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.

Ichabod

Ichabod, what a name
Kind of odd but nice just the same

Themistocleus

Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls:

 After another contest for the honour of yielding precedence, Chichikov succeeded in making his way (in zigzag fashion) to the dining-room, where they found awaiting them a couple of youngsters. These were Manilov's sons, and boys of the age which admits of their presence at table, but necessitates the continued use of high chairs. Beside them was their tutor, who bowed politely and smiled; after which the hostess took her seat before her soup plate, and the guest of honour found himself esconsed between her and the master of the house, while the servant tied up the boys' necks in bibs.

"What charming children!" said Chichikov as he gazed at the pair. "And how old are they?"

"The eldest is eight," replied Manilov, "and the younger one attained the age of six yesterday."

"Themistocleus," went on the father, turning to his first-born, who was engaged in striving to free his chin from the bib with which the footman had encircled it. On hearing this distinctly Greek name (to which, for some unknown reason, Manilov always appended the termination "eus"), Chichikov raised his eyebrows a little, but hastened, the next moment, to restore his face to a more befitting expression.

"Themistocleus," repeated the father, "tell me which is the finest city in France."

Upon this the tutor concentrated his attention upon Themistocleus, and appeared to be trying hard to catch his eye. Only when Themistocleus had muttered "Paris" did the preceptor grow calmer, and nod his head.

"And which is the finest city in Russia?" continued Manilov.

Again the tutor's attitude became wholly one of concentration.

"St. Petersburg," replied Themistocleus.

"And what other city?"

"Moscow," responded the boy.

"Clever little dear!" burst out Chichikov, turning with an air of surprise to the father. "Indeed, I feel bound to say that the child evinces the greatest possible potentialities."

"You do not know him fully," replied the delighted Manilov. "The amount of sharpness which he possesses is extraordinary. Our younger one, Alkid, is not so quick; whereas his brother—well, no matter what he may happen upon (whether upon a cowbug or upon a water-beetle or upon anything else), his little eyes begin jumping out of his head, and he runs to catch the thing, and to inspect it. For HIM I am reserving a diplomatic post. Themistocleus," added the father, again turning to his son, "do you wish to become an ambassador?"

"Yes, I do," replied Themistocleus, chewing a piece of bread and wagging his head from side to side.

At this moment the lacquey who had been standing behind the future ambassador wiped the latter's nose; and well it was that he did so, since otherwise an inelegant and superfluous drop would have been added to the soup.  

Elliott

From some old Elliott Smith bio: 

At some point in high school, he had started to be known to a few close friends as Elliott, which soon became his preferred name. Elliott recalled: "When I was in high school I hated my name and, um, somebody started calling me ... uh, Elliott, and I still haven't gotten it legally changed. ... I didn't like that my first name started with the same letter as my last name. That really irritated me. And also, like, there's no good versions of it, ya know like there's, Steven ... Steven is like sort of too ... hard to say, and kind of like, bookish. Steve is like ... like jockish, sorta. Big handsome Steve, big shirtless Steve, ya know, like football playin' blond haired Steve. Ya know? I didn't like it.". . . At one point, Elliott announced that his full new name was Elliott Stillwater Otter Smith. (The spelling of the name Elliott may have been derived from Elliott Street in Portland; it cuts diagonally through Ladd's Circle connecting to Division.)

N.B. Usually my portraits look nothing like anybody in particular. This one, though, I gotta say, reminds me of a certain E[l]liot[t] Spitzer.  

Elliott

Ann Beattie, Picturing Will:

He didn’t ask where she got a name like Elliott. People who had money often named baby girls for their uncles, deceased. Or they gave babies an important surname they didn’t want lost when a woman took her husband’s name—they put it first, like a person with a sweet tooth who eats the dessert before the meal. As a baby, did they call her Ellie?  

Quinn

I read Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy a few months ago. It was fine. Postmodernism Lite. A totally readable bunch of books. About a third as clever and profound as they think themselves to be, but I suppose that is still reasonably clever and/or profound. A case in point, from City of Glass:

 “It’s not that I dislike strangers per se. It’s just that I prefer not to speak to anyone who does not introduce himself. In order to begin, I must have a name.”

