Teddie

J. Hoberman reviews Siegfried Kracauer’s American Writings: Essays on Film and Popular Culture (eds. Johannes von Moltke and Kristy Rawson):

American Writings includes the endearing “Talk With Teddie,” Kracauer’s notes following a 1960 visit with Theodor Adorno and his wife Gretel. According to Friedel (as Kracauer’s German friends called him), he jousted with Adorno over the logic of “Utopian thought” and, invoking Benjamin, told his friend that his vaunted dialectic was like a film consisting “exclusively of close-ups.” (Would that be Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc?) 

“You cannot upset Teddie,” Kracauer writes. “He grabs everything he is told, digests it and its consequences and then takes over in a spirit of superiority.” Still, he concludes, “in spite of its emptiness, Teddie’s output appears to be concrete and substantial. This semblance of fullness probably results from his aesthetic sensitivity.” Would it be unkind to make the same observation regarding Kracauer? 

 Oh, gosh. What are the chances I could get the Disney Channel to greenlight a series called Frankfurt Babies (or, duh, The Frankfurt Preschool), in which a bediapered and bebinkied Teddie and Friedel, together with their pals Wally B, Herbie, Horkie, and Habie, get themselves into (and out of) all modes of scrapes?

Ilan

 A few weekends ago I overheard two similar conversations.

In the first, an acquaintance was explaining how to pronounce his wife’s name: “Elana. EE-lana. Like ‘e-mail.’ ” In the second, a woman I had just met was describing how her three-year-old daughter, Elena, was adjusting to preschool: “ ‘No,’ she tells all her teachers. ‘It is e-LEH-na.’ ”

Now, don’t get me wrong. Our three-year-old Elena, as the bilingual daughter of two Mexican-Americans, undoubtedly bears the Spanish variant of Helen. Our Elana, meanwhile, who I know to be Jewish, probably bears an alternate transliteration of Ilana, the feminine form of Ilan, which means “tree” in Hebrew. (Elena Kagan, on the other hand, is almost certainly the bearer of the Russian Helen cognate; that she has a brother named Irving is indicative of the sorts of shifts that have taken place in the naming styles of American Jews in the past half-century.)

Nonetheless, these two incidents led me to reflect on how dearly some hold to the particular pronunciation of their names, and a how single vowel is enough to upend their sense of self. Again, don’t get me wrong—I understand that impulse, that need to dig in one’s heels, for indeed not a day goes by that I myself do not fall prey to a narcissism of small differences or have to say, “There is an aitch at the end,” or, “It is a palindrome.” Ilan should not be confused with élan. Milan, Spain, is not Milan, Ohio.

But what, I wonder, if it were?  

Edwina

Two memories:

1. Going grocery shopping with my mother, and her giving me a quarter at the end to get a gum ball or a toy or a fake tattoo from one of the machines near the exit; choosing the one with Bart Simpson on it; getting something, can’t remember what, wrapped in Simpsons trivia. Q: What is the name of Bart’s teacher? A: Edna Crabapple. Thinking this was the funniest name ever. I must have only recently learned to read. 
2. Acquiring two hand-me-down stuffed animals: two dogs. The big one we named Harvey, because its previous owner loved rabbits. The little one, we decided, was his wife—but what could her name possibly be? Didn’t Bart Simpson’s teacher have a funny name? A real mouthful? Ed-something. Something-na. Edwina, that was it.  

Elif

Elif Batuman, The Possessed:

Among the not very numerous theoretical texts I read as a literature major, one that made an especially strong impression on me was Foucault’s short essay on Don Quixote in The Order of Things, the one that likens the tall, skinny, weird-looking hidalgo to “a sign, a long, thin graphism, a letter that has just escaped from the open pages of a book.” I immediately identified with this description because elif, the Turkish word for alif or aleph—the first letter of the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets—is drawn as a straight line. My parents chose this name for me because I was an unusually long and skinny baby (I was born one month early).

Ead.,  “Stage Mothers”:

 A few years ago, a reporter asked Ümmiye if she knew the meaning of her name. She didn’t, and wasn’t pleased to learn that ümmi is Arabic for “illiterate.” (It’s one of the epithets of Muhammad, who is said to have been illiterate at the time he received the prophecies.) Üm is also the Arabic word for “mother,” and thus the two preoccupations of Ümmiye’s dramatic work—education and motherhood—are prefigured in her name. 

[...]

“Wool Doll,” the movie that Ümmiye finished shooting in the spring, is set among the Yörük, some thirty years ago. It tells the story of a mother and daughter, Hatice and Elif, who lead a life of oppression at the hands of Hatice’s mother-in-law. (Many of the daughters in Ümmiye’s plays are called Elif, which is the Turkish word for the first letter of the Arabic alphabet: to say that someone “doesn’t know elif” is to say that the person is illiterate.)

Igrushcha

 Sergei Eisenstein, “Names”:

 Somewhere, a very long time ago, Chukovsky very wittily defended the Futurists.

