back
to find out. I started off slowly, though, asking about
(00:42):
other names which peaked long ago. When I say the
name Mildred, what do you think of um London? I
think of an old British person? Yeah, agreed me to. Okay,
what about what about the name thought an old lady?
(01:02):
That's fat? I agree? I agree, I agree here, I
must confess I get what they're saying. In the twenty
one century, names like Mildred and Bertha conture certain images.
Is it the is it the fun? I think that? Yeah?
(01:26):
Just all together? Yeah? What about the name Todd A
tall person that plays golf, kind of like um middle
age like in his forties, calf um brown hair. I
think they're kind of weird to finally I mustered the
courage to ask them about my name. What do you
(01:50):
think of the name Maurice? I think of like an
old French dude, like a young person who travels a lot.
Maybe doesn't have a home, on the run from the law.
Why is he Maybe he just kind of like stays
in hotels and just goes everywhere, like some like singer.
Maybe that's like they're not really known. Yeah, they're like
(02:11):
a local kind of person, but they still change, they
move a lot. I don't really not really known a
local kind of person out But it turns out there
is a traveling singer named Maurice van Hoap, and Maurice
is also a portly frenchman in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
(02:33):
Help don't help me, I need to help, But the
name Maurice maybe permanently on the way out. We Maurice's
reached the height of our popularity in the nineteen twenties,
when there were an average of about sixteen hundred born annually.
Now just a few hundred come into the world each year.
(02:56):
What makes a name rise and fall in the ranks?
It makes a name pretty in popular to one generation
and unique or downright ugly to the next. From CBS
Sunday Morning and I Heart, I'm Maurice Rocca and this
is mobituaries. This mobent the death of a name. I
(03:29):
knew a kid in elementary school named Jeff Heebner. He
was friendly, he was good at soccer, he was cool.
He could introduce himself with confidence because he was a Jeff.
He perfectly embodied his own name. I, on the other hand,
always felt awkward telling people my name. Maybe it was
because growing up I knew of only three other Maurice's.
(03:53):
There was children's book author Maurice Sendak, who wrote the
classic Where the Wild Things Are? They're was the Maurice
from that Steve Miller band song The Joker Speak, And
that was kind of cool. But that was canceled out
(04:15):
by French entertainer Maurice Chevalier. I'm a little girl of
five or six or seven. I can't rasister join yourself
that song he sang in Gigi Ken Folly, little girl.
I can't believe he hasn't been canceled for that, but
that was pretty much it. I was born Maurice Albert Rocca.
(04:39):
My mother tells me my father was the one who
really wanted to name me Maurice. She would have preferred Gabriel.
My father is no longer living, so I can't know
for sure, but I think he wanted something on the
gentler side, since Rocca can sound brusque. But I didn't
like it. At one point, I thought maybe I should
go by al. I mean, which are being crazy? I mean, like,
(05:02):
when I think about it, I'm not crazy. It just
would it sounded sounded odd al Roca. I talked to
one of my former teachers about it. That day I
visited Wood Acres. Her name is Ms Vanisi, and she
was one of my all time favorites. She was patient, kind,
and impossibly glamorous. More about that in a bit. Turns
(05:24):
out she could have made a pretty decent therapist too. Now,
you said you didn't like your name, So were you
teased in school? You know? I don't know that I
was ever teased for my name. It just felt so different,
it felt foreign. Everything changed when I graduated from Wood
Acres to Pile Middle School, and oddly enough. It was
(05:46):
thanks to the aptly named Jeff Heebner. I know him,
I mean I remember him. He was very blond, very blond.
And when I went to Pile, it's kind of scary
all the elementary schools feeding into the big junior high
and the fizzed teacher there and of the first days
did roll call and said, you know, when I get
to your name, if you have a name you prefer,
I got us. I'll write it in the in the book.
(06:08):
And then she said Maurice rock I said here, and
then Jeff Heepner said, he's not Maurice, He's Mo. And
that's kind of how I got my started. I was
going to ask you, so Jeff just came out with it,
and you preferred it, obviously. Yeah, I kind of liked that.
It was easy. Yeah, kind of popped. But now I
love when people call me Maurice. So you have to
call for this episode, I'm Maurice. I wasn't sure and
(06:31):
what just call you? Whether I should call you Maurice.
And if there's anyone who would understand this kind of
confusion over one's own name, it's miss Vanisi, Mildred Vanisi.
Despite what those kids said, earlier. Mildred Vanisi is not British,
but the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, and there was a
(06:51):
custom I doubt if it's still in existence, that the
firstborn I was the firstborn is named either for the father,
mother by the father's father. Of course, depended upon the sex.
My grandmother's name was Camela, and I'm sure that my parents,
being first generation, wanted an anglicized name. Camela's were called Millie.
(07:17):
Millie is Mildred. Growing up, Ms Venisi didn't know any
other Mildred's and she didn't really like her name. Lucky
for her, she too got a nickname that eventually stuck.
Somewhere along the line. I started being called Millie. Not
by family, my mother and father. I was still Mildred,
but my generation, my friends started calling me that. My
(07:40):
sisters called me Millie, and so now I introduced myself
that way. It happened, just sort of happened. I think
the name Millie flows better. It's a little more musical
than Mildred. I just think Mildred is She's not thoroughly
modern Mildred and that wouldn't sound good. That just wouldn't
(08:02):
sound good. I also never thought Mildred was an appropriate
moniker for Miss Vanisi, with her luxuriant mane of dark
curly hair, her Jackie Oh sunglasses, her Georga's jeans or
were they Gloria Vanderbilt? Look? All I know is that
(08:23):
no other teacher looked like she just walked off the
setup and Aaron spelling nighttime soap. Honestly, Miss Vanisi was
so fabulous I could barely contain myself. I don't know
if you'll remember, so if you don't, it's kind of
like a confession. I guess. But I remember in fifth
grade waiting outside the All Purpose Room for lunch. But
(08:45):
when you walked by, I said, Hey, what shaken, Millie?
You wheeled around and and I think you said something like,
don't you ever call me that again? I Miss Vanisi?
I probably did, tim teacher. The name Mildred reached its
peak in n when more than eighteen thousand babies were
(09:07):
named Mildred. It was the sixth most popular girl's name
that year, popular enough that there are a number of
notable Mildred's throughout history. Mildred J. Hill was the composer
of Good Morning to All, the melody of which became
the Happy Birthday song. And then that movie Mildred Pierce
(09:28):
with Jeremy Crawford that must have been in the forties.
Now I'm sure of one thing, at least, I want
my daughter back. Mildred Giller's an American who broadcast Nazi
propaganda from Germany during World War Two, also known as
Axis Sally. She was indicted after the war and charged
with trees and Okay, so that's not a good Mildred.
That's not a good Mildred. But I think I've heard
(09:50):
of access Sally. But after hitting its popularity peak in
the early twentieth century, Mildred slowly slid down the list
of the thousand most popular names. In only eighty three
newborn girls were named Mildred in the US. Recent users
on one baby naming website dismissed the name as sounding
(10:12):
too much like Mildew wrote another makes me think of
dreading something I was the only milled with in all
my years at school. There was a period of time
when a lot of girls were named Karen, and there
was another period of time or a lot of girls
named Janet. I don't know, but I just think that
names have cycles, and maybe something triggers it. She so
(10:40):
often was when I was growing up. Mildred Venisi is
right coming up. I'm going to talk with linguistic John
mcwardur about what makes names pretty, prickly or popular. But
first in memorium for another name that left us, Hortense.
(11:02):
We hardly knew you despite your French origins. Your name
lacked the crisp, bright bubbliness of champagne and the addictive
qualities of your country's cheeses. Disney must have had a
thing for you, because Hortense mcdock is Donald Duck's mother.