“But once a man gives you his name, he’s no longer a stranger.’ ‘

“Exactly. That’s why I never talk to strangers.”

Quinn had been prepared for this and knew how to answer. He was not going to let himself be caught. Since he was technically Paul Auster, that was the name he had to protect. Anything else, even the truth, would be an invention, a mask to hide behind and keep him safe.

“In that case,” he said, “I’m happy to oblige you. My name is Quinn.”

 “Ah,” said Stillman reflectively, nodding his head. “Quinn.”

 “Yes. Quinn. Q-U-I-N-N.”

“I see. Yes, yes, I see. Quinn. Hmmmm. Yes. Very interesting. Quinn. A most resonant word. Rhymes with twin, does it not?”

“That’s right. Twin.”

“And sin, too, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re not.”

“And also in—one n— or inn—two. Isn’t that so?”

“Exactly.”

“Hmmm. Very interesting. I see many possibilities for the word, this Quinn, this...quintessence...of quiddity. Quick, for example. And quill. And quack. And quirk. Hmmm. rhymes with grin. Not to speak of kin. Hmmm. Very interesting. And win. And fin. And gin. And pin. And tin. And bin. Hmmm. Even rhymes with djinn. Hmmm. And if you say it right, with been. Hmmm. Yes, very interesting. I like your name, enormously, Mr. Quinn. It flies off in so many little directions at once.”

“Yes, I’ve often noticed that myself.”

“Most people don’t pay attention to such things. They think of words as stones, as great unmovable objects with no life, as monads that never change.”

“Stones can change. They can be worn away by wind or water. They can erode. They can be crushed. You can turn them into shards, or gravel, or dust.” 

Now, one might contend that this exchange ultimately differs little from the passage I quoted from Lorrie Moore’s Anagrams a couple weeks ago, the one that ended with the thing about “meaning, if it existed at all”—and, sure, you would be right that both writers here use names to advance a thesis about words. But where I find Moore’s observations wry and charming (mostly—A Gate at the Stairs was dreck), Auster’s are, I think, ponderously absurd.

And, ’sides, I just disagree with him! For how can I not, when Frank O’Hara’s “Today” will always be my favorite poem?

         Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
         You really are beautiful! Pearls,
         harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
         the stuff they've always talked about

         still makes a poem a surprise!
         These things are with us every day
         even on beachheads and biers. They
         do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.

Glenn

It has always delighted me that Glenn Beck (b. 1964) and Glenn Greenwald (b. 1967) share a first name. However different they might be otherwise, they nonetheless have in common parents who admired John Glenn—or who, at the very least, unwittingly tapped into the zeitgeist he wrought.   

Sofonisba

I read Sanford Schwartz’s “The Moment of Moroni,” which appears in August 16, 2012, issue of the New York Review of Books, ’cuz I thought it might have something to with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Turns out it was just about some painter dude. I was pleasantly surprised, then, when, in his discussion of the 2004 “Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy” exhibit at the Met, Schwartz remarked, “Among the few painters to make immediately distinct impressions were Moroni and the slightly younger Sofonisba Anguissola, who was represented by riveting paintings and drawings of herself and of her family members.”

Sofonisba! Sure, it’s no Sophronia, but it’ll do.

Rob

The Russian word for slave is раб—that is, rab, or, well, Rob.

Fear not, my dear Roberts and Robertos and Robertas and Robins! Just remember that whosoever should think this license to tease you is herself or himself a (and say this with me in your best Joisey accent) Slavic-speaker. 

Camden

When one frequents baby name blogs and discussion boards, as I do, one begins to be able to anticipate the jokes. A classic: all that the parents of infant Holdens demonstrate is that they never read a novel after high school (the phonies!). Another joke I see quite a bit comes in the form of observing the relative popularity of Camden (which ranked #160 in 2011, with 2,391 baby boys by that name) and Trenton (which got as high as #178 in 2000 and again in 2007; 1,811 births in 2011). That is the whole joke, that observation, though I suppose it should be accompanied by an eye roll or a finger wag for maximum effect. Let me put this another way: Trenton, by being around the 178th most popular male name in America, is about as popular as Gary was two decades ago.

