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Trivia tidbit: Most popular baby names by income and race
Willisms ^ | unknown | unknown

Posted on 08/12/2005 6:33:27 AM PDT by Phantom Lord

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To: Phantom Lord

Ledgend has it that a farmer in east Texas named Hogg named his two daughters, IMA and SHEESA. I don't know if it is true, but it should be.


101 posted on 08/12/2005 9:19:12 AM PDT by Bar-Face
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To: Bar-Face
That is absolutely 100% true. Well, the part about Ima is.

She was the daughter of Texas Gov. James Stephen Hogg

Sheesa is not true. She had 3 brothers, no sisters.

102 posted on 08/12/2005 9:22:19 AM PDT by Phantom Lord (Fall on to your knees for the Phantom Lord)
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To: 2nd amendment mama

"Blanche was my grandmother's name - and she wasn't southern."

God's bodkins, unauthorized usage of a Southern name.

Y'all.


103 posted on 08/12/2005 9:52:34 AM PDT by dsc
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To: Andy from Chapel Hill
My wife's response was "Whatever..." Tane reported my wife's racist attitude to the HR department and it was quite a stink.

Did the HR Dept. side with the pretending-to-be-offended person of color who was engaging in "white management"?

If so, did they explain

a) what process of special mentation would inform the person seeing this name for the first time that

i) it was to be pronounced as it was and

ii) the owner was black and likely to get in a snit if a person lacking the proper color attributes got it wrong, and

b) by what magical magisterium HR felt it could manage your wife's "attitude" and sensitization from their own ridiculously supine position on the floor?

Inquiring minds want to know.

An article in our local paper went into these "special" names at some length one day, explaining how the mothers of these persons attach these names to them with the explicit intention of "forcing" the world of authority to "pay attention" to the child as an "individual". Their operative assumption being, apparently, that if they didn't do this, that persons encountering the child in future would naturally not give them any attention at all otherwise. Twisted, but there it is.

Talk about setting kids up to fail.

104 posted on 08/12/2005 10:29:06 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: Puddleglum
You know, I do like Rose alot. I think it's a very pretty underused named.

I had an aunt named Rose. Her middle name was Mary. Ours is an Irish family, and there was a family tradition (Irish? local? familial?) of giving the first girl in the new generation the name "Mary" -- so Rose was "Rose Mary". And I had wondered why, when my sister was born, she was also given the name "Mary" -- it was worked into the string somewhere -- along with the one she was more usually called. Mystery solved, when I finally heard about the tradition from another aunt who broke it when she named her firstborn girl something else that didn't go with Mary very well. She broke with tradition out of consideration for her girl, knowing that other kids would take two rhyming names and try to make mean little singsong taunts out of them if afforded the opportunity.

105 posted on 08/12/2005 10:40:51 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: helen crump
What makes name a Christian name? I've always heard that referred to as any first name.

It is custom in Europe to refer to the first name as the "Christian" name, since it is the one given at Baptism.

But, what was meant here by "Christian" name is a little more exact. Basically meaning names found in the Bible, or names of famous saints. In other words, traditional names passed down through the common Christian heritage.

By naming a child, you wish to impart some imprint on him. To try to make some character of the saint part of your child.

Just making up a name, or using one from a commercial product, is to make a mockery of this.

SD

106 posted on 08/12/2005 10:43:04 AM PDT by SoothingDave
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To: lentulusgracchus
The whole episode was brief. The HR department conceded that the name was spelled such that several pronunciations were possible. They did ask my wife to refrain from saying "whatever..." again, which she acknowledged was not consistent with her normal professional behavior.

Tane was told that she could file a formal, written and sworn complaint which would be considered at higher levels and that the forms were located at the administration building. Nothing was ever filed.

Tane, who was not very good at coming into the hospital on schedule, never showed up again. My wife speculates that she simply went to another free clinic in downtown Baltimore.

Anyway, we moved to Chapel Hill, NC and have not looked back.
107 posted on 08/12/2005 10:43:11 AM PDT by Andy from Chapel Hill
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To: Phantom Lord
Texans take the bite out of references to Ima Hogg by referring to her in conversation as "Miss Ima". She was a very nice person, extremely wealthy and philanthropic, and a major benefactress of Houston. Her old home is now a public place, and a showcase dedicated to her memory.
108 posted on 08/12/2005 10:47:15 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: SoothingDave
By naming a child, you wish to impart some imprint on him. To try to make some character of the saint part of your child.

That was the reasoning I heard as a boy, that was common in religious families, ergo among almost all Irish families, since the women especially were religiously observant.

Just making up a name, or using one from a commercial product, is to make a mockery of this.

The manipulative naming motive I mentioned above would certainly seem to qualify as mockery. However, there are some unconventional names that are part of frontier tradition. Some rural families got into the habit of giving children made-up "family names" (as they are called) and passing them along from generation to generation. Examples given in a newspaper article I saw years ago were "Lebus" and "Orem". I personally know a young woman named "Thamer", who went by a nickname at the office rather than have to explain her unusual name to people. She did this for several years, then changed her mind and let everyone know to call her by her given name, which we do now.