Donald gets an ostrich named Hortense, and his uncle Scrooge
(11:23):
McDuck named his horse Hortense. Alas, Disney was never going
to create a princess Hortense as a name. You're just
not pretty. You barely cracked the top four hundred names
in the US around the turn of the twentieth century,
and you slid off the top one thousand after Now,
(11:44):
Ordensia does have a nice ring to it. It's the
Spanish version of Hortense or Dnsia also means Hydraine job.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting anyone named their daughter
Hydraine jaw Hortense. You are strictly a past, tense, gone,
and yes forgotten. To understand better why names come and go,
(12:11):
I talked with an expert, Columbia University Associate Professor of
Comparative Literature and linguished John mcwardo, How did you become
a John? I'm John Hamilton's mcwardo the fifth and John
Hamilton mcquarter the first was a slave. So I was
named because of that relentless succession and the idea that
(12:31):
you don't break it. And as a matter of fact,
I know if my father hadn't been John Hamilton quarter
the fourth, I would be named Bruce. That's what my
mother would have chosen. And I would have named my
son John, except he's a girl, and so the name
had to stop with my two girls. So she has
my middle name Johnna. In Italian, you've had Johnny and
Jihanna in English Johnette, none of them. That just sounds
(12:55):
like a tiny little bathroom. We live in an efficiency.
We only have room for a John. A. Mcward was
born in n when John was the second most popular
name in the country, and the name John isn't going away.
It's still in the top thirty names for boys in
the US. But if you go back in time to
(13:17):
the early twentieth century, John was far and away the
number one boy's name. America was producing John's in mass quantities.
It was like the model t of names. In fact,
if you were born in that era, it was really
common for you to have a name that was in
the top ten. People just seemed to want to fit in.
(13:39):
You go back to that time and there is a
sense of what a normal American person is that would
strike us today as almost bizarrely homogeneous. And that's not
to say that there weren't some ripples going on around
the edges, but there was a certain sense that America was,
you know, turkey and apple pie, and that's what one was.
(13:59):
One was very, very very white. Well that's so interesting
because aren't that those are competing impulses, right. I want
my child to have a name that makes him or
her special. I also want my child to have a
name that makes him or her fit in and and
so and back then no special. I mean, if you
think of somebody naming their child in eighteen sixty five,
(14:21):
most people did not want something that would make the
child feel special, or it would be something going on
with the middle name, something that was less known, you
might play with it. Even when I was in school
in the seventies and eighties, I remember the popular names
were really popular. I mean in junior high I was
drowning in Jennifer's. Oh, they were everywhere. That's right. What
(14:44):
was going on? Jennifer? And that's right, there's so many Jennifers.
It's just it was a tsunami of them school Jennifers.
But the days of a few names dominating are over.
At its peak, a full five percent of all newborn
male babies were named John one in twenty Fast forward
(15:09):
to and the top names for females and males, Olivia
and Liam, made up only around one percent of babies
born that year. In other words, the most popular names
are less popular. Parents today shoot for originality. There's a
sense that if you're going to name a child, you
(15:29):
spontaneously reach out and you think, how can we have
a little bit of fun with this, and you don't
want to torture your child. I once knew this poor
little boy. His parents had named him Rotunda Thanksgiving Jones,
and it was because he was born when John F.
Kennedy was laid out in the rotunda and they named
him Thanksgiving just because, and of course he was made
(15:51):
fun of. It sounds like a song and I've forgotten
Gershwin musical because therefore sounds like that Rotunda Thanksgiving you
can and this guy really had made and so it
was a tragic thing. But you want your child to
be somewhat different, probably not too different, but I think
most people think not the average thing, unless it's named
(16:13):
after a grandparent or a father or something like that.
John mcwarter says that trend towards uniqueness and away from
uniformity tracks with broader changes in American society. I think
it's very much a spirit of individuality, and of course
many people would say that the spirit of individuality is
part of what being an American is. But there's an
(16:34):
extreme that happens, and I think it happens after the
nineteen sixties with the sense of what was called the
Me generation in the seventies, and then the greater respect
for and awareness of the diversity of American nous is
that you get that really becomes default starting in the eighties.
That's when a certain browning of the culture happens. Think
(16:56):
about four is when the Cosby Show becomes a big hit.
Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America and Miss America.
Beverly Hills Cop is almost the biggest selling movie in
the country. You know, this is the clinnest and nicest
(17:16):
police car I've ever been in my life. That's and
that's just black diversity. I think we become much more
comfortable with America not just being my three sons starting
in the nineteen eighties. As a part of that change,
there's a shift in naming traditions, especially among Black Americans.
Eight is a particularly interesting year for naming kids. That year,
(17:38):
sixty of black girls are given a unique name, one
that no one else has. Mcward points out that after
the Civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties, afrocentrism gained
traction in the seventies and eighties. So once you get
past integration as the watch cry, and there's a certain
kind of in some ways healthy separatism that's afoot, then
(18:02):
it becomes natural to be comfortable making up a name.
And so what happens, frankly is I've often thought that
black girls in particular tend to have more interesting names
because it's considered okay to just make it up and
what you get are all of these beautiful African style
names for people born in the United States. And it's
all rather pretty, but it really explodes, especially with the
(18:26):
sense of Africa and the African heritage rising in the
nineteen seventies. That's when you get little girls named Mikiba. Well,
I'm going to impress you right now and tell you,
and I'm sorry if it sounds boastful. In college, I
was in a production of a Little Shop of Horrors
with Katangi Brown now Jackson, I would Seymour, thank you
(18:47):
very much. She one of she was run at and
she was fantastic. She was fantastically Yeah, and she yea Crystal.
I'm suddenly forgetting glass of one's name. But anyway, she
was gonna into improv comedy together. But her name, I
know you've written about improv. Wow, she thinks really funny?
Is she funny? She is? I'm telling you we will
(19:11):
because we are going to make sure that hearings are now,
you know, simulcast on Comedy Central. I think she's that funny.
I want to know that about her. Yeah, that's a
perfect example that her name is Katanji. If she were
a generation older, her name would probably be Caroline, but
now it is Katanji Brown Jackson, and that's ordinary starting
especially with women of her generation. It's nice to see.
(19:34):
I mean, Katanji is a much more interesting name than Caroline.
But one group of people, we expect original names from celebrities.
It's practically a rite of passage. The first time I
can remember this happening is in two thousand four, when
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin named their daughter Apple. At
the time it was weird. Now totally normal. Kylie Jenner
(19:57):
has a daughter named Stormy, and it's not it's not
with a y, it's with an eye at the end.
And Elon Musk has one that can pronounce it's a
bunch of symbols. I think by the way I looked
it up, it's pronounced x ash a twelve. All of
that is because they are public figures, and so for them,
naming is a public act. And if it's going to
be a public act, then you want to do something
(20:18):
that's gonna stand out rather than something that's gonna bore people.
If somebody, like when Paltrow sets off a tradition, next thing,
you know, everybody's doing it. So it's sort of a
celebrity contagion. And I think I would put it just
that way. What Jay Z and Beyonce blew Ivy. That's
really beautiful, but it's not African. It's not the usual tradition.
That's something they came up with all by themselves as
(20:40):
people who knew that everybody was watching them having that child.
So that's where you get that tradition, and that seems
to actually cut across races with celebrities too. Yeah, it's
it's a show, it's a it's a kind of display.
And I don't mean that in a bad way. Most
parents aren't going to resort to naming their kids after
(21:01):
a combination of math, Aircraft, and Elvin symbols representing artificial intelligence,
which is what Musk's baby's name represents. But throughout history,
parents have often taken naming cues from pop culture. Well,
I'm going to quiz you on it right now. Actually
it's really fun, so I'll start off really easy. Shirley
(21:21):
saw a dramatic spike between five because of of Little
Shirley Temple, And if you think about it, nobody is
named Shirley before then, and then all of a sudden.