Of course, no one would accuse a parent of a Gary of naming their sweet, darling baby after Gary, Indiana. (Not even Gary Indiana’s parents!)

Trenton and Camden, on the other hand, immediately—well, for those who are rolling theirs eyes and wagging their figures—summon up two of the poorest cities in New Jersey. This is not the reason for their popularity, of course. We can attribute that to the fact that they both end in the letter n (think Mason, Jackson, Landon) and  can double as surnames (think Mason, Jackson, Landon). Trenton has the added bonus of yielding the previously established name Trent as a nickname, as Jackson yields Jack or Lillian Lily, while Camden conjures up visions of Cameron and Caden.

For those who remain unconvinced by the appeal of these names, I offer little assurance. Take comfort, I suppose, in your refined taste, your superior knowledge. You are a good person.

And here is a new joke for you. It might require a little practice, but I am sure you will soon be a pro. “Trenton? Camden?” you start off with. “Why those cities? If you’re going to name your little one after some Garden State hellhole, why not choose an especially wealthy hellhole? Names should be aspirational, like Bentley and Tiffany, or like Toms River, like Rumson, like Teterboro, like Ho-Ho-Kus. What is wrong with a toddling Sea Girt, a puckish Tewksbury, a scrumptious Tenafly, a swaddled Cranbury, a wee Wyckoff, a colic Mahwah?”

Your interlocutor, if he or she is hip to your jive, can then chime in: “Aspirational, schmaspirational. There is nothing wrong with the culture of our country’s lumpenproletariat. They must learn to love themselves as much as they love the Insane Clown Posse. So, on Camden, on Trenton, I say! May your best buds be Perth Amboy and Egg Harbor and Tavistock! May the girl you knock up between paint huffs be Orange! May your first-born be . . . Elizabeth!” 

Grant

The recent post “Quiz: America’s Local Name Styles” by Laura Wattenberg at her Baby Name Wizard blog—

I've collected the top 3 most characteristic names for girls and boys from eight states [Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Wisconsin]. These aren't necessarily the most popular choice, but rather the names most disproportionately popular in that state compared to the rest of the country. To me, these names feel like a tour of eight distinct parts of the country. Can you match the names to the states? 

—is exactly the sort of thing that sets my heart a-pitter-pat. Required reading! Scroll down to comment #23 for the answers and a follow-up quiz, in which Grant is showcased.

Lancel

The vagaries of taste! A line of dialogue from the third episode of the first season of Game of Thrones:  “Lancel. Gods, what a stupid name. Lancel Lannister. Who named you, some half-wit with a stutter?”

One wonders what—in a world populated by Cerseis and Galbarts and Tobhos and Viseryses and Waymars and Theons—makes Lancel any stupider than any other name. Is it simply its pairing with Lannister that singles it out? If his name were Lancel Stark or Lancel Baratheon, would he be subject to the same derision? And if Theon Greyjoy were named Theon Baratheon, would he, too, fall prey to Robert’s lacerating wit?

(My brother, a few weeks ago: “I was going to live-tweet my reading of Game of Thrones sentence by sentence, but I misspelled a character’s name in the very first one.”)

Naum

From Benjamin Hale’s “The Last Distinction?: Talking to the Animals” in this month’s Harper’s:

 Proving that an animal could be “taught” to communicate by language—as narrowly conceived by [Noam] Chomsky—became a holy grail for language researchers. Herbert Terrace sought this prize by way of Nim Chimpsky.

There is something glib and thoughtless about bestowing on another conscious being a pun for a name. Glibness and thoughtlessness, as one sees in the documentary [Project Nim], are just a couple of Terrace’s winning traits, and Nim Chimpsky’s name was only the first indignity in a life full of indignity and suffering, which is the main subject of Marsh’s film. 

You know, I don’t know. I just don’t know. What separates “bestowing on another conscious being a pun for a name” from “naming your child after yourself or another loved one”? I just don’t see there being all that much of difference between having yourself generations of Anthonys and what Hale perceives as symptomatic of Terrace’s abusiveness.  Is Ramon Jr. different in degree or in kind from Nomar?