Another example is the former NFL Oilers football coach O.A. "Bum" Phillips, father of Wade, also an NFL coach. "Bum" was the old man's nick, his given name being Oail, a "family name".

109 posted on 08/12/2005 11:00:38 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: Phantom Lord
The 20 Blackest Boy Names

6. Malik

13. Jamal

This is on the order of Jewish parents naming their kids "Siegfried" or "Brunnhilde."

110 posted on 08/12/2005 11:04:23 AM PDT by denydenydeny ("As a Muslim of course I am a terrorist"--Sheikh Omar Brooks, quoted in the London Times 8/7/05)
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To: lentulusgracchus
However, there are some unconventional names that are part of frontier tradition. Some rural families got into the habit of giving children made-up "family names" (as they are called) and passing them along from generation to generation. Examples given in a newspaper article I saw years ago were "Lebus" and "Orem".

I suspect the names may have been surnames (last names) of other relatives, pressed into service as first or middle names. Nothing wrong with that. Again, the idea is to both honor the descendent and to try to imprint on the character of the child. "Prescott" is not a normal Christian saint name, but it was the last name of a Bush family patriarch. It's the middle name of George P Bush.

SD

111 posted on 08/12/2005 11:17:50 AM PDT by SoothingDave
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To: denydenydeny
After his pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm Little, a.k.a. Malcolm "X", legally changed his name. I believe his new name was El Hajji (pilgrimage accomplished) Malik el-Shabazz. His wife still goes by Betty Shabazz.
112 posted on 08/12/2005 11:18:20 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: SoothingDave
I suspect the names may have been surnames (last names) of other relatives, pressed into service as first or middle names.

No, in the case of these country whites, the names were actually confected out of whole cloth, chosen for the way they sounded or for similar reasons, created as "one-off" namings for an individual child. One can speculate as to why they did this, but it is not uncommon in some parts of the rural South to encounter this sort of naming "convention" (or unconvention, if you will). It's seen in Texas; I don't know about other states, but suspect it's a Scots-Irish thing and would not be surprised to hear it's found in states that originally supplied Scots-Irish settlers to Texas: Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, northern Louisiana, the North Carolina piedmont and mountain counties, western Virginia.

Using last names of favored ancestors or friends of the family is more a feature of the "deferential society" of the Atlantic slope, especially among people of English backgrounds. Yankee brahmins like the Bushes would certainly be among that number.

113 posted on 08/12/2005 11:31:11 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: lentulusgracchus

My point was that if slavery was the "Black Holocaust," a chief responsibility must go to the Arabs, who almost exclusively maintained the sub-Saharan African slave trade for centuries, and still practice it today. Black people who name their kids "Malik" or "Jamal" are honoring those who enslaved their ancestral homeland.


114 posted on 08/12/2005 1:10:04 PM PDT by denydenydeny ("As a Muslim of course I am a terrorist"--Sheikh Omar Brooks, quoted in the London Times 8/7/05)
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To: dawn53

I remember it. It's one of two of those shows that stick out in my mind. The other one is the one with the walnuts.

Neither of my kids' names are on the lists: Heidi and Timothy.


115 posted on 08/12/2005 1:38:01 PM PDT by abigailsmybaby ("This is the sort of English up with which I will not put." Winston Churchill)
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To: abigailsmybaby
My mother was a public health RN in a rural parish in Louisiana in the sixties. It was part of her job to visit mothers who had delivered babies at home. She checked the babies and helped the mothers to fill out the necessary forms to obtain a birth certificate. On one visit, she tried to talk a mother out of naming her infant girl "Placenta Privia" because the mom had heard the midwife mention the word. Now there is a woman in the world named just that, if she hasn't changed her name.

My great mother named her girls Virginia, Louise, Florida, Carolina and Georgia. She named her only son Tex.
116 posted on 08/12/2005 1:57:06 PM PDT by Conservababe
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To: Conservababe

Criminy! If I was her I would have been at the courthouse on the day I turned 18, getting my named changed.

WOW! What a great idea your mom had. I never would have thought of that approach.


117 posted on 08/12/2005 6:42:56 PM PDT by abigailsmybaby ("This is the sort of English up with which I will not put." Winston Churchill)
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To: lentulusgracchus

She does not still go by the name Betty Shabazz, at least she did until she was murdered by her granddaughter five years ago or so.


118 posted on 08/12/2005 6:59:39 PM PDT by ThreeYearLurker
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To: SMARTY
What's wrong with Christian names?

Well, first very few of these names are made up.

Second if by Christian you mean Bible there is rather a dearth of female names. So you end up with girls named Keren-Happuch. (no, I am not joking)

Third not all are Christian.

119 posted on 08/12/2005 7:05:22 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (When I walk into Sanctuary the band plays "Sweet Home Alabama")
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To: Mr. Jeeves

Or as my cousin named her daughter...Katelynn...yet another spelling!


120 posted on 08/12/2005 7:11:24 PM PDT by samiam1972 (Live simply so that others may simply live!)
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