Everybody's grandmother is named Shirley by the late twentieth century,
and now the name is impossible, Meet little Shirley. Never
(21:42):
Michelle entered the top twenty in nineteen sixty five, because
that was the same year. It has to be because
of that song, the Beatles song nobody is named Michelle.
Maybe in Frances you're just kind of guessing, but not here,
(22:02):
I mean new Michelle's. We've got a lot of Michelle's
running around, women named Michelle women, but not here, not
before then. What you're saying like, there's no first lady
named Michelle, And if you think about it, there was
a first lady to Michelle. Good point right, only only
after and she's named around that time. Michelle Polk. No
(22:26):
Michelle Quinciata, no suffragette named Michelle. You know that's that's right,
it's Michelle kt S. The name Layla first appeared in
the top one thousand in nineteen seventy two. No, why
that Eric Clapton song. Yeah, I'm not as good at
(22:50):
modern pop. It's fine. I love that you and I
have the same definition of modern pop. Nineteen seventy two.
Everything ends. This is a strict question. Rosanna shot up
in two because of that Toto song. Right. Yes, I
(23:11):
interviewed Patricia Arquat that song was named after her sister,
also an actress. But Patricia pointed out to me that
her sister's name is really pronounced Rosanna Rosanna Arquette, and
I'm so they got the pronunciation of her name wrong.
Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly
(23:33):
swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President
of the United States that iowa faith After Reagan became
president in the eighties, the name Reagan not not Ronald
as much, but the name Reagan surged in popularity, landing
in the top one hundred by two thousand twelve. Now
here's what I think is fascinating is that Republican parents
(23:54):
were more likely to pick the name Reagan for their
kid if they lived in a district that was purple,
that was that was sort of evenly split between Democrats
and Republicans. Then make a statement exactly, then, if they
weren't a deep red Republican enclave, right, then they don't
need to stand out, they don't need to stake their
individuality exactly, And of course they weren't thinking of this consciously.
(24:15):
So much goes on subconsciously. I doubt any of those
families said so many people around here vote Democratic, that
let's name her Reagan. It was just part of the
warp and wolf of their psychology because of sensing themselves
as a minority or as not more than half of
their district. Well, that's fascinating. Yeah. And if you're in
a purple district and you name your kid Reagan, do
(24:35):
you plant the kid on the front lawn during election time?
That's right, mommy? How long do I understand here? Spend
some time with the Social Security Administration's baby named database,
and you'll see a sort of pendulum swing over the
last century, especially among girls. Half of the most popular
(25:00):
girls names started with vowels in the eighteen eighties. Then
we're all consonants. By nifty Anna and Emma became Patricia
and Deborah. Now vowels are back in a big way.
It makes you wonder why. Certainly, in terms of how
we perceive beauty, at least in English and in related languages,
(25:23):
vowels are beautiful because they involve no obstruction of the airflow.
Stop sounds such as put cut, but those are the
ugliest sounds because you have to stop. Those are the
ones that you're calling the jabbing sounds. Then there's everything
in between, so you get a buzz at least you
get a hiss, and then with yeah, whollo. Those might
(25:45):
as well be vowels. So having more vowels now could
have something to do with people looking for a certain
mallifluous nous in names now why people would have valued
it more during the McKinley administration than during the cool
edge administer straation. I have no idea. I get the
feeling that is random statistical flutter. Mick Warter says that
(26:07):
over time, fashions change gradually, and something you once found
repellent you now find irresistible. You know how today, if
you have a dinner party every every second time you
have Brussels sprouts, probably with bacon or something like that,
imagine how unthinkable that was. Say, even as recently as
twenty five years ago, you didn't give people you liked
brussel sprous, did not russell sprouts or were synonymous with
(26:31):
something that was basical torture. Torture, Yeah, I mean little cabbages.
They sucked, and so you wouldn't give them to anybody,
And you don't even have to dress them up that much.
Now we're used to them. That's partly fashioned. I don't
think that the Brussels Sprouts lobby created this. Sometime early
in the George W. Bush administration. One recent trend boys
names ending in a certain consonant. What is this with
(26:54):
all these boys today? Baby boys having an end at
the end of their names. So we've got all these
logans Mason's, Ethan's, Jackson's. We subconsciously associate that un with
a kind of a gracious masculinity. It's what you want
to name your little boy, as opposed to Jack, which
is a severe Jack as might be a bully. Yeah,
(27:16):
not only old fashioned, but Jack Jack's people up. You know,
Ethan has conversations. You imagine Ethan is open to change,
like right, right, he reasons right, Ethan reasons as opposed
to Jack, who just sits yeah. But even names that
hit that right mix of vowels and and just right,
(27:41):
ones that are pined after in song or become famous
in the names of movie characters or the actors who
played them, well, just like we as a society can
birth the name. We can also let it die. But
first another in memorium for Sid Stay and Irv sigh,
(28:01):
Shelley and Morty. No, they weren't the original waite staff
at the Carnegie Deli. In the late eighteen hundreds, Sydney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon,
and Morton were all popular baby boy names with WASP
that is, White Anglo Saxon Protestant parents. Then in the
late nineteen twenties, many American Jewish parents began choosing these
(28:25):
names for their baby boys to help them fit in.
But America's wasps apparently felt stung and took flight from
these names. Soon enough, Sydney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon, and
Morton were seen as stereotypically Jewish and their assimilation value
greatly diminished, as documented by sociologist Stanley Lieberson, American Jews
(28:49):
eventually abandoned the names as well. Incidentally, another name in
that category was Morris, a sort of cousin to Maurice.
But at least Morris was the name of a terrifically
drolled tabby who used to sell cat food on TV commercials.
Nine Lives Seafood Pladder anchors away pop culture and big
(29:17):
news events can correlate with names surging, even when those
events are disasters. After Hurricane Katrina, names that began with
the letter K actually jumped by nine according to an
analysis by professors at Wharton Business School. The sheer repetition
of the name Katrina, it seems, had a subliminal effect
(29:39):
that K sound got stuck in people's heads. But the
name Katrina itself, well, Katrina had been a pretty popular
name and even broke the top one hundred for a
while in the late seventies and eighties. After the storm, though,
the name quickly fell out of fashion and in dropped
out of the top one thousand entirely. Indeed, history can
(30:01):
be a name killer as well. The name Isis saw
a burst of popularity in the early nineteen seventies thanks
to a Saturday Morning superhero of the same name and
found she was heir to the sacreds of Isis, and
so it has since fallen out of favor with the
rise of the Islamic State, which I find reassuring. But
(30:27):
Bertha toppled from a much greater height in mother's birth
to more than five thousand. Bertha's try saying that five
times fast so what happened to Bertha. Well, Bertha was
the name of a German heiress to crup a G
a German weapons manufacturer, and during World War One the
(30:49):
company began making heavy guns. Those guns were dubbed Big
Bertha's by the Germans. The Allies then learn to this nickname,
that it was being called the big Bertha, and they
began using it for all heavy artillery, so it suddenly
became synonymous with big heavy, portly. Right, yeah, so next
(31:10):
thing you know Bertha is overweight? Is it's associated with
being large. That's linguistic John mcwardour again, But is there
also something about just the sound of it birth thought?