My partner, Jacob, was named after his great-grandfather Israel—and might we not think of wrestling with angels as simply another term for the highest form of wordplay?

Maybe I am sensitive here. As I have described elsewhere, it was not until the seventh or eighth grade that I came to like my own first and middle names, Hannah Maitland, and this was only because, as I then realized—I was attending a friend’s dance performance at Dance Theater Workshop, this I so clearly remember—“Hannah Maitland” contains the word “animate” and, in full, nearly rhymes with “animation.” How could I dislike a name, I reasoned, that seemed to forecast my lifelong obsession with cartoons?

And does not the fact that she calls them Roc and Roe singlehandedly redeem Mariah Carey’s decision to name her son and daughter Moroccan and Monroe?

I think, too, about a name that, like Noam and Nim—and name—begins with an n sound and ends in an m one: Naum. I have once before discussed it in conjunction with Noam, but I should I clarify that, as far as I can tell, the two names are etymologically distinct. Noam is like Naomi, while Naum, the alternative spelling of Naoum notwithstanding, is not. But I would not look askance at you if, say, you decided to name your son Naum in commemoration of his great-grandfather Noam. Would that be glib?

I, meanwhile, would choose to name a son Naum for a wholly different, but no less (it would seem) glib, reason: its resemblance to “zaum”—in English, “transreason,” “transration,” or (my preferred translation, courtesy of Paul Schmidt) “beyonsense.” Working backwards, that would make Naum mean not “comforter” but something like “in mind” or “to[wards] reason” or “in a sense” (“innocence”? “incensed”?).

Ah, show me a monkey capable of such reasoning and I will gladly be his uncle!

Leonard

I have never watched The Big Bang Theory. I will never watch The Big Bang Theory.  But, look, you tell me that the show is about two nerds named Sheldon and Leonard, one of whom lusts after a woman named Penny, and there is no way I don’t automatically compute that as, “This show is about two Jews and a shiksa.”

I don’t care that Sheldon and Leonard were supposedly named after Sheldon Leonard—a Jew of course, by the way—and  I don’t care that one of the show’s creators—the one who also wrote the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles theme song—is Jewish. These things don’t change the facts. The nerdiest Leonard there will ever be? Leonard Nimoy—Jewish! Virtually every famous Sheldon except Sheldon Turnipseed? Jewish! Oh, and I don’t care, furthermore, whether or not the characters themselves are in fact Jewish: they are Jewish. 

Serious

Renata Adler, Speedboat: 

 At the woman’s college where I went, we had distinguished faculty in everything, digs at Nuoro and Mycenae. We had a quality of obsession in our studies. For professors who had quarrelled with their wives at breakfast, those years of bright-eyed young women, never getting any older, must have been a trial. The head of the history department once sneezed into his best student’s honors thesis. He slammed it shut. It was ultimately published. When I was there, a girl called Cindy Melchior was immensely fat. She wore silk trousers and gilt mules. One day, in the overheated classroom, she laid aside her knitting and lumbered to the window, which she opened. Then she lumbered back. “Do you think,” the professor asked, “you are so graceful?” He somehow meant it kindly. Cindy wept. That year, Cindy’s brother Melvin phoned me. “I would have called you sooner,” he said, “but I had the most terrible eczema.” All the service staff on campus in those days were black. Many of them were followers of Father Divine. They took new names in the church. I remember the year when a maid called Serious Heartbreak married a janitor called Universal Dictionary. At the meeting of the faculty last fall, the college president, who is new and male, spoke of raising money. A female professor of Greek was knitting—and working on Linear B, with an abacus before her. In our time, there was a vogue for madrigals. Some of us listened, constantly, to a single record. There was a phrase we could not decipher. A professor of symbolic logic, a French Canadian, had sounds that matched but a meaning that seemed unlikely: Sheep are no angels; come upstairs. A countertenor explained it, after a local concert: She’d for no angel’s comfort stay. Correct, but not so likely either.