If we have to talk about generational difficulties, I thought this recent XKCD (2271) was more insightful, and funnier, too:
P.S. If anyone is still having trouble figuring out the “Half Full”(*) panel, it’s simply that Ms. Scrivan thought it would be funny to have a snot-nosed kid unceremoniously dissing a venerable philosopher. I’ll concede that there is a bit of incongruity in the scene, but it doesn’t come off as being that clever (or funny).
Isn’t the whole concept of “Okay Boomer” that the kids are getting unsolicited advice from their elders?
The KID is coming to HIM for advice.
Whatever, Charles… :)
Yeah, I reacted along the same lines as Charles.
Maybe the kid was simply mountain climbing ; but, in comics, you can never climb a mountain without encountering a “wise old man”. He’s getting fed up with the unsolicited wisdom he is fed against his will at every mountain-top.
Kilby: The xkcd is funny for “Grandpa Chad”, but Jason seems like a totally normal, cross generational name to me, so “Grandpa Jason” doesn’t sound weirder than “Grandpa George”.
Is it just me?
(Re the XKCD) When my brother was nearing birth, in 1958, the whole family participated in the process of names-choosing. For a boy, we settled on “Jason”, which was easily spelled, somewhat unusual and thus colorful, but not weird. The only Jasons we could name offhand were the one from Greek mythology, and Jason Robards, Jr.
It’s hard to tell precisely from the XKCD graph, but I think it was about 1970 that Jason was the #1 given name for boys born in the U.S. My brother never felt bad about that, people guessed him to be a bit younger than he was.
1) “Ok, Junior.”
2) Sandal sole to face (presumably the guru is wearing them).
3) “Serenity now.”
I think the xkcd would have worked a lot better with girls’ names, which tend to be trendier. Grandma Tiffany or Brittany, or whatever.
It’s funny to imagine Jason Vorhees as a grandfather.
I believe the reference to Grandpas Jason and Chad is not that their names are funny (and were very popular) but rather Chad & Jason are together. I’m sure there are grandmas Tiffany and Brittany as well.
As for the cartoon, “OK Boomer” is wearing a little thin as a meme. It won’t wear as well as grim reaper cartoons.
Hey, Grandpa Chad! How’s it hanging?
A good source for popularity of names in the US is here:
@Mike, the difference is that gags are written around the Grim Reaper concept, while cartoonists think saying “Okay, Boomer” IS the gag.
(Oh yeah, I remember the Chad Watch! Also wasn’t it around that same time that there was a collection of models / versions / ads using a particular number? Maybe 3000?)
When my wife was pregnant with our younger son, we decided on “Zachary,” a name we liked for various reasons and which wasn’t particularly common. What we didn’t know is that this would become an insanely common name that year, for no apparent reason.
Fast-forward about ten years, and his hockey game had to be cancelled because there was some virus going around and only eight kids total showed up. Since the kids still wanted to play, I organized them into a scrimmage with the four Zacharys against the four non-Zacharys.
@ Mitch4 – I had to use the SSA link to be sure, but “Jason” never made it to the #1 spot. It spent five years at #2 (from 1974 to 1978), and spent the next four years at #3 & #4. The #1 boy’s name for that entire period was “Michael”.
Thanks Kilby. But don’t tell Jason!
The only trouble with Zachary is deciding how to spell the short form, Zach or Zack.
Did I mention my cousin Richard Nixon? He was called Rickie in the family when we were kids, and I think he tried to go by Rich in college, but later eased into Rick. Never ever Dick!
My Zachary went though all possible variations until he finally settled on “Zak.”
It was interesting (and a bit disconcerting), when I went to my XXth high school reunion last year, how many of my friends had moved on to different variations of their names (though to be fair, so had I).
You know, it seems like the singers Chad & Jeremy should be about 25 years younger than they are.
But then, I suppose names become popular because of someone famous. Given Gene’s age, Arlo and Janis could have been born in 1970 and named after Arlo Guthrie and Janis Joplin.
But if names become popular because of someone famous, who were the original Scott and Kimberly and Jessica and Jason?
I’ve heard that there are a lot of Monica’s in their twenties where there were hardly any before.
My parents settled on Jennifer for my name (and if I’d been a boy, I would have been Christopher) – it was an unusual name in 1966. I’ve never had another Jennifer in class with me. However, the class after me usually had two or three Jennifers and a couple Christophers.