I mean, is it I'm thinking of girth birth. The
error is not pretty because it's not as open as
other vowel sounds. Is a little unpleasant, and it begins
(31:32):
with a stop consonant. But er I mean it's it's
nasty in that way. But then, especially just because it
was associated with something that was portly. I work with
a woman who was telling me about a person in
her neighborhood that she doesn't like, and she said, ah,
I cut her a wide berth, and it's a wide
birth right. I never thought about that, And you wonder
(31:55):
why that expression catches on. Yeah, boy, I wonder what
it would take for Bertha to come back. Hi, Bertha,
I don't see it. After World War One, Bertha faded
into obscurity and was off the top one thousand list
by the mid nineteen eighties. But a name doesn't have
(32:17):
to become synonymous with military weaponry or get added to
a terrorist watch list to fade. Sometimes names just wear out.
They fall out of the rotation in the same way
you'll find a shirt that you really like and it
still fits, and it's in your closet and you haven't
worn it for five years for no real reason. A
name with ugly sounds can last almost a counterintuitively long time.
(32:39):
For example, Richard, what an ugly name that is? And
think about how much uglier the nickname is, and how
there were, until about ten minutes ago, normal male people
running around in Anglophone America named Dick and nobody battered
to nine. It wasn't only Dick sartin Dick York. I
knew a Dick back in the eighties has anything to
(33:01):
do with the wet That's right. It's Dick Lincoln and
he was taken seriously as an executive. Only with the
past generation or two has that stopped. And not only
is dick ridiculous? And dick was used to mean what
it meant long before it went out, But dick is
an ugly word by these standards. Composer Cole Porter would
beg to Differry Todd. One of the other names I've
(33:35):
been pondering is Todd. Todd showed up in the thirties
and just grew and grew. We hit Peeke Todd in
X four. More than fifteen thousand were born that year.
I used to know tons of Todd's, but now I
haven't met a baby Todd in decades. What do you
think the appeal was in the first place. I think
(33:57):
it's partly because ah is the most basic sound and humanity.
It's the first sound that babies make. And then with Todd,
what you have is a kind of a nice assonance,
as it were, because too and du are the same
sound but different. DU is too with a little bit
of belly in it, so you don't have to make
a change. There was something pleasant about Todd. Todd was
(34:20):
like a little white potato. That's one of those little
balls and it's boiled just right. That's Todd like a
tater todd Um. Yes, I guess it would have to
be deepride as well as Todd and a lovely woman
(34:41):
named Millie with a hairnet giving it to you personally.
I like Todd, and I brought in one of my
favorite Todds to defend his name, Todd Bridges. Todd Bridges
was born in Nive, just one year after Peque Todd,
and when he was a teenager, he got a starring
role in the hit TV show Different Strokes as Willis Jackson,
(35:04):
opposite Gary Coleman as Arnold. Yeah, Phyllis isn't bad. Why
don't you ask about Arnold? Are you chiding starter? She
doesn't even know me. My mom said that she dreamed
my name because there's not very many black Todds. I
don't know if you know that or not, but there isn't.
I think I know Todd Gurley, the football player, and
that's about it. I don't think I know anybody else
(35:26):
named Todd. That's right. Even though Todd was near its
peak when Bridges was born, it was indeed as white
as those potatoes. And I'll tell you what what what happened,
which is really funny. One time I got to check
somewhere that I was living at and it said Todd
Bridgies and I'm looking, I don't know of his company,
and it's for a couple of thousand nolls. I'm like,
I don't know. Let's say this is not me. So
(35:47):
what happened was the postman thought it was me and
it was an address down the street. And I went
down the street and bringing the bell and I go, hey, man,
is there a Todd Bridges. He goes, yeah, it's me,
and he goes, oh, hey Todd. I go, hey Todd,
and I gave him it was his This there's another
Todd Bridge right down the street. It was right down
the street when I used to live in Yeah, another
guy was a white guy. That's kind of crazy. People
(36:08):
get their names made fun of for all sorts of reasons.
Is there anything you can do with Todd? Will you
ever teased? Well? A lot of people thought that Todd
was short for Theodore, but I'm like, no, that's Ted.
That's shut for Theodore. Todd is just Todd. Then in
the nineteen seventies, Todd fell off the baby naming Cliff
(36:28):
Oh man Todd fell off the map. Dang. In two
thousand fifteen, there were only two hundred and twelve baby
boys named Todd. And did you ever consider naming any
of your children Todd? No? No, I named my son Spencer,
but I spell it differently. Okay, we I mean we
(36:49):
spell his sp n C I R. Now why did
you do that? We just thought it making this original
because Spencer is out there and it's you know, sp
and c R, and we just wanted to make it original.
And it's original Spencer, It totally is. George Carlin had
a whole bit a routine in two thousand one where
(37:10):
he actually made fun of the name Todd. He made
fun of a number of I didn't see that. What
he what do he say? And I'm getting really sick
of guy's name Todd. You know, yeah, it's just a
goofy it's a goofy fucking name. Okay, Hi, what's your name? Todd?
Is he still around? That? He is not still around?
But great, stand he is lucky because I have to
(37:33):
go choke him out mess with my name. It's not
a goofy name. It's a cool name. It's Todd. We
end this episode with a nod to Western civilization's earliest
(37:56):
baby naming book, the Bible. From Adam and Eve to
Ahab and Jezebel, there are well over a thousand different
names mentioned between the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament.
People have been blessing and sometimes saddling their kids with
the names of patriarchs and prophets, matriarchs and magi for
(38:17):
over a thousand years. The most recently popular baby names
in the US have included Jonah, Elijah, Naomi, and Noah.
I was surprised to see that even the name Lazarus
has risen from the dead. Of course, not every biblical
name is heaven sent. Judas. If we ignore your history
for a second, you're not terrible, your spelling makes sense,
(38:41):
and you have no off putting hard consonants. Then again,
your behavior towards Jesus was more than off putting. Your
name has been permanently shunned. Earlier biblical outcasts haven't fared
much better. Sure, there were three hundred Canes born in
but nearly times as many ables were born that year.
(39:02):
It doesn't pay to kill your brother. Jesus, of course,
is a popular name, especially as Jesus, but Judas. I
don't see you ever cracking the top one thousand. Come here,
little Judas. Yeah, they're more than time for friendless, dateless
(39:24):
little boy. Esther and Ruth your solid names, if not
always easy to say. Hey, Esther, meet me at Ruth's
Chris Steak House. You're the only two women with books
of the Bible named after you. But after the nineteen thirties,
your name's made a quick exodus. Yet history shows us
that most names are cyclical. What's old, sometimes very old
(39:48):
is new again. Indeed, Genesis, the very first book of
the Bible, has seen a surge in popularity as a
first name since the nineteen nineties. P s. If you
ever see me out on the street, feel free to
call me Maurice. I kind of miss it. I certainly
(40:13):
hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask you to
please rate and review our podcast. You can also follow
Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me
on Twitter at Morocca. Here all new episodes of Mobituaries
every Wednesday. Wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries.
(40:33):
Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling
book now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes plenty
of stories not in the podcast. This episode of Mobituaries
was produced by Jake Harper and Aaron Shrank. Our team
of producers also includes Wilcome Martinez Cacceto and me Morocca.
(40:55):
It was edited by Moral Walls and engineered by Sam Bear,
with fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is
Neon Hum Media. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Our
theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from
(41:15):
Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Pang, Reggie Basil and everyone
at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Megan Marcus, Alberto
Robina and the staff of wood Acres Elementary the inimitable.
Aaron Shrink is our senior producer. Executive producers for Mobituaries
(41:36):
include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is created by
Yours Truly and as always undying gratitude to Rand Morrison
and John Carp for helping breathe life into Mobituaries. One
Yes, a question. Do you guys like to answer? Question?