He found the same abstract charm in their euphonious nonsense as we find in Longfellow’s enumeration of Indian tribes. For us they too are utterly devoid of any sense, and their charm lies solely in the rhythm and phonetic features (in Hiawatha: “Came Comanches...” etc.).

Sometimes, when I start remembering things, I lapse into an utterly abstract chain of names and surnames.

The Pension Koppitz.

Igrushcha (the Germanized pronunciation of the diminutive of Igor). And Arsik (from Arseny, a wanton, dumpy, pallid and capricious individual of my age) from Moscow. Frau Schaub, with her little dog—and the ruddy-cheeked, bare-kneed Tolya Schaub.

Esther and Frieda.

Maka and Viba Strauch.

The architect, Felsko, from Riga, with his daughter—an aging spinster. And Mr. Torchiani, who had married her three years earlier. Frau Frisk from Norway, with the strange large earrings, brooches and rings.

Sapico-y-Sarra Lucqui, the Spanish consul.

Caspar

Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady:

“Caspar Goodwood,” Ralph continued—“it’s a rather striking name.”

“I don’t care anything about his name. It might be Ezekiel Jenkins, and I should say the same.”  

Emily

My second entry inspired by Jay Leyda’s Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson is meant to assure all the Emilys born between 1996 and 2007, inclusive, that they are not alone:

Zebina

A riveting passage from the opening section of Jay Leyda’s Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson (1960), made even more riveting if you are able to imagine that the names here refer not to specific people but to the names themselves:

Ostracized Harriet and paralyzed Zebina—daughter and son of Luke Montague and Irene Dickinson (sister of ED’s grandfather)—occupied a peculiar but important place in Amherst life and in the lives of their Dickinson cousins. Neither brother nor sister married, yet both were near marriage (2 Aug. 30; 20 Nov. 39), and the few documentary scraps that touch them deepen rather than clarify their mystery. For example, what were “the peculiar circumstances” of the Dickinson family referred to by Zebina (12 Oct. 31)? What was Harriet’s sin that deprived her of the communion of the church for six months (16 Jan. 45)? [...] ED’s earliest extant letter (18 April 42) mentions Zebina’s “fit,” and he reappears throughout her correspondence. His abundant contributions of comedy and history to the local press (30 Oct. 50; 10 Oct. 56; 2 Jan. 60) gave her at least one literary cousin. The verbose Personal History of Zebina C. Montague was prepared for a reunion of the Class of ’32. [...] In Around a Village Green, Mary Adele Allen describes a visit to the Montagues in 1872, after Harriet broke her hip: “As I entered the house, Mr. Zebina sat in a gay-flowered dressing-gown, his bright eyes aglow.”

Helen

The name, more properly, is HELEN. All caps, sans serif. This is a reasonable approximation of how my four-year-old first cousin, once removed, writes her name, at least from time to time.

Here, then, are some of the other ways she writes her name:

HNELE
HELNE
HEENL
HLNEE
HNLEE 
HLENE
HENEL
HEELN

Mogscha

This was, supposedly, the first name of the father of a certain Arthur Leonard Rosenberg, that is, Tony Randall. Now—and, granted, I haven’t yet checked the Dictionary of Ashkenazi Given Names, which might quickly disabuse me of the notion I am about to advance—but I do immediately wonder, upon encountering such a name, if it weren’t the product of a typographical error somewhere done the line.

Ralzemond

A friend asked me to investigate the origins of this name, which was borne by the man, a Ralzemond D. Parker, who filed patents like no. 1312572, for a “Secret-Signaling System.”

I am sorry to report that neither The Oxford Names Companion nor my expert Googling skills yielded much of anything about from whence this name might have come. Denmark? I cannot say. England? Perhaps. The Netherlands? Could very well be. I mean, “mond” means “mouth” in Dutch. (Other translations, according to Google Translate, include: opening, orifice, muzzle, kisser, aperture, embouchure, rictus, potato trap, outfall, potato box.) Let your imagination go hog-wild!

I did, though, turn up a biography of one Ralzemond A. Parker. I copy below the stuff I dug just ’cuz and put in bold those things with onomastic implications:

Ralzemond A. Parker was born in 1843, the son of Asher Bull Parker and Harriet Castle.  [...] Parker also apparently sold saws or worked with saw patents. [...] Later, he worked as Henry Ford’s patent lawyer and led the fight for automobile patent rights. [...] Parker was involved with the GAR [oh, if only this said GWAR — ed.], Oakland County Temperance Association, the Michigan State Chess Association, and the Union Veterans’ Patriotic League. Parker married Sarah Electa Drake, the daughter of Flemon Drake, M.D. [...] Some of his furniture was given to the Royal Oak Historical Society. Ralzemond is a family name which continues to be actively used among his descendants.

Things we can safely assume: 1) the “A” in Ralzemond A. Parker is “Asher”; 2) the “D” in Ralzemond D. Parker is “Drake.”