I have worked, once, with three of us – and two of us were Jennifer M. Fortunately she liked Jenny, which is not a nickname I’ve ever used.
who were the original Scott and Kimberly
Oh, those were just paper-products companies…
Oddly enough, though “William” has been one of the five top names (in the United States) every year since I was born, I only had one William/Billy/Bill classmate in all my years of public school (and only in kindergarten: Billy Fineberg apparently disappeared off the face of the earth after then).
My name used to be very common, back when non-Gaelic Irish names were uncommon.
Then, everyone’s ‘Irish’ name became ‘Liam’…
People came and went through the seven years I was at my (then all-boys) secondary school, but in total we had 55 people between 1968 and 1975 in our group. At our 40th anniversary reunion I noticed we had almost entirely standard British first names. Discounting Toeng Lie Lam from Malaysia, the most unusual were Marcus and Guy. Other singleton names included Jeremy, Adrian, Steven, Charles, David, Edward, Nicholas, Philip, Geoffrey, Michael, Hugh, Neil, Joseph, Stuart, Roger, Robert, Paul – all which could easily have fitted into a character list from some mediaeval play full of knights, kings, priests and saints.
In multiples we had two Simons, two Daniels, two Georges, two Johns (and a Jonathan), two Williams, two Alans, two Marks (not counting Marcus), three Christophers and three Timothys, four Andrews and no fewer than five Richards. So Richards alone were almost 10% of our cohort, and over a quarter of us shared only four names.
I looked at the then-latest school magazine for the most recent entry group, 2014, and among the new entrants (discounting the now-admitted girls) were names we didn’t have such as Louis, Oscar, Oskar, Jake, Jack, Milo, Benedict, Owen, Joshua, Igor, Seb, Samson, Franco. There are some traditional names still in the mix, like Edward, Charles, George, Henry, and Stephen (once and UK future kings there). But of our group’s 25% Big Four names there is no-one in the 2014 entry called Richard, Christopher or Timothy, and there is only one Andrew.
There is no world where Meryl is a common name – I had hopes after Meryl Streep became famous.
I was in class in maybe 5th grade with 4 Meryls in it – though one was a Merrill and one was a Merrell and one of them was a boy. I figure someone thought it was funny to put all the Meryl/Merrill/Merrells in one class.
Even when my parents ordered me a name license plate for my bicycle from a cereal promotion – they spelled it wrong – I was always upset that the items sold with names never had any version of Meryl.
I’ll had at least three friends named Meryl.
And one Merrill, but that’s a different matter.
“[a class] with 4 Meryls in it – though one was a Merrill and one was a Merrell and one of them was a boy. I figure someone thought it was funny to put all the Meryl/Merrill/Merrells in one class.”
I can’t imagine the teacher found that even remotely funny.
@ Meryl A ” I figure someone thought it was funny to put all the Meryl/Merrill/Merrells in one class“
A friend of mine called Zoë Gray had been to Cambridge. She told me that her tutor told her that in the succeeding previous years there had been a Zoë Green, a Zoë Brown and a Zoë Black (and maybe even a Zoë White) in their college, the implication being that she owed her place to a whimsical desire to collect a Zoë colour set. Perhaps Zoë (my Zoë) was joking, or her tutor was.
One of the Richards in my class of five had a Merrell surname.
Meryl A – given the paucity of Meryls in your experience, it is interesting that you add an A. In the quiz game Pointless, when two contestants (out of the eight) have the same name one is given a surname initial, so you have Peter and Peter J for instance. On one recent occasion a pair of Matts – friends on the same team – were both were given a Matt H nametag. They said their surnames were similar up to three of four places – Hancock and Hancroft, or some such thing. Still, a minor blunder by the production team.
Such Mattiness allows me to report we had no Matthews at my school, at least in my year, but as a name it seems to crop up a lot in the 23-35 year old age group, at least in the UK. My nephew is a Matthew, my niece’s husband is too (well, he is American, though his mother was originally English); my partner’s daughter (herself a Matilda) had as university best friends and flatmates two Matts known as The Two Matts, and her next flatmate to be is yet another Matthew, and her cousin (from New Zealand) has another Matt (pronounced Mit) as a fiance. It can’t all be down to there being two Matt/Matthews in the cast list of Friends, as a couple of my examples predate 1994.
@ Bill – “William” has been one of the five top names … every year since I was born –
Where did you get your data? According to the SSA website (see Brian’s link), you must have been born in 2009 ;-) “William” was in the top 5 for the entire first half of the 20th century (#2 & #3 for the first 25 years, then #4 for the next 25). It then dropped out of the top 5, falling as low as #20 in the early ’90s, before recovering to the current string of top-5 ratings, for obvious (British) reasons.
