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.