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was that there were far more 18-year-old (now 22-year-old) boys with names—and nicknames—that seemed a generation or so out-of-date than I would ever have expected.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.