Arvo

To Arto, Arlo, Aldo, let us add Arvo, as in Arvo Pärt.

Lois

This post is inspired, in part, by a native Russian speaker's inability to properly pronounce "Lois Weber." First he called her Lewis, then he called her Loy.

It is also inspired by something I occasionally reflect on, namely, mid-to-late-nineties/early-aughts indie-rock bands that have (old-timey) feminine names, e.g., Lois (or am I thinking of this Lois?), Ida, Beulah. A related post might be on all the names of women that appear (what is the auditory equivalent of "appear"?) in Destroyer songs, e.g., Michelle ("The Very Modern Dance"), Tabitha ("Your Blood"), Contessa ("Streets of Fire"), but there's not much I can about that, and I've already fallen behind on keeping this blog a lively thing. So you'll have to imagine it, or just listen to a Destroyer song yourself.

Carroll

I've elsewhere averred that I don't think or, really, care much about pen names, but I just mentioned Doublets so I guess I'll go with a riff on Lewis Carroll. The way I remember his real first name is by noting that Carroll is like Carl which is like Charles, and that his next begins with L, much like Lewis does; I then muse that perhaps his name is Charles Louis, or Lyman, but that's not right, nor that, and eventually I sort everything out and it all comes back to me. And then I think about Carroll O'Connor, whom I used to confuse with Carol Burnett; might we also note that Frances Hodgson Burnett had a son named Vivian, which introduced me to that as a masculine name? I could go on. That is what this blog is for.

Arto

Arto Lindsay's given name is Arthur Morgan Lindsay, so I guess you could consider this post a reprise. But this name intrigues me in its own right. Actually, that's not right. I like thinking about in relationship to two other names: Arlo, as in Guthrie, and Aldo, as in Tambellini. Can we play Doublets with these three names? How do we get from Arlo to Aldo?

Arthur

I don't particularly care for the fiction of Michael Cunningham, but I can nonetheless appreciate this appreciation:

Let's try to forget that the words "Call me Ishmael" mean anything, and think about how they sound.
Listen to the vowel sounds: ah, ee, soft i, aa. Four of them, each different, and each a soft, soothing note. Listen too to the way the line is bracketed by consonants. We open with the hard c, hit the l at the end of "call," and then, in a lovely act of symmetry, hit the l at the end of "Ishmael." "Call me Arthur" or "Call me Bob" are adequate but not, for musical reasons, as satisfying.

Penny

This is post #99 for CHEW ON THIS, so in anticipation of post #100 I thought I'd give you all a name that makes sense.

Here are other number names, with occasional sources:

1 - Una
2 - Tuesday
3 - Tre
4 - Anan
5 - Quinn
6 - Sextus
7 - Seven
8 - Octavius
9 - Nona
10 - Ten

Marcellus

Cassius Marcellus Clay: abolitionist.
Cassius Marcellus Clay: painter, musician, father of Cassius Marcellus and Rudolph Valentino.
Cassius Marcellus Clay: Muhammad Ali.
Cassius Marcellus Cornelius Clay: this guy.

Allen

William Shawn married Cecille Lyon. They had three children: Wallace (Wally), Allen, and Mary. Starting in 1950, and until his death in 1992, William Shawn had an affair with Lillian Ross.

I recite these well-rehearsed facts because the outlier here is Mary—not because she is autistic and lives in an institution, though that is true, but because she is the only one in this mini-narrative without a double-l in her name.

Rico

In D.H. Lawrence's St. Mawr, St. Mawr is a horse ("The man repeated [his name], with a slight Welsh twist"), Lou Witt is Louise (from Louisiana)—and there's also, in this novella, a Lewis—is Lady Carrington, and her husband Rico is Sir Henry. Everyone has names, and many of them, and they are all of those names at once, but only one at a time. It is wordplay, nameplay. Thus:

"Isn't Fred flirting perfectly outrageously with Lady Carrington!--She looks so sweet!" cried Flora, over her coffee-cup. "Don't you mind, Harry!"

They called Rico 'Harry'! His boy-name.

"Only a very little," said Harry. "L'uomo è cacciatore."