Any Matt you encounter, you should snap a picture of, posed holding a cat. So that you can caption it “The cat sat upon the Matt.”
I was a little surprised to notice how many female Aarons there are. I guess there are some varieties of English that collapse the pronunciations of Aaron and Erin. But I don’t really mean to attribute them all as mistakes. Someone just wanted to recruit that name to the girls’ naming pool. As apparently is happening with Michael as well, which I would have thought of as a core male name.
@ Mitch4 – The curious thing about “Michael” is not the gender, but the orthography. if you type “Micheal” into the SSA “babynames” page, it reveals that every single year, several hundred American boys get saddled with a misspelling. Back in the 1950s, there were thousands of victims (every year).
And I have only recently made my peace with Rachael pronounced Rachel. The first Rachael I knew was from Israel and pronounced it with an AH for the first vowel, a back fricative consonant in the middle, and a sort of diphthong for the vowel in the final syllable. Since the context was Linguistics grad students, she could just say it, and describe it that way, and pretty much everybody followed her lead on that. But to be friendly to the civilians and spouses at parties, she also said “You can pronounce it Raquel, like Raquel Welch” [which was a reference people might know at that time].
And then I started seeing the Rachael spelling, without either of those pronunciations, just pronounced /ˈreɪtʃəl/ like the Rachel spelling. For a while I was obnoxious about imposing an exaggerated foreign-sounding pronunciation and saying things like “You know that celebrity chef, Rahxxxx-ay-el Ray?”. But later had to admit the “offenders” weren’t really being offensive or phony, and furthermore that the historical argument didn’t really go my way.
I guess there are some varieties of English that collapse the pronunciations of Aaron and Erin.
That’s the case where I live, but that doesn’t generally result in people confusing the spellings.
I’m in frequent contact with a woman named “Arthur” — she goes by “Artie” (or possibly “R.T.” — I’ve never seen her spell out her preference). I believe she was named after a relative who insisted that “just because she’s a girl is no excuse for not honoring me.”
On mispellings, my parents intended my middle name to be “Keith” but spelled it “Kieth” on the birth certificate. (Yes, both variations are acceptable, but in spite of Mr. Knight, the former is much more frequently seen). As a kid, I caught a glimpse of said birth certificate and decided to “change” their intended spelling to the one they’d actually given me, which irritated them. (I don’t much like the name in either version, so may as well go for the odder one.)
There is a musician who goes by “Ryn Weaver”. Her first name was originally “Erin”, but decided to start spelling it “Aryn” when she was young, then shortened that to “Ryn”. “Weaver” is her mother’s maiden name.
I never really thought of “Mark” being a common name compared with James and John and William, but I’ve been in plenty of classes and workplaces where there were two or more Marks but only one each of James and John and William.
Of course if I were a William …
mitch: you need a few more props, and then post the picture to slack, and then in that chat, pat and nat’s fat cat sat upon matt’s hat.
@ Shrug – In German, the “ie” version would at least produce the correct vowel sound, whereas the more common “ei” spelling would be interpreted as having an “eye” in it. The problem is that most Germans cannot pronounce a “th”, so “Kieth” would probably end up sounding pretty much like “quiche”.
“I guess there are some varieties of English that collapse the pronunciations of Aaron and Erin.”
There was the day I was in the drugstore and when the woman behind me heard my last name, she said Oh, I’m Aaron’s mother.
Which I thought unlikely, because I had a pretty good seat when my son Aaron was born, and I’m kinda certain my wife is his mother.
I couldn’t begin to re-create the “Who’s on first” routine that followed — seriously, this took a lot longer than it probably should have — but the upshot was that she was the mother of my other son’s girlfriend ERIN and she just happened to pronounce her daughter’s name the same way we pronounce “Aaron.”
The German attempts to pronunce of “th” seems to vary in the different regions of Germany, so Keith could be Keet or Keess or Keez. Just like our attempts to pronounce “ich”.
When an American in Germany says “Berliner”, is it different depending on where they are from? Berlinnerr if the midwest, Balinnah if from Boston?
Kilby, I guess I didn’t check every year. The basic point was that during my school years, the name was always among the leaders, and therefore I should have shared the classroom with more than just Billy Fineberg.
I imagine so, Mark, since I’d say Berlinna (no h).