For a while back, I visited my alma mater. I'm
talking about my first alma mater, Wood Acres Elementary School
in Bethesda, Maryland. I am Mr Rock. I went to
this school. When I first came to Wood Acres in
(00:21):
the third grade, I wasn't Mo. I was Maurice Rocca Maurice,
a name which felt hopelessly out of style. I was
the only Maurice in the whole school. But maybe the
name has a better rep Now, Okay, I'm gonna ask
each of you question, and that's what I've come back
to find out. I started off slowly, though, asking about
(00:42):
other names which peaked long ago. When I say the
name Mildred, what do you think of um London? I
think of an old British person? Yeah, agreed me to. Okay,
what about what about the name thought an old lady?
(01:02):
That's fat? I agree? I agree, I agree here, I
must confess I get what they're saying. In the twenty
one century, names like Mildred and Bertha conture certain images.
Is it the is it the fun? I think that? Yeah?
(01:26):
Just all together? Yeah? What about the name Todd A
tall person that plays golf, kind of like um middle
age like in his forties, calf um brown hair. I
think they're kind of weird to finally I mustered the
courage to ask them about my name. What do you
(01:50):
think of the name Maurice? I think of like an
old French dude, like a young person who travels a lot.
Maybe doesn't have a home, on the run from the law.
Why is he Maybe he just kind of like stays
in hotels and just goes everywhere, like some like singer.
Maybe that's like they're not really known. Yeah, they're like
(02:11):
a local kind of person, but they still change, they
move a lot. I don't really not really known a
local kind of person out But it turns out there
is a traveling singer named Maurice van Hoap, and Maurice
is also a portly frenchman in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
(02:33):
Help don't help me, I need to help, But the
name Maurice maybe permanently on the way out. We Maurice's
reached the height of our popularity in the nineteen twenties,
when there were an average of about sixteen hundred born annually.
Now just a few hundred come into the world each year.
(02:56):
What makes a name rise and fall in the ranks?
It makes a name pretty in popular to one generation
and unique or downright ugly to the next. From CBS
Sunday Morning and I Heart, I'm Maurice Rocca and this
is mobituaries. This mobent the death of a name. I
(03:29):
knew a kid in elementary school named Jeff Heebner. He
was friendly, he was good at soccer, he was cool.
He could introduce himself with confidence because he was a Jeff.
He perfectly embodied his own name. I, on the other hand,
always felt awkward telling people my name. Maybe it was
because growing up I knew of only three other Maurice's.
(03:53):
There was children's book author Maurice Sendak, who wrote the
classic Where the Wild Things Are? They're was the Maurice
from that Steve Miller band song The Joker Speak, And
that was kind of cool. But that was canceled out
(04:15):
by French entertainer Maurice Chevalier. I'm a little girl of
five or six or seven. I can't rasister join yourself
that song he sang in Gigi Ken Folly, little girl.
I can't believe he hasn't been canceled for that, but
that was pretty much it. I was born Maurice Albert Rocca.
(04:39):
My mother tells me my father was the one who
really wanted to name me Maurice. She would have preferred Gabriel.
My father is no longer living, so I can't know
for sure, but I think he wanted something on the
gentler side, since Rocca can sound brusque. But I didn't
like it. At one point, I thought maybe I should
go by al. I mean, which are being crazy? I mean, like,
(05:02):
when I think about it, I'm not crazy. It just
would it sounded sounded odd al Roca. I talked to
one of my former teachers about it. That day I
visited Wood Acres. Her name is Ms Vanisi, and she
was one of my all time favorites. She was patient, kind,
and impossibly glamorous. More about that in a bit. Turns
(05:24):
out she could have made a pretty decent therapist too. Now,
you said you didn't like your name, So were you
teased in school? You know? I don't know that I
was ever teased for my name. It just felt so different,
it felt foreign. Everything changed when I graduated from Wood
Acres to Pile Middle School, and oddly enough. It was
(05:46):
thanks to the aptly named Jeff Heebner. I know him,
I mean I remember him. He was very blond, very blond.
And when I went to Pile, it's kind of scary
all the elementary schools feeding into the big junior high
and the fizzed teacher there and of the first days
did roll call and said, you know, when I get
to your name, if you have a name you prefer,
I got us. I'll write it in the in the book.
(06:08):
And then she said Maurice rock I said here, and
then Jeff Heepner said, he's not Maurice, He's Mo. And
that's kind of how I got my started. I was
going to ask you, so Jeff just came out with it,
and you preferred it, obviously. Yeah, I kind of liked that.
It was easy. Yeah, kind of popped. But now I
love when people call me Maurice. So you have to
call for this episode, I'm Maurice. I wasn't sure and
(06:31):
what just call you? Whether I should call you Maurice.
And if there's anyone who would understand this kind of
confusion over one's own name, it's miss Vanisi, Mildred Vanisi.
Despite what those kids said, earlier. Mildred Vanisi is not British,
but the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, and there was a
(06:51):
custom I doubt if it's still in existence, that the
firstborn I was the firstborn is named either for the father,
mother by the father's father. Of course, depended upon the sex.
My grandmother's name was Camela, and I'm sure that my parents,
being first generation, wanted an anglicized name. Camela's were called Millie.
(07:17):
Millie is Mildred. Growing up, Ms Venisi didn't know any
other Mildred's and she didn't really like her name. Lucky
for her, she too got a nickname that eventually stuck.
Somewhere along the line. I started being called Millie. Not
by family, my mother and father. I was still Mildred,
but my generation, my friends started calling me that. My
(07:40):
sisters called me Millie, and so now I introduced myself
that way. It happened, just sort of happened. I think
the name Millie flows better. It's a little more musical
than Mildred. I just think Mildred is She's not thoroughly
modern Mildred and that wouldn't sound good. That just wouldn't
(08:02):
sound good. I also never thought Mildred was an appropriate
moniker for Miss Vanisi, with her luxuriant mane of dark
curly hair, her Jackie Oh sunglasses, her Georga's jeans or
were they Gloria Vanderbilt? Look? All I know is that
(08:23):
no other teacher looked like she just walked off the
setup and Aaron spelling nighttime soap. Honestly, Miss Vanisi was
so fabulous I could barely contain myself. I don't know
if you'll remember, so if you don't, it's kind of
like a confession. I guess. But I remember in fifth
grade waiting outside the All Purpose Room for lunch. But
(08:45):
when you walked by, I said, Hey, what shaken, Millie?
You wheeled around and and I think you said something like,
don't you ever call me that again? I Miss Vanisi?
I probably did, tim teacher. The name Mildred reached its
peak in n when more than eighteen thousand babies were
(09:07):
named Mildred. It was the sixth most popular girl's name
that year, popular enough that there are a number of
notable Mildred's throughout history. Mildred J. Hill was the composer
of Good Morning to All, the melody of which became
the Happy Birthday song. And then that movie Mildred Pierce
(09:28):
with Jeremy Crawford that must have been in the forties.
Now I'm sure of one thing, at least, I want
my daughter back. Mildred Giller's an American who broadcast Nazi
propaganda from Germany during World War Two, also known as
Axis Sally. She was indicted after the war and charged
with trees and Okay, so that's not a good Mildred.
That's not a good Mildred. But I think I've heard
(09:50):
of access Sally. But after hitting its popularity peak in
the early twentieth century, Mildred slowly slid down the list
of the thousand most popular names. In only eighty three
newborn girls were named Mildred in the US. Recent users
on one baby naming website dismissed the name as sounding
(10:12):
too much like Mildew wrote another makes me think of
dreading something I was the only milled with in all
my years at school. There was a period of time
when a lot of girls were named Karen, and there
was another period of time or a lot of girls
named Janet. I don't know, but I just think that
names have cycles, and maybe something triggers it. She so
(10:40):
often was when I was growing up. Mildred Venisi is
right coming up. I'm going to talk with linguistic John
mcwardur about what makes names pretty, prickly or popular. But
first in memorium for another name that left us, Hortense.
