Posted on 05/22/2011 1:43:24 AM PDT by thecodont
One of my longstanding pleasures when visiting Hawai'i is to read the birth announcements in the local papers, to savor the ethnic melange that results in truly distinctive baby names (unlike my own fairly plain-Jane handle.)
Often these newborns' monikers can be summed up as "first name also popular on the Mainland" plus "descriptive Hawaiian middle name that's too long for most blanks on official forms" (among Native Hawaiians, this name may have come to the parent or another relative in a dream), plus "one to two surnames from plantation-era immigrant cultures" -- but not always.
Sometimes a mellifluous Hawaiian name comes first (often shortened in everyday use) and a pedestrian Anglo-Saxon moniker comes last. Sometimes they're proudly, across-the-board Hawaiian. That's the beauty of these names: They're a verbal mix plate, with lots of delicious elements to choose from. (A couple of real-life examples from the Star Advertiser's "Hawaii's Ohana" feature: Kainoa Thomas Collins and Teagan Ka'imi Cupcake Saramosing, the latter born to Ashley Kahealani Shizue Saramosing and Randy Resgonia Saramosing.)
It's true that some of the "most hated baby names in America" appear in Social Security's recently released Top 100 names for boys and girls in Hawai'i in 2010 (the statewide tallies are always released after the nationwide lists.) But what the Hawai'i lists also reveal are that, as unique as the full names may be, there are a handful of Hawaiian (or Hawaiian-influenced) names that made it to 10 or more state birth certificates in 2010. (And no, "Barack" was not among those names, though I hear there's at least one certificate with his name on it, circa 1961...)
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/hawaii/detail?entry_id=89295#ixzz1N4HzjO8F
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Ping for your interest.
Why would anyone name their kid after Mohammed’s horse?
Unless they were a true Islamist.
The writer’s name is Jeanne Cooper. She makes casual reference to “a pedestrian Anglo-Saxon moniker.” Where do these people get this self-loathing and self-contempt? Why insult people with Anglo-Saxon names?
You would think that a state with a significant population of an ethnic group that uses extremely long names would fix up their forms so as to have enough spaces.
But states are stupid. When I was doing taxes, California’s forms had boxes for the digits of your gross revenue and so on, and they never had enough spaces. And we didn’t have all that much business in California; it must have been terrible for really big companies!
Jeanne is a French spelling. If it were pedestrian and modern English, it would be Jane or Joan.
Wheel Of Fortune TV show in Hawaii = “I’d like to buy a consonant.”
I like it.
Can’t believe I missed that ... you make up a name for yourself (since your name is supposed to be Barry Sotero) ... and you choose the name of M’s horse? Tell me this guy wasn’t “manufactured” from the ground up!
“Baby names”
I’ve always disliked that description.
Hello!? The name doesn’t go away when the kid stops being a baby. It sticks for the rest of one’s life. Too many stupid parents don’t seem to realize this.
No, some of them do have meanings. I have heard of brothers named "Orangello" and "Lemonjello" (pronounced "Oh-rahn-juh-low" and "Leh-mahn-juh-low"), and one other case of a boy named "Lemonjello."
“June Bug’’ is another popular name among southern blacks, swear to God it’s true.
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