"Oh, now, what does that mean?" cried Flora, who always thrilled to Rico's bits of affectation.

"It means," said Mrs. Witt, leaning forward and speaking in her most suave voice, "that man is a hunter."

Even Flora shrank under the smooth acid of the irony. "Oh, well now!" she cried. "If he is, then what is woman?"

"The hunted," said Mrs. Witt, in a still smoother acid. "At least," said Rico, "she is always game!"

"Ah, is she though!" came Fred's manly, well-bred tones. "I'm not so sure."

Mrs. Witt looked from one man to the other, as if she were dropping them down the bottomless pit.

D.J.

I'm hardly the first person to think D.J. Conner or Tanner would make for an excellent disc jockey name. D.J. Conner was David Jacob and Tanner was Donna Jo—and D.J. Fontana Dominic Joseph and Shockley Donald Eugene and Caruso Daniel John—but A.J. Soprano was Anthony, Jr.; from this should I extrapolate that most deejays are first name-middle name derivations and most ehjays juniors? No, but A.J. Burnett is Allan James and A.J. Cook is Arthur James or Andrea Joy. And that Soprano kid was actually Anthony John, it turns out. So forget it!

Oxide

The name of one of the Pang brothers, co-directors of films like The Eye. The other brother: Danny. I cannot come up with an analogous sibling set.

Noël

I only just realized that Noël Carroll—he of, for instance, Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory—must've gotten a lot of "What Child Is This" growing up. I mean, his name is Christmas Carol. Or even just Carol Carol. Noël, Noël, Noël, Noël...

Lucy

Frank Tashlin:

Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned

See James Davidson, "Flat-Nose, Stocky and Beautugly." The 17th century Nevaeh? Or maybe closer to the Wizard of Oz's full name: Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs. O.Z.P.I.N.H.E.A.D., meet U-J-C-H-D-F-T-T-H-B-D. Uj for short?

Cameron

This week's New Yorker profile of Tavi—not Tavie—Gevinson:

Steve Gevinson, Tavi's father, a tall, gawky man of about sixty, came downstairs, wearing pleated shorts and a polo shirt. (Everyone in the family wears glasses.) He shook hands with one of the Barbie cameramen, who introduced himself as Cameron.

"That's a good name for a cameraman!" Steve said.

Kenward

Kenward Elmslie: another member of the New York School who doubles as a preparatory academy.

Roland

Gosh, one of my great fears is being in seminar and referring to some essay by Ronald Barthes.

Augusta

The actor Kevin McCarthy just died. His first wife's name was Augusta. This, too, was the name of his maternal grandmother, who raised him and his siblings. Majestic!

Reuel

The actor Kevin McCarthy just died. Did you know that he was the brother of Mary McCarthy? I certainly did not. Intrigued by this new trivial bit, I did some reading up on his sister. She had a son named Reuel. Did you know that Reuel is Hebrew, meaning "friend of God"? I certainly did not. I had never heard of this name before tonight. It is one of the R's in J.R.R. Tolkien. Anyway, what I get from this is that you could have a son named Reuel and a son named Raoul—two names that look similar but are of wholly distinct origins. And a third, Royal.

Kevin

The actor Kevin McCarthy just died. He was 96. It's weird to think you could have an elderly relative named Kevin.

Fairfield

I originally intended for this post to be about Jane, a name I find immediately evocative—not of plainness, but of "Jane Awake," i.e., of Frank O'Hara and Jane Freilicher. Instead, I turn to another New York School painter, Fairfield Porter, who sounds like a prep school.

Willibald

As Liam is derived from William, might Libald emerge out of Willibald? And then, if you struggled with your liquid consonants, thus he becomes Ribald.

Gwynplaine

Why, you ask, do I persist/insist on mocking the Welsh? Why not, say, the Irish? I mean, Deirbhile? Amhlaoibh? Fionnghuala? Come on! And why do Igbo names (Chiazagomekpele, Iweobiegbulam, Uwaezuoke) get away with what they get away with? I have no good answer. Seriously, though. Gwynplaine.