(11:02):
We hardly knew you despite your French origins. Your name
lacked the crisp, bright bubbliness of champagne and the addictive
qualities of your country's cheeses. Disney must have had a
thing for you, because Hortense mcdock is Donald Duck's mother.
Donald gets an ostrich named Hortense, and his uncle Scrooge
(11:23):
McDuck named his horse Hortense. Alas, Disney was never going
to create a princess Hortense as a name. You're just
not pretty. You barely cracked the top four hundred names
in the US around the turn of the twentieth century,
and you slid off the top one thousand after Now,
(11:44):
Ordensia does have a nice ring to it. It's the
Spanish version of Hortense or Dnsia also means Hydraine job.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting anyone named their daughter
Hydraine jaw Hortense. You are strictly a past, tense, gone,
and yes forgotten. To understand better why names come and go,
(12:11):
I talked with an expert, Columbia University Associate Professor of
Comparative Literature and linguished John mcwardo, How did you become
a John? I'm John Hamilton's mcwardo the fifth and John
Hamilton mcquarter the first was a slave. So I was
named because of that relentless succession and the idea that
(12:31):
you don't break it. And as a matter of fact,
I know if my father hadn't been John Hamilton quarter
the fourth, I would be named Bruce. That's what my
mother would have chosen. And I would have named my
son John, except he's a girl, and so the name
had to stop with my two girls. So she has
my middle name Johnna. In Italian, you've had Johnny and
Jihanna in English Johnette, none of them. That just sounds
(12:55):
like a tiny little bathroom. We live in an efficiency.
We only have room for a John. A. Mcward was
born in n when John was the second most popular
name in the country, and the name John isn't going away.
It's still in the top thirty names for boys in
the US. But if you go back in time to
(13:17):
the early twentieth century, John was far and away the
number one boy's name. America was producing John's in mass quantities.
It was like the model t of names. In fact,
if you were born in that era, it was really
common for you to have a name that was in
the top ten. People just seemed to want to fit in.
(13:39):
You go back to that time and there is a
sense of what a normal American person is that would
strike us today as almost bizarrely homogeneous. And that's not
to say that there weren't some ripples going on around
the edges, but there was a certain sense that America was,
you know, turkey and apple pie, and that's what one was.
(13:59):
One was very, very very white. Well that's so interesting
because aren't that those are competing impulses, right. I want
my child to have a name that makes him or
her special. I also want my child to have a
name that makes him or her fit in and and
so and back then no special. I mean, if you
think of somebody naming their child in eighteen sixty five,
(14:21):
most people did not want something that would make the
child feel special, or it would be something going on
with the middle name, something that was less known, you
might play with it. Even when I was in school
in the seventies and eighties, I remember the popular names
were really popular. I mean in junior high I was
drowning in Jennifer's. Oh, they were everywhere. That's right. What
(14:44):
was going on? Jennifer? And that's right, there's so many Jennifers.
It's just it was a tsunami of them school Jennifers.
But the days of a few names dominating are over.
At its peak, a full five percent of all newborn
male babies were named John one in twenty Fast forward
(15:09):
to and the top names for females and males, Olivia
and Liam, made up only around one percent of babies
born that year. In other words, the most popular names
are less popular. Parents today shoot for originality. There's a
sense that if you're going to name a child, you
(15:29):
spontaneously reach out and you think, how can we have
a little bit of fun with this, and you don't
want to torture your child. I once knew this poor
little boy. His parents had named him Rotunda Thanksgiving Jones,
and it was because he was born when John F.
Kennedy was laid out in the rotunda and they named
him Thanksgiving just because, and of course he was made
(15:51):
fun of. It sounds like a song and I've forgotten
Gershwin musical because therefore sounds like that Rotunda Thanksgiving you
can and this guy really had made and so it
was a tragic thing. But you want your child to
be somewhat different, probably not too different, but I think
most people think not the average thing, unless it's named
(16:13):
after a grandparent or a father or something like that.
John mcwarter says that trend towards uniqueness and away from
uniformity tracks with broader changes in American society. I think
it's very much a spirit of individuality, and of course
many people would say that the spirit of individuality is
part of what being an American is. But there's an
(16:34):
extreme that happens, and I think it happens after the
nineteen sixties with the sense of what was called the
Me generation in the seventies, and then the greater respect
for and awareness of the diversity of American nous is
that you get that really becomes default starting in the eighties.
That's when a certain browning of the culture happens. Think
(16:56):
about four is when the Cosby Show becomes a big hit.
Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America and Miss America.
Beverly Hills Cop is almost the biggest selling movie in
the country. You know, this is the clinnest and nicest
(17:16):
police car I've ever been in my life. That's and
that's just black diversity. I think we become much more
comfortable with America not just being my three sons starting
in the nineteen eighties. As a part of that change,
there's a shift in naming traditions, especially among Black Americans.
Eight is a particularly interesting year for naming kids. That year,
(17:38):
sixty of black girls are given a unique name, one
that no one else has. Mcward points out that after
the Civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties, afrocentrism gained
traction in the seventies and eighties. So once you get
past integration as the watch cry, and there's a certain
kind of in some ways healthy separatism that's afoot, then
(18:02):
it becomes natural to be comfortable making up a name.
And so what happens, frankly is I've often thought that
black girls in particular tend to have more interesting names
because it's considered okay to just make it up and
what you get are all of these beautiful African style
names for people born in the United States. And it's
all rather pretty, but it really explodes, especially with the
(18:26):
sense of Africa and the African heritage rising in the
nineteen seventies. That's when you get little girls named Mikiba. Well,
I'm going to impress you right now and tell you,
and I'm sorry if it sounds boastful. In college, I
was in a production of a Little Shop of Horrors
with Katangi Brown now Jackson, I would Seymour, thank you
(18:47):
very much. She one of she was run at and
she was fantastic. She was fantastically Yeah, and she yea Crystal.
I'm suddenly forgetting glass of one's name. But anyway, she
was gonna into improv comedy together. But her name, I
know you've written about improv. Wow, she thinks really funny?
Is she funny? She is? I'm telling you we will
(19:11):
because we are going to make sure that hearings are now,
you know, simulcast on Comedy Central. I think she's that funny.
I want to know that about her. Yeah, that's a
perfect example that her name is Katanji. If she were
a generation older, her name would probably be Caroline, but
now it is Katanji Brown Jackson, and that's ordinary starting
especially with women of her generation. It's nice to see.
(19:34):
I mean, Katanji is a much more interesting name than Caroline.
But one group of people, we expect original names from celebrities.
It's practically a rite of passage. The first time I
can remember this happening is in two thousand four, when
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin named their daughter Apple. At
the time it was weird. Now totally normal. Kylie Jenner
(19:57):
has a daughter named Stormy, and it's not it's not
with a y, it's with an eye at the end.
And Elon Musk has one that can pronounce it's a
bunch of symbols. I think by the way I looked
it up, it's pronounced x ash a twelve. All of
that is because they are public figures, and so for them,
naming is a public act. And if it's going to
be a public act, then you want to do something
(20:18):
that's gonna stand out rather than something that's gonna bore people.
If somebody, like when Paltrow sets off a tradition, next thing,
you know, everybody's doing it. So it's sort of a
celebrity contagion. And I think I would put it just
that way. What Jay Z and Beyonce blew Ivy. That's
really beautiful, but it's not African. It's not the usual tradition.
That's something they came up with all by themselves as
(20:40):
people who knew that everybody was watching them having that child.
So that's where you get that tradition, and that seems
to actually cut across races with celebrities too. Yeah, it's
it's a show, it's a it's a kind of display.
