Jerome

I always cherished those rare occasions on Seinfeld when Elaine would call Jerry "Jerome."

Thayer

Thayer is just a non-name. No, that's not right. It is pretentious; it is insecure. Its insecurity is pretentious. If Thatcher is horrible because of Margaret, Thayer is horrible because it props up the same elitist, conservative, prep-school bullshit while doing away with any substance.

Thatcher

If I am not mistaken, the son of Bryan Voltaggio, a not-quite-Top Chef, is named Thatcher. Thatcher Voltaggio. How American a name is that?

Voltaggio aside, is Thatcher or Reagan a worse first name?

Bathilde

St. Bathilde is also Bathild, Bathilda, Baudour, or Bauthieult—or Varburgis.

Armistead

Lewis Addison Armistead was a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. La Amistad was the site of a slave mutiny.

Ina

Ida, Una—these I love. Ana—this I like. Ina—this rhymes with vagina.

Dulcibella

A little much, don't you think?

Praxiteles

Praxiteles! Prax...is! Here is a dude who talks the talk and walks the walk.

Gael

If you went to Yale sometimes you call it "jail," and if you're British maybe you'd spell it "gaol," but this is neither of those, nor is it to Gail or Gale what Jaime can be to Jamie; it is GAH-el, kind of like Kal-El, or Superman, but more like a variant of Gwenaël. Gail, by the way, comes from Abigail, and Gale means jovial—i.e., gay—and Dorothy Gale got carried away by her own last name.

Velvel

Vell, vell, vell.

This name means "wolf" in Yiddish. I think that means just "vel" alone means "woof."

Thoroughgood

Thurgood Marshall's original first name.

Georgy

I am perhaps deriving more pleasure than is right and proper from reading and rereading the names children have been suggesting for the newborn snow leopards at the Cape May County Zoo. The pleasure is only heightened by having a list of the kids' names to read, too; sometimes the first and last names are just wonderful (e.g., "Henry James" and "Hannah Stanks," also known as what no one has ever called me even though they've certainly had the chance), sometimes the sibling pairs are surprising or puzzling (e.g., the sisters Clementine and Isabel and the ten-year-old Matilda with the brother named, somewhat disappointingly, Mikey).

And, boy, the names these kids have suggested? Abysmal. To wit:

Georgy and Big Belly
Hima-layin' and Hima-standin'
Himanijay and Vijaymani (!)
Snow and Moe
Buzz and Woody
Edward and Jacob
Benny and Jet
Lewis and Clarke, for the unforgettable brothers
Achlendra and Fuyuki, two beautiful Asian words
Snowflaky and Snowy
Asia and India
Twilight and Avatar
Twilight and Eclipse
Ying and Yang
Cutie and Oscar
Manny and Jay Jay

Actually, I sort of dig that last one, unless it's a reference to something I'm not about to Google. And I like another pair that includes Jacob—Cornelius and Jacob, for the founder of Cape May. I also like James Bond and Crumpoo.

And I appreciate that Jordan Presley O'Drain, nine months old, submitted Jordan and Presley.

Melissa

I don't much care for this name (it's probably a generational thing, cf. Donna), although in abstraction I can appreciate it for the following reasons:

1. It means "bee," which is pretty cute. Sisters Melissa, Deborah, Beatrice—how cute would that be[e]!
2. It contains in its folds the Soviet name (see Aviakhim, Tractor) Melis: Marx, Engels, Lenin i ["and"] Stalin. Sorry, America!
3. Sometimes I think I like the names Vanessa and Clarissa—linked, of course, by that -ssa and Vanessa Redgrave portrayal of Clarissa Dalloway—so why not Melissa, too? But sometimes I dislike the names Vanessa and Clarissa—so why not Melissa, too?
4. You could have a fourth sister, Honey. And a brother, Benjamin Netanyahu, called Bibi. Even better, what if they were all WASPs?
   

Sherrod

You know, all this Shirley Sherrod stuff, well, it gets me thinking about another Sherrod, Sherrod Brown, and Connie Schultz's gag that she's—per Fox News and Rush Limbaugh—married to an African-American woman.

Tractor

I found this in a Russian book on Russian names (What is your name? Where do you live? by Aleksandra Superanskaya). It was listed along with other post-Revolution names, such as: Marten ("furnace"), Elektrostantsiya, Podyem ("rise" or "recovery"), Smichka ("union"), Energiya, Rem (standing for "Revolution, Electrification, Machinery"). See also Aviakhim.