@ MiB – Where he comes from is only part of the interminable rabbit hole (you have been warned, it might be better to stop reading this comment right now). Asking for a “Berliner” will get you a “jelly doughnut” only in certain parts of Germany. Everywhere near Berlin(*), that same confection is called “Pfannekuchen“(**). Therefore, nobody in this city ever thought that Kennedy was a jelly doughnut. Another German name for doughnuts is “Krapfen“, which always makes me trip over the syllable “crap”.
P.S. (*) – In German, the city is pronounced “bearLEEN”, and not “BURRlinn”.
P.P.S. (**) – Literally “pan cake”, but not to be confused with American(***) “pancakes”, which are called “Eierkuchen“, meaning “egg cakes”.
P.P.P.S. (***) – There is another glazed cakelike thing that is known here as an “Amerikaner” (the name may come from a mangled understanding of the “ammoniac” component of the baking powder).
P.P.P.P.S. The two-tone version shown in that link is unusual, normally the glaze on an “Amerikaner” is all white.
Don’t you keep hoping for a crisis in Denmark, so an American official can announce “I am a Danish!”?
named “Arthur” — she goes by “Artie” (or possibly “R.T.”
There was a guy called Ari in our departnent, always said that way, and he would write it that way on lists and so on . But then on some centrally generated forms there was a Roger E. Lastname, who turned out to be Ari. He had gone by “R. E.” at one time, and that morphed to Ari.
The problem is that most Germans cannot pronounce a “th”, so “Kieth” would probably end up sounding pretty much like “quiche”.
As both an individual matter, and a demographic dialect feature, there are also English speakers who have trouble with that sound. Which must be why Kieth Knight sometimes has people calling his character Keef.
@ Mitch4 – “I am a Danish!”
Inserting the indefinite article (“a”) into that line is the only way to make the joke work; this underscores the exact reason that a few people made fun of Kennedy’s pronouncement “Ich bin ein Berliner!” — Anyone who actually hails from Berlin (or Denmark) would say “Ich bin Berliner!“, or “I am Danish!” (respectively). Adding the article turns the adjective into a noun, and invites misinterpretation.
I recall an anecdote (probably in a Bennett Cerf collection) of a guy whose parents gave him only initials for a first and middle name (I recall obscure 1950s big-league baseball catcher J.W. Porter had the same sort of silly parents), and when asked on forms to fill out his full name, learned to write it as: R(only) B(only) Jones. Which was fine until he was drafted and the army recorded him as Ronly Bonly Jones.
As both an individual matter, and a demographic dialect feature, there are also English speakers who have trouble with that sound. Which must be why Kieth Knight sometimes has people calling his character Keef.
Adele is one with that dialect. It provides quite a disjoint between her songs and her normal speech.
Shrug, my dad told us the Ronly Bonly Jones story, set in the WWII era US Army. Also related story of someone whose middle name was recorded as Nmi.
Johnny Cash was named J.R. by his parents. The Air Force wouldn’t accept initials, so he wrote “John R.”. He changed it to Johnny when he started to record.
I don’t know anyone whose parents named them with initials, but I have a friend who legally changed her name to P.J.
Those were her initials but from the time she was little, everyone called her P.J. and she preferred it.
In M*A*S*H, B. J. Hunnicut would not reveal to Hawkeye what the initials stood for, and insisted that they stood for nothing.
“What parents would do that?”
“My parents, Bea and Jay.”
It was never clear if the story was true or not.
@ Brian – I remember that episode. At one point Hawkeye snuck into Potter’s office to snoop into the official records, but he discovered that (in contrast to the real Air Force’s treatment of Mr. Cash), the TV Army was perfectly willing to draft Hunnicut as “B.J.”
narmitaj – that is why I add the A – because I think it amusing – as if there are so many Meryls on any group that I need to be certain that people know it is me and not another Meryl. (But is is my middle or last initial? Actually both.)
Bill – how else would all the Meryls/Merrill end up in one class? Not funny for the teacher, but what about the office staff?
When I graduated from high school I did so as “Merle” – no, not a misspelling, but the assistant principal always called me that. I had actually written my name out phonetically on the card and still he got it wrong.
Now my sister and her husband have the same first name – Randi and Randy. When talking about them they are not around to be sure who we are talking about, the family calls them girl Randi and boy Randy. One day when my (now 30 year old) niece was young, my mother was curious about how she would differentiate their names. “What are mommy an daddy’s names?” “Mommy Randi and Daddy Randy” was the reply.