Dudu

From Haaretz:

Sabbar Kashur wanted to be a person, a person like everybody else. But as luck would have it, he was born Palestinian. It happens. His chances of being accepted as a human being in Israel are nil. Married and a father of two, he wanted to work in Jerusalem, his city, and maybe also have an affair or a quickie on the side. That happens too.

He knew that he had no chance with the Jews, so he adopted another name for himself, Dudu. He didn't have curly hair, but he went by Dudu just the same. That's how everyone knew him. That's how you know a few other Arabs too: the car-wash guy you call Rafi, the stairwell cleaner who goes by Yossi, the supermarket deliveryman you know as Moshe.

What's wrong? Is it only fearsome Shin Bet interrogators like "Capt. George" and "Abu Faraj" who are allowed to adopt names from other peoples? Are only Israelis who emigrate allowed to invent new identities? Only the Yossi from Hadera who became Joe in Miami, the Avraham from Bat Yam who became Abe in Los Angeles? ...

Selvagee

White Jacket, also Melville:

One of these two quarter-deck lords went among the sailors by a name of their own devising—Selvagee. Of course, it was intended to be characteristic; and even so it was.

In frigates, and all large ships of war, when getting under weigh, a large rope, called a messenger used to carry the strain of the cable to the capstan; so that the anchor may be weighed, without the muddy, ponderous cable, itself going round the capstan. As the cable enters the hawse-hole, therefore, something must be constantly used, to keep this travelling chain attached to this travelling messenger; something that may be rapidly wound round both, so as to bind them together. The article used is called a selvagee. And what could be better adapted to the purpose? It is a slender, tapering, unstranded piece of rope prepared with much solicitude; peculiarly flexible; and wreathes and serpentines round the cable and messenger like an elegantly-modeled garter-snake round the twisted stalks of a vine. Indeed, Selvagee is the exact type and symbol of a tall, genteel, limber, spiralising exquisite. So much for the derivation of the name which the sailors applied to the Lieutenant.

Malia

I previously reflected on Sasha, as in Obama. But, really, shouldn't we let Rick Warren have the last word?

Allison

Change one letter and you have Addison. And change just a bit of that and you get Edison. Funny how that works.

Gwillym

Unsurprisingly—given the barely buried "will" and our familiarity with names like Gwyneth—the Welsh form of William. But still.

Peregrine

Peregrine was the first name of a female contestant on the truly excruciating Bravo reality show Work of Art. She was a hippie, or her parents were, and thus I presume she was named for the bird. Compare, for instance, Falcon, the first name of the Balloon Boy (puzzling, however, are his brothers' names, Bradford and Ryo). Traditionally, though, Peregrine is a masculine name—meaning traveler, and borne, as if a cross, by several saints.

Since I'm on the topic (of raptors), I learned not too long ago—though perhaps falsely—that Fawkes, as in Guy, means hawk, or something of the sort—but sort of similar to falcon, in its way. Yet the etymology of hawk is distinct from that of falcon, to wit:

Middle English hauk, from Old English hafoc; akin to Old High German habuh hawk, Russian kobets a falcon

vs.

Middle English faucoun, falcon, from Anglo-French faucon, from Late Latin falcon-, falco, probably from Latin falc-, falx...

Sleet

From Moby-Dick:

In the fire-side narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled 'A Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;' in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented crow's-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good craft. He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in honor of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we may beget.

Peleg

= Peg-leg + Pelé. Though Pelé + peg-leg = hardly Pelé no more.

Newgate

Is this name even a name? What's in a name? Rose, rose, rose, etc.

Newgate Callender used to review crime fiction for the New York Times Book Review. What a funny name, thought I, when a back-of-a-book-blurb by Mr. or Ms. Callender was pointed out to me—indeed, an ideal name to chew on.

Ah, but this was before I learned about the Newgate Calendar, the moralizing tales of felons and their hangings that were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

So, you got me. I don't especially care about pen names, though I am especially fond of using the nom de plume of one Samuel Clemens to rejoin those who disparage wordplay (and who cite his famous dismissal of puns while making their case).

Elijah

David Brooks thinks this name is abusively pretentious. But, in fact, it's just obviously indication you're Muslim.