Jacob

"I know nothing of a man, by knowing that his name is Jacob." — Marx

Petula

If she were particularly mean to her nieces and nephews, they could call her their petulaunt.

Mary

Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows:

What a gamble it is to have children! One can see it in the names one gives them. Here is Mary who is so fierce that she should have an Old Testament name, and Rose who is like a thorn-bush, and a Cordelia who lives by pride.

Mehitabel

There is a Mehitabel somewhere there on my family tree. I've got some serious Puritan roots, that's for sure.

Lorne

An especially Canadian name.

Jhonny

I was reading Jhonny Peralta's Wikipedia entry, which led me to this passage from a New York Times baseball round-up:

Whatever criteria Major League Baseball used to select its list of 60 Latino players for its voting for the Latino Legends team, common sense had to be one of them, and common sense says that Ted Williams, despite his Mexican mother, and Reggie Jackson, despite his half-Puerto Rican father, should not be considered Latin players.

Their inclusion on the ballot would have gone well beyond political correctness, raised far more questions than their exclusion and just might have been insulting to Latinos whose heritage more closely matches that of players like Roberto Clemente and Juan Marichal.

But mentioning Jackson as a Latino recalls Mickey Rivers's riveting remark to Jackson nearly 30 years ago when they played for the Yankees. Jackson was giving Rivers a hard time, and Rivers responded:

"Reginald Martinez Jackson. You got a white man's first name, a Puerto Rican's middle name and a black man's last name. No wonder you're so messed up."

30 years later, is Reginald a white man's first name?

Donna

It only recently occurred to me that I have terrible aversion to nearly every name closely associated with the original Beverly Hills, 90210. To wit, I hate or am otherwise much distressed by (in alphabetical order): Amber, Andrea, Austin, Brandon, Brenda, Donna, Dylan, Gabrielle, Jason, Kelly, Shannen, Steve, Tiffani, Tori, Valerie. It's probably just a generational thing, though.

Ross

Who is more suspect: a parent who names a child Ross after Ross Douthat, or one who wishes to pay tribute to the ugly, handsome David Schwimmer?

Aviakhim

Walter Benjamin:

The Russians, too, like to give their children "dehumanized" names: they call them "October," after the month of the Revolution; "Pyatiletka," after the Five-Year Plan; or "Aviakhim," after an airline. No technical renovation of language, but its mobilization in the service of struggle or work—at any rate, of changing reality instead of describing it.

Zealous

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/fashion/weddings/04lee.html

Ximena

Somewhere between jicama and homina homina.

Octavius

Octavius has only ranked in the top 1000 baby names twice—in 1987 and in 1991. Curiously, 1987 is also the year Octavia was at its most popular (that is, disregarding its heyday in the late 1800s and early 1900s). What happened in 1987 to boost the popularity of both Octavius and Octavia?

Xiomara

Has ranked in the top 1000 names since 2004. Peaked at #771 in 2005. Is, if behindthename.com is to be believed, related to the Old Germanic name Wigmar.

Øystein

There will never be a better name.

Velimir

О, рассмейтесь, смехачи!
О, засмейтесь, смехачи!
Что смеются смехами, что смеянствуют смеяльно,
О, засмейтесь усмеяльно!
О, рассмешищ надсмеяльных — смех усмейных смехачей!
О, иссмейся рассмеяльно, смех надсмейных смеячей!
Смейево, смейево!
Усмей, осмей, смешики, смешики!
Смеюнчики, смеюнчики.
О, рассмейтесь, смехачи!
О, засмейтесь, смехачи!

Analy

See also: Annalee.

Erdmute

The feminine form of Erdmut.

Pancrazio

Not, I don't think, etymologically related to "pancreas."

Tjark

Derek.

Montmorency

According to the Oxford Dictionary of First Names, Montmorency "enjoyed a brief vogue in the 19th century, but it is now regarded as affected and so hardly ever used."

Etheldred

See also: ÆÐELÞRYÐ

Keren-happuch

One of Job's daughter. Her name means, like, eyeshadow.

Vyvyan

Oscar Wilde's son, of course.

Llelo

A pet form of Llewellyn.

Sasha

Sasha Obama's real name is Natasha, which is traditionally a diminutive of Natalya.

Cloudesley

Cloudesley Brereton was one of the translators of Henri Bergson's Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic.

Mordaunt

Mordaunt Hall was the first film critic for the New York Times. His full name Frederick William Mordaunt Hall, although he went by Freddie and sometimes claimed his name was in fact Frederick Wentworth Mordaunt Hall.