Comics I Don't Understand 
If we have to talk about generational difficulties, I thought this recent XKCD (2271) was more insightful, and funnier, too:
P.S. If anyone is still having trouble figuring out the “Half Full”(*) panel, it’s simply that Ms. Scrivan thought it would be funny to have a snot-nosed kid unceremoniously dissing a venerable philosopher. I’ll concede that there is a bit of incongruity in the scene, but it doesn’t come off as being that clever (or funny).
Isn’t the whole concept of “Okay Boomer” that the kids are getting unsolicited advice from their elders?
The KID is coming to HIM for advice.
Whatever, Charles… :)
Yeah, I reacted along the same lines as Charles.
Maybe the kid was simply mountain climbing ; but, in comics, you can never climb a mountain without encountering a “wise old man”. He’s getting fed up with the unsolicited wisdom he is fed against his will at every mountain-top.
Kilby: The xkcd is funny for “Grandpa Chad”, but Jason seems like a totally normal, cross generational name to me, so “Grandpa Jason” doesn’t sound weirder than “Grandpa George”.
Is it just me?
(Re the XKCD) When my brother was nearing birth, in 1958, the whole family participated in the process of names-choosing. For a boy, we settled on “Jason”, which was easily spelled, somewhat unusual and thus colorful, but not weird. The only Jasons we could name offhand were the one from Greek mythology, and Jason Robards, Jr.
It’s hard to tell precisely from the XKCD graph, but I think it was about 1970 that Jason was the #1 given name for boys born in the U.S. My brother never felt bad about that, people guessed him to be a bit younger than he was.
1) “Ok, Junior.”
2) Sandal sole to face (presumably the guru is wearing them).
3) “Serenity now.”
I think the xkcd would have worked a lot better with girls’ names, which tend to be trendier. Grandma Tiffany or Brittany, or whatever.
It’s funny to imagine Jason Vorhees as a grandfather.
I believe the reference to Grandpas Jason and Chad is not that their names are funny (and were very popular) but rather Chad & Jason are together. I’m sure there are grandmas Tiffany and Brittany as well.
As for the cartoon, “OK Boomer” is wearing a little thin as a meme. It won’t wear as well as grim reaper cartoons.
Hey, Grandpa Chad! How’s it hanging?
A good source for popularity of names in the US is here:
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/
Just when you thought Chad Watch was over…
@Mike, the difference is that gags are written around the Grim Reaper concept, while cartoonists think saying “Okay, Boomer” IS the gag.
(Oh yeah, I remember the Chad Watch! Also wasn’t it around that same time that there was a collection of models / versions / ads using a particular number? Maybe 3000?)
When my wife was pregnant with our younger son, we decided on “Zachary,” a name we liked for various reasons and which wasn’t particularly common. What we didn’t know is that this would become an insanely common name that year, for no apparent reason.
Fast-forward about ten years, and his hockey game had to be cancelled because there was some virus going around and only eight kids total showed up. Since the kids still wanted to play, I organized them into a scrimmage with the four Zacharys against the four non-Zacharys.
@ Mitch4 – I had to use the SSA link to be sure, but “Jason” never made it to the #1 spot. It spent five years at #2 (from 1974 to 1978), and spent the next four years at #3 & #4. The #1 boy’s name for that entire period was “Michael”.
Thanks Kilby. But don’t tell Jason!
The only trouble with Zachary is deciding how to spell the short form, Zach or Zack.
Did I mention my cousin Richard Nixon? He was called Rickie in the family when we were kids, and I think he tried to go by Rich in college, but later eased into Rick. Never ever Dick!
My Zachary went though all possible variations until he finally settled on “Zak.”
It was interesting (and a bit disconcerting), when I went to my XXth high school reunion last year, how many of my friends had moved on to different variations of their names (though to be fair, so had I).
You know, it seems like the singers Chad & Jeremy should be about 25 years younger than they are.
But then, I suppose names become popular because of someone famous. Given Gene’s age, Arlo and Janis could have been born in 1970 and named after Arlo Guthrie and Janis Joplin.
But if names become popular because of someone famous, who were the original Scott and Kimberly and Jessica and Jason?
I’ve heard that there are a lot of Monica’s in their twenties where there were hardly any before.
My parents settled on Jennifer for my name (and if I’d been a boy, I would have been Christopher) – it was an unusual name in 1966. I’ve never had another Jennifer in class with me. However, the class after me usually had two or three Jennifers and a couple Christophers.