Claudia

One thing you can expect to see very little of here are the meanings of names, because I mostly don't give a damn. Calvin means bald, Cameron means crooked nose, and Claudia means lame—but surely the hairless, Jewish, and crippled deserve some recognition, too.

Bonthrop

Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography:

A few minutes later, they became engaged.

The morning after, as they sat at breakfast, he told her his name. It was Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, Esquire.

"I knew it!" she said, for there was something romantic and chivalrous, passionate, melancholy, yet determined about him which went with the wild, dark–plumed name—a name which had, in her mind, the steel–blue gleam of rooks' wings, the hoarse laughter of their caws, the snake–like twisting descent of their feathers in a silver pool, and a thousand other things which will be described presently.

"Mine is Orlando," she said. He had guessed it. For if you see a ship in full sail coming with the sun on it proudly sweeping across the Mediterranean from the South Seas, one says at once, "Orlando," he explained.

LaceDarius

I've heard and read many cryptoracist and/or cryptoclassist screeds about names in my day—and, not-so-arguably, two of my recent posts rank high on that list. But this Washington Post piece about the basketball player LaceDarius Dunn, published this past April, isn't one of them.

Leigh

Beverly Cleary, Dear Mr. Henshaw:

Like I've been telling you, I'm Leigh Botts. Leigh Marcus Botts. I don't like Leigh for a name because some people don't know how to say it or think it's a girl's name. Mom says with a last name like Botts I need something fancy but not too fancy. My Dad's name is Bill and my Mom's name is Bonnie. She says Bill and Bonnie Botts sounds like something out of a comic strip.

Breighleigh

That's Breigh as in weigh (see: Breighdn) and leigh as in Leigh (see: Beverly Cleary's Dear Mr. Henshaw). Actually, what I want to write about is not this spelling, but rather this one: Braylee.

Jaden, Brayden, Caden—I would not name my own child this or that, but I could see why someone might. Jacob is popular, and Jason was; likewise, you have your Brandons and your Brendans, and so on. Laura Wattenberg has covered the popularity of the final "n" quite well.

And though I prefer Katie to Kaylee—and Ashley to Ashlee, if I had to choose—I do not exactly object to the second option. A rose is a rose is a rose, and it is what it is.

But Braylee, Braylee may very well be to euphony what asparagus is to pee, were that analogy in fact sensical; I read it, and all I see is "bray," and I hear it, and all I hear is donkey. (An aside, a fun fact: Eeyore is Hee-haw said with a Cockney accent.) Just terrible, just asinine.

Ree

Ree is the name of the main character in Winter's Bone, a movie that is pretty good and often wonderful. But this is not a website for off-handed film reviews (see: Caden). No, I am here to talk about Ree.

There is a game I sometimes play. Ree would go along swimmingly with it. In the game, I pick a consonant or two and try to find, if I stick a vowel before or between or after 'em, whether it makes a name or not. And I do it with all the vowels. So, for instance, Ree:

Ra — is sort of a name. Would go well with sister Soleil and brother Heliodoro.
Ree — see above.
Rye — not a name. Ryo, though, that's a character from Street Fighter II. Correction: Ryu.
Roe — the name of my second-grade teacher. I do not know if Roe was a nickname.
Rue — a name, though Rue McClanahan was born Eddi-Rue.

A perennial favorite is J---n. To wit:

Jan
Jane
Jean
Jen
Gin
Joan
John
June

A vowel that doesn't quite work is the one that'd yield us—here the spelling rather escapes me—Jyne (see: Ina). And Juhn, whatever that is. Also, permit me to note that nearly every name listed above, save Gin (as in, you know, Virginia) and June, is a derivation of John (assuming, that is, that Jen is short for Jenny, originally a nickname for Jane, not Jennifer).

Breighdn

Here, in alphabetical order, are all the 2005 spellings of Breighdn, male and female, as recorded by the Social Security Administration:
Bradan
Bradden
Braden
Bradin
Bradon
Bradyn
Braedan
Braeden
Braedin
Braedon
Braedyn
Braeton
Braidan
Braiden
Braidon
Braidyn
Braydan
Brayden
Braydin
Braydon
Braydn
Braydyn
Brayton
Breydan
Breyden
Breydon

Please let me know if there are any I've overlooked, or if my alphabetizing leaves something to be desired.