And I don't mean that in a bad way. Most
parents aren't going to resort to naming their kids after
(21:01):
a combination of math, Aircraft, and Elvin symbols representing artificial intelligence,
which is what Musk's baby's name represents. But throughout history,
parents have often taken naming cues from pop culture. Well,
I'm going to quiz you on it right now. Actually
it's really fun, so I'll start off really easy. Shirley
(21:21):
saw a dramatic spike between five because of of Little
Shirley Temple, And if you think about it, nobody is
named Shirley before then, and then all of a sudden.
Everybody's grandmother is named Shirley by the late twentieth century,
and now the name is impossible, Meet little Shirley. Never
(21:42):
Michelle entered the top twenty in nineteen sixty five, because
that was the same year. It has to be because
of that song, the Beatles song nobody is named Michelle.
Maybe in Frances you're just kind of guessing, but not here,
(22:02):
I mean new Michelle's. We've got a lot of Michelle's
running around, women named Michelle women, but not here, not
before then. What you're saying like, there's no first lady
named Michelle, And if you think about it, there was
a first lady to Michelle. Good point right, only only
after and she's named around that time. Michelle Polk. No
(22:26):
Michelle Quinciata, no suffragette named Michelle. You know that's that's right,
it's Michelle kt S. The name Layla first appeared in
the top one thousand in nineteen seventy two. No, why
that Eric Clapton song. Yeah, I'm not as good at
(22:50):
modern pop. It's fine. I love that you and I
have the same definition of modern pop. Nineteen seventy two.
Everything ends. This is a strict question. Rosanna shot up
in two because of that Toto song. Right. Yes, I
(23:11):
interviewed Patricia Arquat that song was named after her sister,
also an actress. But Patricia pointed out to me that
her sister's name is really pronounced Rosanna Rosanna Arquette, and
I'm so they got the pronunciation of her name wrong.
Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly
(23:33):
swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President
of the United States that iowa faith After Reagan became
president in the eighties, the name Reagan not not Ronald
as much, but the name Reagan surged in popularity, landing
in the top one hundred by two thousand twelve. Now
here's what I think is fascinating is that Republican parents
(23:54):
were more likely to pick the name Reagan for their
kid if they lived in a district that was purple,
that was that was sort of evenly split between Democrats
and Republicans. Then make a statement exactly, then, if they
weren't a deep red Republican enclave, right, then they don't
need to stand out, they don't need to stake their
individuality exactly, And of course they weren't thinking of this consciously.
(24:15):
So much goes on subconsciously. I doubt any of those
families said so many people around here vote Democratic, that
let's name her Reagan. It was just part of the
warp and wolf of their psychology because of sensing themselves
as a minority or as not more than half of
their district. Well, that's fascinating. Yeah. And if you're in
a purple district and you name your kid Reagan, do
(24:35):
you plant the kid on the front lawn during election time?
That's right, mommy? How long do I understand here? Spend
some time with the Social Security Administration's baby named database,
and you'll see a sort of pendulum swing over the
last century, especially among girls. Half of the most popular
(25:00):
girls names started with vowels in the eighteen eighties. Then
we're all consonants. By nifty Anna and Emma became Patricia
and Deborah. Now vowels are back in a big way.
It makes you wonder why. Certainly, in terms of how
we perceive beauty, at least in English and in related languages,
(25:23):
vowels are beautiful because they involve no obstruction of the airflow.
Stop sounds such as put cut, but those are the
ugliest sounds because you have to stop. Those are the
ones that you're calling the jabbing sounds. Then there's everything
in between, so you get a buzz at least you
get a hiss, and then with yeah, whollo. Those might
(25:45):
as well be vowels. So having more vowels now could
have something to do with people looking for a certain
mallifluous nous in names now why people would have valued
it more during the McKinley administration than during the cool
edge administer straation. I have no idea. I get the
feeling that is random statistical flutter. Mick Warter says that
(26:07):
over time, fashions change gradually, and something you once found
repellent you now find irresistible. You know how today, if
you have a dinner party every every second time you
have Brussels sprouts, probably with bacon or something like that,
imagine how unthinkable that was. Say, even as recently as
twenty five years ago, you didn't give people you liked
brussel sprous, did not russell sprouts or were synonymous with
(26:31):
something that was basical torture. Torture, Yeah, I mean little cabbages.
They sucked, and so you wouldn't give them to anybody,
And you don't even have to dress them up that much.
Now we're used to them. That's partly fashioned. I don't
think that the Brussels Sprouts lobby created this. Sometime early
in the George W. Bush administration. One recent trend boys
names ending in a certain consonant. What is this with
(26:54):
all these boys today? Baby boys having an end at
the end of their names. So we've got all these
logans Mason's, Ethan's, Jackson's. We subconsciously associate that un with
a kind of a gracious masculinity. It's what you want
to name your little boy, as opposed to Jack, which
is a severe Jack as might be a bully. Yeah,
(27:16):
not only old fashioned, but Jack Jack's people up. You know,
Ethan has conversations. You imagine Ethan is open to change,
like right, right, he reasons right, Ethan reasons as opposed
to Jack, who just sits yeah. But even names that
hit that right mix of vowels and and just right,
(27:41):
ones that are pined after in song or become famous
in the names of movie characters or the actors who
played them, well, just like we as a society can
birth the name. We can also let it die. But
first another in memorium for Sid Stay and Irv sigh,
(28:01):
Shelley and Morty. No, they weren't the original waite staff
at the Carnegie Deli. In the late eighteen hundreds, Sydney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon,
and Morton were all popular baby boy names with WASP
that is, White Anglo Saxon Protestant parents. Then in the
late nineteen twenties, many American Jewish parents began choosing these
(28:25):
names for their baby boys to help them fit in.
But America's wasps apparently felt stung and took flight from
these names. Soon enough, Sydney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon, and
Morton were seen as stereotypically Jewish and their assimilation value
greatly diminished, as documented by sociologist Stanley Lieberson, American Jews
(28:49):
eventually abandoned the names as well. Incidentally, another name in
that category was Morris, a sort of cousin to Maurice.
But at least Morris was the name of a terrifically
drolled tabby who used to sell cat food on TV commercials.
Nine Lives Seafood Pladder anchors away pop culture and big
(29:17):
news events can correlate with names surging, even when those
events are disasters. After Hurricane Katrina, names that began with
the letter K actually jumped by nine according to an
analysis by professors at Wharton Business School. The sheer repetition
of the name Katrina, it seems, had a subliminal effect
(29:39):
that K sound got stuck in people's heads. But the
name Katrina itself, well, Katrina had been a pretty popular
name and even broke the top one hundred for a
while in the late seventies and eighties. After the storm, though,
the name quickly fell out of fashion and in dropped
out of the top one thousand entirely. Indeed, history can
(30:01):
be a name killer as well. The name Isis saw
a burst of popularity in the early nineteen seventies thanks
to a Saturday Morning superhero of the same name and
found she was heir to the sacreds of Isis, and
so it has since fallen out of favor with the
rise of the Islamic State, which I find reassuring. But
(30:27):
Bertha toppled from a much greater height in mother's birth
to more than five thousand. Bertha's try saying that five
times fast so what happened to Bertha. Well, Bertha was
the name of a German heiress to crup a G
a German weapons manufacturer, and during World War One the
(30:49):
company began making heavy guns. Those guns were dubbed Big
Bertha's by the Germans. The Allies then learn to this nickname,
that it was being called the big Bertha, and they
began using it for all heavy artillery, so it suddenly
became synonymous with big heavy, portly. Right, yeah, so next
(31:10):
thing you know Bertha is overweight? Is it's associated with
being large. That's linguistic John mcwardour again, But is there
also something about just the sound of it birth thought?