I have worked, once, with three of us – and two of us were Jennifer M. Fortunately she liked Jenny, which is not a nickname I’ve ever used.
who were the original Scott and Kimberly
Oh, those were just paper-products companies…
Oddly enough, though “William” has been one of the five top names (in the United States) every year since I was born, I only had one William/Billy/Bill classmate in all my years of public school (and only in kindergarten: Billy Fineberg apparently disappeared off the face of the earth after then).
My name used to be very common, back when non-Gaelic Irish names were uncommon.
Then, everyone’s ‘Irish’ name became ‘Liam’…
People came and went through the seven years I was at my (then all-boys) secondary school, but in total we had 55 people between 1968 and 1975 in our group. At our 40th anniversary reunion I noticed we had almost entirely standard British first names. Discounting Toeng Lie Lam from Malaysia, the most unusual were Marcus and Guy. Other singleton names included Jeremy, Adrian, Steven, Charles, David, Edward, Nicholas, Philip, Geoffrey, Michael, Hugh, Neil, Joseph, Stuart, Roger, Robert, Paul – all which could easily have fitted into a character list from some mediaeval play full of knights, kings, priests and saints.
In multiples we had two Simons, two Daniels, two Georges, two Johns (and a Jonathan), two Williams, two Alans, two Marks (not counting Marcus), three Christophers and three Timothys, four Andrews and no fewer than five Richards. So Richards alone were almost 10% of our cohort, and over a quarter of us shared only four names.
I looked at the then-latest school magazine for the most recent entry group, 2014, and among the new entrants (discounting the now-admitted girls) were names we didn’t have such as Louis, Oscar, Oskar, Jake, Jack, Milo, Benedict, Owen, Joshua, Igor, Seb, Samson, Franco. There are some traditional names still in the mix, like Edward, Charles, George, Henry, and Stephen (once and UK future kings there). But of our group’s 25% Big Four names there is no-one in the 2014 entry called Richard, Christopher or Timothy, and there is only one Andrew.
There is no world where Meryl is a common name – I had hopes after Meryl Streep became famous.
I was in class in maybe 5th grade with 4 Meryls in it – though one was a Merrill and one was a Merrell and one of them was a boy. I figure someone thought it was funny to put all the Meryl/Merrill/Merrells in one class.
Even when my parents ordered me a name license plate for my bicycle from a cereal promotion – they spelled it wrong – I was always upset that the items sold with names never had any version of Meryl.
I’ll had at least three friends named Meryl.
And one Merrill, but that’s a different matter.
“[a class] with 4 Meryls in it – though one was a Merrill and one was a Merrell and one of them was a boy. I figure someone thought it was funny to put all the Meryl/Merrill/Merrells in one class.”
I can’t imagine the teacher found that even remotely funny.
@ Meryl A ” I figure someone thought it was funny to put all the Meryl/Merrill/Merrells in one class“
A friend of mine called Zoë Gray had been to Cambridge. She told me that her tutor told her that in the succeeding previous years there had been a Zoë Green, a Zoë Brown and a Zoë Black (and maybe even a Zoë White) in their college, the implication being that she owed her place to a whimsical desire to collect a Zoë colour set. Perhaps Zoë (my Zoë) was joking, or her tutor was.
One of the Richards in my class of five had a Merrell surname.
Meryl A – given the paucity of Meryls in your experience, it is interesting that you add an A. In the quiz game Pointless, when two contestants (out of the eight) have the same name one is given a surname initial, so you have Peter and Peter J for instance. On one recent occasion a pair of Matts – friends on the same team – were both were given a Matt H nametag. They said their surnames were similar up to three of four places – Hancock and Hancroft, or some such thing. Still, a minor blunder by the production team.
Such Mattiness allows me to report we had no Matthews at my school, at least in my year, but as a name it seems to crop up a lot in the 23-35 year old age group, at least in the UK. My nephew is a Matthew, my niece’s husband is too (well, he is American, though his mother was originally English); my partner’s daughter (herself a Matilda) had as university best friends and flatmates two Matts known as The Two Matts, and her next flatmate to be is yet another Matthew, and her cousin (from New Zealand) has another Matt (pronounced Mit) as a fiance. It can’t all be down to there being two Matt/Matthews in the cast list of Friends, as a couple of my examples predate 1994.
@ Bill – “William” has been one of the five top names … every year since I was born –
Where did you get your data? According to the SSA website (see Brian’s link), you must have been born in 2009 ;-) “William” was in the top 5 for the entire first half of the 20th century (#2 & #3 for the first 25 years, then #4 for the next 25). It then dropped out of the top 5, falling as low as #20 in the early ’90s, before recovering to the current string of top-5 ratings, for obvious (British) reasons.