Thalassa

I must just be really into the names of women associated with plants. I don't mean Susan, as in Black-Eyed Susan, or Daisy, I mean Watershine, as in Watershine Woods, who deals with garlic, and now Thalassa, as in Thalassa Cruso, host of the television program (and book series) Making Things Grow—"The Julia Child of Horticulture."

Kirbyjon

Kirbyjon Caldwell officiated Jenna Bush's wedding, the one that took place in front of the giant cross, not the one in Rhinebeck, NY, to a Jew.

Jill

Of all the weird things—that Heidi Montag's plastic surgeon died after driving his car off a cliff—while tweeting—about his border collie—who survived the crash with minor injuries—the weirdest is that dog—Jill—is named after his girlfriend—Charmaine Jill Blake. With Frank Ryan, so goes romance.

Watershine

Watershine Woods is a garlic farmer. You can read about her in Garlic, Garlic, Garlic by Linda and Fred Griffith.

There's also Maybelline Watershine Pure Lipstick.

Gurdon

I just read a memoir published in the latest (September 2010) issue of Harper's. Roxana Robinson names her uncles: Sammy, Gurdon, William, Henry. Gurdon! I didn't place this as a variant of Gordon until I looked it up. It seemed more a mutation of Gudrun.

Addendum: my mother informs me she once knew a man named Gurdon Waddles. He was very nice, and no one thought his name was funny.

Zane

When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, there was some twerp—a fourth-grader, probably, with a nub of a rat-tail—who was a little hotshot basketball player, and I was having none of it. My way of trash-talking him was going up next to him when he was at the water fountain and whispering, with as much cool menace as I could muster, "I bet I can guess your name." I'd overheard someone shout it at him, maybe even someone as embarrassing as his mother.

"Oh, yeah?" he said. "What is it?"

"West," I said.

But it wasn't West, it turned out, and later he probably stole the ball from me or was unimpressed by my left-handed dribbling or something equally impertinent. His name was Zane.

Or maybe I guessed his name was Zane, and it was West. I no longer remember which way it went.

West, the last name of that guy who played Batman. Zane, the last name of my downstairs neighbor, the one who always called up my mother to tell her I was being too loud.

I'm sorry I guessed his name wrong, but I'm glad it was Zane, not West. Unless it was the other way around, in which case I'm doubly sorry.

Jackie

Hélène Cixous, Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint:

...of Jackie and of Jacques, Jacques with que and with s, Jacques with the silent sign of the plural in French and Jackie with his i and his mute e, his feminine silenced and his American ck, Jackie a period name, the period when Algeria's Jewish families, naive, native, were infatuated with foreign names especially the Anglo-American ones. They just loved Jack, William, Pete, and the vocables conjured up by fantasies of a promised land other than France, longed for but increasingly explicitly hostile.... So he was elected Jackie, as my grandfather names his Oran hat shop Highlife pronounced "Iglif," Jackie like Jackie Koogan the Kidd, Jackiderrida, that's him all right, take a gander not everyone sees him. Jackid in his outsize cap, always ready to pick a fight. Jackie like j'acquis get it? and jacqui get who? ...

Hal

Hal and Hank, as in the Steinbrenner sons, are both diminutives of Henry (see also: Harry). In the case of the Steinbrenners, one is a Henry, the other a Harold.

Benedict

I'll say it—that (literary, theatrical, cinematic, televisual) works that call attention to the names of their characters, these are probably bad works. And I love names, so I must be right.

Take True Blood, which is definitely bad. And, what do you know, this is a show that repeatedly has called attention to its characters' names. I remember, for instance, Tara remarking on her name being indication of how her mother abused her, it being also the name of a plantation and all; and recently we had an exchange about Crystal—was she named for champagne or meth? And Eggs, he was so called because his name is Benedict. I know this because he told me.

Then again, I like Nabokov.

Then again again, I do not love Nabokov.