Things I amuse myself with assuming: 1) I, a Castle on my maternal grandmother’s side, am related to Ralzemond A. Parker.

Snowden

There are a handful of names to which I am irrationally drawn: I like how they look or I like how they sound, although I couldn’t give you an explanation any which way as to why. I am almost embarrassed to list these names, for fear of losing every last drop of my already parched credibility, but I also recognize that that same credibility thrives on honesty. So, in the interest of full disclosure, here are some of the names I like for no reason at all: Hart, Sally, Cloudesley, Snowden. The last of these is a new fixation. I should, I think, find it totally reprehensible, for it is little more than another awful transplanted surname with the added bonus of the ultimate feature of the loathsome Caden and the foul Camden—and yet time and again I catch myself sighing dreamily, Snowden...

Steve

Another thing about watching mid-century American animation, before I forget: you can, on the one hand, get a little cross-eyed from all the monosyllabic first names in the credits, but, on the other, you learn a little something about how men born around 1900 or 1910 were named and called.

So what if I can’t always keep my Arts (Landy, Riley, Stevens, Babbitt...) or Milts (Kahl, Gray, Banta, Gross, Schaffer...) or Kens (Anderson, O’Connor, Peterson, Hultgren...) straight—it is good to know they were out there, right?

And were these fellows born today, they would be probably go by Arthur and Kenneth (or Kenward) and Milton, full names (William instead of Bill, Robert instead of Bob) being a trend and all. That said, one thing that I encountered—and that, indeed, surprised me—in the two years I spent teaching undergraduates in Iowa was that there were far more 18-year-old (now 22-year-old) boys with names—and nicknames—that seemed a generation or so out-of-date than I would ever have expected. No Bills or Bobs, but a Glenn here, a Rick there, not to mention more than a few Steves.

I found myself thinking back to 1990. Was this student, the one bragging before class about how wasted he had been or was going to become, always called Steve? Even as a squishy little baby?

To call a baby Steve even as long as a couple decades ago seems unfathomable. And now? Are there any baby Steves? Most, I imagine, are simply Stevens, or Stevies, or—should their parents be particularly winsome—Stevedore. 

Heck

Were some of my previous entries not sufficiently clear on this matter, I watch a lot of cartoons.

This past week, for example, I took in a ton of Tex Avery’s MGM shorts.

One starts to notice things. That, for instance, Millionaire Droopy (1956) is identical to Wags to Riches (1949), except that it is in CinemaScope—and that its backgrounds have been updated to match the nineteen-fifties. Hence—

—gives way to—

—and so on.

One notices, too, the credits. The names that repeat, reappear. Tex. Fred. Bob.

And, my favorite—Heck. As in Heck Allen, as in Henry Wilson Allen, also known as Will Henry and Clay Fisher.

Heck! Add it, I insist, to your list of diminutives of Henry.

Hell

Last spring I was flipping through Ivor Montagu’s With Eisenstein in Hollywood (1969) when my eyes happened to settle on this image—

—How so very strange!, I thought. What was Hell doing in Chaplin’s pool, and whosoever knew that Hell was a woman?

Ah, but how quickly our fancies dissipate: Hell, it turns out, was born Eileen Hellstern.

Yet, lucky for me, a new fancy soon congealed, for while it is clear that Hell Montagu’s nickname was derived from her maiden name, one might also imagine an instance in which Hell could be short for Eileen, being as it is on occasion an Irish variant of Helen—making Mrs. Montagu Hell twice over, hell, the Hell of Hells.

Nomolos

“Nomolos is a very nice name,” says my five-year-old nephew, Solomon.

Michael

There was a dark time in my life—let us just call it “high school”—when I stayed up until 2 AM most every Saturday night watching two syndicated episodes of ER back-to-back. You wouldn’t have known it from looking at me—or, indeed, from talking with me, for I like to think I was very good at pretending to have watched every last minute of the previous weekend’s Saturday Night Live and Showtime at the Apollo—but at some point in my adolescence I developed very strong attachments to the plot lines that developed and cast members who emerged in those golden seasons between the departure of Sherry Stringfield and the return of Sherry Stringfield.

There were some notable exceptions, of course, the most notable being any and all plot lines involving the cast member Michael Michele, whom I remember only for how terrible she was and—what brings me here now—her name, which I always regarded as an adding-insult-to-injury kind of deal, like, "It is one thing that her first name is Michael, but then to have her last name be Michele!" 

But I am older, and wiser, and on reflection what was once puzzlement has slipped into something resembling admiration. It helps, too, that during an equally dark period of my life, my early twenties, I moved to Chicago for the first time, where I took this photograph:

I never would have believed you if you had told me when I was fifteen that I would one day seek solace in an intersection that evokes Dr. Peter Benton. But people change. They grow, they open themselves up to the possibility of new experiences and new takes on things. I still find Michael Michele's name remarkable, her acting less than passable, but nonetheless I thank her.