Any Matt you encounter, you should snap a picture of, posed holding a cat. So that you can caption it “The cat sat upon the Matt.”
I was a little surprised to notice how many female Aarons there are. I guess there are some varieties of English that collapse the pronunciations of Aaron and Erin. But I don’t really mean to attribute them all as mistakes. Someone just wanted to recruit that name to the girls’ naming pool. As apparently is happening with Michael as well, which I would have thought of as a core male name.
@ Mitch4 – The curious thing about “Michael” is not the gender, but the orthography. if you type “Micheal” into the SSA “babynames” page, it reveals that every single year, several hundred American boys get saddled with a misspelling. Back in the 1950s, there were thousands of victims (every year).
And I have only recently made my peace with Rachael pronounced Rachel. The first Rachael I knew was from Israel and pronounced it with an AH for the first vowel, a back fricative consonant in the middle, and a sort of diphthong for the vowel in the final syllable. Since the context was Linguistics grad students, she could just say it, and describe it that way, and pretty much everybody followed her lead on that. But to be friendly to the civilians and spouses at parties, she also said “You can pronounce it Raquel, like Raquel Welch” [which was a reference people might know at that time].
And then I started seeing the Rachael spelling, without either of those pronunciations, just pronounced /ˈreɪtʃəl/ like the Rachel spelling. For a while I was obnoxious about imposing an exaggerated foreign-sounding pronunciation and saying things like “You know that celebrity chef, Rahxxxx-ay-el Ray?”. But later had to admit the “offenders” weren’t really being offensive or phony, and furthermore that the historical argument didn’t really go my way.
I guess there are some varieties of English that collapse the pronunciations of Aaron and Erin.
That’s the case where I live, but that doesn’t generally result in people confusing the spellings.
I’m in frequent contact with a woman named “Arthur” — she goes by “Artie” (or possibly “R.T.” — I’ve never seen her spell out her preference). I believe she was named after a relative who insisted that “just because she’s a girl is no excuse for not honoring me.”
On mispellings, my parents intended my middle name to be “Keith” but spelled it “Kieth” on the birth certificate. (Yes, both variations are acceptable, but in spite of Mr. Knight, the former is much more frequently seen). As a kid, I caught a glimpse of said birth certificate and decided to “change” their intended spelling to the one they’d actually given me, which irritated them. (I don’t much like the name in either version, so may as well go for the odder one.)
There is a musician who goes by “Ryn Weaver”. Her first name was originally “Erin”, but decided to start spelling it “Aryn” when she was young, then shortened that to “Ryn”. “Weaver” is her mother’s maiden name.
I never really thought of “Mark” being a common name compared with James and John and William, but I’ve been in plenty of classes and workplaces where there were two or more Marks but only one each of James and John and William.
Of course if I were a William …
mitch: you need a few more props, and then post the picture to slack, and then in that chat, pat and nat’s fat cat sat upon matt’s hat.
@ Shrug – In German, the “ie” version would at least produce the correct vowel sound, whereas the more common “ei” spelling would be interpreted as having an “eye” in it. The problem is that most Germans cannot pronounce a “th”, so “Kieth” would probably end up sounding pretty much like “quiche”.
“I guess there are some varieties of English that collapse the pronunciations of Aaron and Erin.”
There was the day I was in the drugstore and when the woman behind me heard my last name, she said Oh, I’m Aaron’s mother.
Which I thought unlikely, because I had a pretty good seat when my son Aaron was born, and I’m kinda certain my wife is his mother.
I couldn’t begin to re-create the “Who’s on first” routine that followed — seriously, this took a lot longer than it probably should have — but the upshot was that she was the mother of my other son’s girlfriend ERIN and she just happened to pronounce her daughter’s name the same way we pronounce “Aaron.”
The German attempts to pronunce of “th” seems to vary in the different regions of Germany, so Keith could be Keet or Keess or Keez. Just like our attempts to pronounce “ich”.
When an American in Germany says “Berliner”, is it different depending on where they are from? Berlinnerr if the midwest, Balinnah if from Boston?
Kilby, I guess I didn’t check every year. The basic point was that during my school years, the name was always among the leaders, and therefore I should have shared the classroom with more than just Billy Fineberg.
I imagine so, Mark, since I’d say Berlinna (no h).