I mean, is it I'm thinking of girth birth. The
error is not pretty because it's not as open as
other vowel sounds. Is a little unpleasant, and it begins
(31:32):
with a stop consonant. But er I mean it's it's
nasty in that way. But then, especially just because it
was associated with something that was portly. I work with
a woman who was telling me about a person in
her neighborhood that she doesn't like, and she said, ah,
I cut her a wide berth, and it's a wide
birth right. I never thought about that, And you wonder
(31:55):
why that expression catches on. Yeah, boy, I wonder what
it would take for Bertha to come back. Hi, Bertha,
I don't see it. After World War One, Bertha faded
into obscurity and was off the top one thousand list
by the mid nineteen eighties. But a name doesn't have
(32:17):
to become synonymous with military weaponry or get added to
a terrorist watch list to fade. Sometimes names just wear out.
They fall out of the rotation in the same way
you'll find a shirt that you really like and it
still fits, and it's in your closet and you haven't
worn it for five years for no real reason. A
name with ugly sounds can last almost a counterintuitively long time.
(32:39):
For example, Richard, what an ugly name that is? And
think about how much uglier the nickname is, and how
there were, until about ten minutes ago, normal male people
running around in Anglophone America named Dick and nobody battered
to nine. It wasn't only Dick sartin Dick York. I
knew a Dick back in the eighties has anything to
(33:01):
do with the wet That's right. It's Dick Lincoln and
he was taken seriously as an executive. Only with the
past generation or two has that stopped. And not only
is dick ridiculous? And dick was used to mean what
it meant long before it went out, But dick is
an ugly word by these standards. Composer Cole Porter would
beg to Differry Todd. One of the other names I've
(33:35):
been pondering is Todd. Todd showed up in the thirties
and just grew and grew. We hit Peeke Todd in
X four. More than fifteen thousand were born that year.
I used to know tons of Todd's, but now I
haven't met a baby Todd in decades. What do you
think the appeal was in the first place. I think
(33:57):
it's partly because ah is the most basic sound and humanity.
It's the first sound that babies make. And then with Todd,
what you have is a kind of a nice assonance,
as it were, because too and du are the same
sound but different. DU is too with a little bit
of belly in it, so you don't have to make
a change. There was something pleasant about Todd. Todd was
(34:20):
like a little white potato. That's one of those little
balls and it's boiled just right. That's Todd like a
tater todd Um. Yes, I guess it would have to
be deepride as well as Todd and a lovely woman
(34:41):
named Millie with a hairnet giving it to you personally.
I like Todd, and I brought in one of my
favorite Todds to defend his name, Todd Bridges. Todd Bridges
was born in Nive, just one year after Peque Todd,
and when he was a teenager, he got a starring
role in the hit TV show Different Strokes as Willis Jackson,
(35:04):
opposite Gary Coleman as Arnold. Yeah, Phyllis isn't bad. Why
don't you ask about Arnold? Are you chiding starter? She
doesn't even know me. My mom said that she dreamed
my name because there's not very many black Todds. I
don't know if you know that or not, but there isn't.
I think I know Todd Gurley, the football player, and
that's about it. I don't think I know anybody else
(35:26):
named Todd. That's right. Even though Todd was near its
peak when Bridges was born, it was indeed as white
as those potatoes. And I'll tell you what what what happened,
which is really funny. One time I got to check
somewhere that I was living at and it said Todd
Bridgies and I'm looking, I don't know of his company,
and it's for a couple of thousand nolls. I'm like,
I don't know. Let's say this is not me. So
(35:47):
what happened was the postman thought it was me and
it was an address down the street. And I went
down the street and bringing the bell and I go, hey, man,
is there a Todd Bridges. He goes, yeah, it's me,
and he goes, oh, hey Todd. I go, hey Todd,
and I gave him it was his This there's another
Todd Bridge right down the street. It was right down
the street when I used to live in Yeah, another
guy was a white guy. That's kind of crazy. People
(36:08):
get their names made fun of for all sorts of reasons.
Is there anything you can do with Todd? Will you
ever teased? Well? A lot of people thought that Todd
was short for Theodore, but I'm like, no, that's Ted.
That's shut for Theodore. Todd is just Todd. Then in
the nineteen seventies, Todd fell off the baby naming Cliff
(36:28):
Oh man Todd fell off the map. Dang. In two
thousand fifteen, there were only two hundred and twelve baby
boys named Todd. And did you ever consider naming any
of your children Todd? No? No, I named my son Spencer,
but I spell it differently. Okay, we I mean we
(36:49):
spell his sp n C I R. Now why did
you do that? We just thought it making this original
because Spencer is out there and it's you know, sp
and c R, and we just wanted to make it original.
And it's original Spencer, It totally is. George Carlin had
a whole bit a routine in two thousand one where
(37:10):
he actually made fun of the name Todd. He made
fun of a number of I didn't see that. What
he what do he say? And I'm getting really sick
of guy's name Todd. You know, yeah, it's just a
goofy it's a goofy fucking name. Okay, Hi, what's your name? Todd?
Is he still around? That? He is not still around?
But great, stand he is lucky because I have to
(37:33):
go choke him out mess with my name. It's not
a goofy name. It's a cool name. It's Todd. We
end this episode with a nod to Western civilization's earliest
(37:56):
baby naming book, the Bible. From Adam and Eve to
Ahab and Jezebel, there are well over a thousand different
names mentioned between the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament.
People have been blessing and sometimes saddling their kids with
the names of patriarchs and prophets, matriarchs and magi for
(38:17):
over a thousand years. The most recently popular baby names
in the US have included Jonah, Elijah, Naomi, and Noah.
I was surprised to see that even the name Lazarus
has risen from the dead. Of course, not every biblical
name is heaven sent. Judas. If we ignore your history
for a second, you're not terrible, your spelling makes sense,
(38:41):
and you have no off putting hard consonants. Then again,
your behavior towards Jesus was more than off putting. Your
name has been permanently shunned. Earlier biblical outcasts haven't fared
much better. Sure, there were three hundred Canes born in
but nearly times as many ables were born that year.
(39:02):
It doesn't pay to kill your brother. Jesus, of course,
is a popular name, especially as Jesus, but Judas. I
don't see you ever cracking the top one thousand. Come here,
little Judas. Yeah, they're more than time for friendless, dateless
(39:24):
little boy. Esther and Ruth your solid names, if not
always easy to say. Hey, Esther, meet me at Ruth's
Chris Steak House. You're the only two women with books
of the Bible named after you. But after the nineteen thirties,
your name's made a quick exodus. Yet history shows us
that most names are cyclical. What's old, sometimes very old
(39:48):
is new again. Indeed, Genesis, the very first book of
the Bible, has seen a surge in popularity as a
first name since the nineteen nineties. P s. If you
ever see me out on the street, feel free to
call me Maurice. I kind of miss it. I certainly
(40:13):
hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask you to
please rate and review our podcast. You can also follow
Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me
on Twitter at Morocca. Here all new episodes of Mobituaries
every Wednesday. Wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries.
(40:33):
Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling
book now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes plenty
of stories not in the podcast. This episode of Mobituaries
was produced by Jake Harper and Aaron Shrank. Our team
of producers also includes Wilcome Martinez Cacceto and me Morocca.
(40:55):
It was edited by Moral Walls and engineered by Sam Bear,
with fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is
Neon Hum Media. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Our
theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from
(41:15):
Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Pang, Reggie Basil and everyone
at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Megan Marcus, Alberto
Robina and the staff of wood Acres Elementary the inimitable.
Aaron Shrink is our senior producer. Executive producers for Mobituaries
(41:36):
include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is created by
Yours Truly and as always undying gratitude to Rand Morrison
and John Carp for helping breathe life into Mobituaries. One
Host
Mo Rocca
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