@ MiB – Where he comes from is only part of the interminable rabbit hole (you have been warned, it might be better to stop reading this comment right now). Asking for a “Berliner” will get you a “jelly doughnut” only in certain parts of Germany. Everywhere near Berlin(*), that same confection is called “Pfannekuchen“(**). Therefore, nobody in this city ever thought that Kennedy was a jelly doughnut. Another German name for doughnuts is “Krapfen“, which always makes me trip over the syllable “crap”.
P.S. (*) – In German, the city is pronounced “bearLEEN”, and not “BURRlinn”.
P.P.S. (**) – Literally “pan cake”, but not to be confused with American(***) “pancakes”, which are called “Eierkuchen“, meaning “egg cakes”.
P.P.P.S. (***) – There is another glazed cakelike thing that is known here as an “Amerikaner” (the name may come from a mangled understanding of the “ammoniac” component of the baking powder).
P.P.P.P.S. The two-tone version shown in that link is unusual, normally the glaze on an “Amerikaner” is all white.
Don’t you keep hoping for a crisis in Denmark, so an American official can announce “I am a Danish!”?
named “Arthur” — she goes by “Artie” (or possibly “R.T.”
There was a guy called Ari in our departnent, always said that way, and he would write it that way on lists and so on . But then on some centrally generated forms there was a Roger E. Lastname, who turned out to be Ari. He had gone by “R. E.” at one time, and that morphed to Ari.
The problem is that most Germans cannot pronounce a “th”, so “Kieth” would probably end up sounding pretty much like “quiche”.
As both an individual matter, and a demographic dialect feature, there are also English speakers who have trouble with that sound. Which must be why Kieth Knight sometimes has people calling his character Keef.
@ Mitch4 – “I am a Danish!”
Inserting the indefinite article (“a”) into that line is the only way to make the joke work; this underscores the exact reason that a few people made fun of Kennedy’s pronouncement “Ich bin ein Berliner!” — Anyone who actually hails from Berlin (or Denmark) would say “Ich bin Berliner!“, or “I am Danish!” (respectively). Adding the article turns the adjective into a noun, and invites misinterpretation.
I recall an anecdote (probably in a Bennett Cerf collection) of a guy whose parents gave him only initials for a first and middle name (I recall obscure 1950s big-league baseball catcher J.W. Porter had the same sort of silly parents), and when asked on forms to fill out his full name, learned to write it as: R(only) B(only) Jones. Which was fine until he was drafted and the army recorded him as Ronly Bonly Jones.
As both an individual matter, and a demographic dialect feature, there are also English speakers who have trouble with that sound. Which must be why Kieth Knight sometimes has people calling his character Keef.
Adele is one with that dialect. It provides quite a disjoint between her songs and her normal speech.
Shrug, my dad told us the Ronly Bonly Jones story, set in the WWII era US Army. Also related story of someone whose middle name was recorded as Nmi.
Johnny Cash was named J.R. by his parents. The Air Force wouldn’t accept initials, so he wrote “John R.”. He changed it to Johnny when he started to record.
I don’t know anyone whose parents named them with initials, but I have a friend who legally changed her name to P.J.
Those were her initials but from the time she was little, everyone called her P.J. and she preferred it.
In M*A*S*H, B. J. Hunnicut would not reveal to Hawkeye what the initials stood for, and insisted that they stood for nothing.
“What parents would do that?”
“My parents, Bea and Jay.”
It was never clear if the story was true or not.
@ Brian – I remember that episode. At one point Hawkeye snuck into Potter’s office to snoop into the official records, but he discovered that (in contrast to the real Air Force’s treatment of Mr. Cash), the TV Army was perfectly willing to draft Hunnicut as “B.J.”
narmitaj – that is why I add the A – because I think it amusing – as if there are so many Meryls on any group that I need to be certain that people know it is me and not another Meryl. (But is is my middle or last initial? Actually both.)
Bill – how else would all the Meryls/Merrill end up in one class? Not funny for the teacher, but what about the office staff?
When I graduated from high school I did so as “Merle” – no, not a misspelling, but the assistant principal always called me that. I had actually written my name out phonetically on the card and still he got it wrong.
Now my sister and her husband have the same first name – Randi and Randy. When talking about them they are not around to be sure who we are talking about, the family calls them girl Randi and boy Randy. One day when my (now 30 year old) niece was young, my mother was curious about how she would differentiate their names. “What are mommy an daddy’s names?” “Mommy Randi and Daddy Randy” was the reply.