Nauvelene22
Navelle23
Needa
Neketia
Neldagae
Nelma
Nerva
Neval
Newana
Nicoma
Nieca
Nissie
Nix
Noba
Nolia1
Nookie
Nordamyrth2
Norissa
Normarie
Norvain
Nylotis
Nynn
Oaxim
Obanon
Oberzine
O’Dwaine
Odyle
Ogalallah
Ogeal
Okemah
Okla
Olgalene
Olinzea
Omadell
Omelia
Onema
Onza3
Oolooah4
Oota5
Opaloma
Orabelle
Ordis6
Orene
O’Rhaitia7
Orilla
Orr-Lyda
Orsavilla8
Ortice
Oscaretta
Ostella
Ostenia
Othema
Otta
Ova
Owaelah
Oyonna
Ozell9
Paradine
Parzola
Patriola
Patti Jo
Paulala
Pava
Pearline
Pencilla10
Permelia
Persotia
Petula
Phadalee
Phalla
Phaye
Pheotine
Philelle
Phra11
Phygenia
Phylistice12
Pleasantina
Polo13
Pomalee
Prucia14
Prunice
Pyola15
Qay
Quaintillia16
Quejette17
Queena
Quida
Rae18
Ragine19
Ramarion
Raola20
Ravola
Raychel21
Reasta
ReDonda22
Refolla
Reinette
Revola
Rheufina
Rhumelle23
Rhygene
Rocille
Romalice24
Roseola25
Roumaine26
Roxaner
Royalene
Rozetta
Ruburdia
Rumba Jo
Ruy
Rylda
Sabra
Sadlle
Safronia
Saidee27
Salathia
Saline1
Sally Ben
Saphrona
Satyra2
Scharlott
Seena
Serene
Sewlliea
Sharmeen
Shelby Lee
Shelta
Shelvia
Shir Lee3
Sibeth
Sina4
Sing5
Sireen
Sivola6
Sonora
Srilda
St. Clair7
Stenola8
Susunah
Suvada
Sva
Swan9
Syreath
Syveta
Tahwahnah
Talicia
Taloah10
Tamora
Tasceil
TeAta
Teletha
Tenya
Teretha
Tesa
Teyna
Texana11
Thallis
Tharyn
Thava
Thella
Theral
Therica
Theyva
Thuda
Thurolenc
Tolee
Tomi12
Tonkajo13
Toovone14
Tosa15
Totus
Townzella16
Traina
Travette
Trevania
Tryphena17
Twitty
Twylah18
Tydfyl
Tyi
Uarda
Ukdene
Ulala
Ullainee19
Ulyssia20
Uneveigh
Urath
Urcell
Ureatha21
Urlda
Utahna
Uva
Vadna
Vae
Valeita
Valerica
VaLeta22
Valfred
Valla
Valoise
Vandetta
Vangele
Varbel
Vardrene
Varice
VaRue
Vasoline23
Vaughncille
Vavelle
Vaye
Vella24
Velondia
Velva Jo25
Vema
Venazulia
Veneriece26
Venie1
Ver
Verdavelle
Ve Ree
Verma2
Vermilla
Vernola
Veroqua3
Vesnelle
Vetelia4
V-Etta
Viadell
Vilentia
Vinnierenn
Violintta
Viora
Virjama
Vitoline5
Viviaette6
Vlene
Vomera
Vonda
Vondilee7
Vonnez
Voy
Vura
Vyrillia
Wacile
Wah-Leah
Wahlelu8
Wahneta9
Waive10
Walsena
Wanahda11
Wanda Verline12
Wanoka
Wanza13
Warrenetta
Wathena14
Wauhilla
Weeda15
Welo
Weltha
Willie Mae16
Wilsonia
Wilvarine
Wimmie17
Windi
Winnaretta
Winnell
Winola
Wona
Wreatha18
Wroberta
Wyena
Wylvia Jayne19
Wymola
Wyneese
Wynelle20
Wyvine
Xie Mae
Xina
Xmay
Yabel21
Yetza
Yondah
Zadean22
Zadonna23
Zala
Zannis24
Zanola
ZaZelle25
Zdenka26
Zeema
Zefferine
Zelvateen
Zemma
Zenana27
Zenoda
Zerietha
Zessie
Ziba28
Ziona
Zippa29
Zle1
Zoan2
Zoda
Zola3
Zonza
Zoualda
Zoya4
Zudeen
Zula Bell
Zuma
Zwilla
Zylphia
Zymole
Zzelle
Despite the seeming chaos here the judicious reader will at once observe certain patterns and tendencies. Many of these names, he will note, are more or less plausible and euphonious modifications of common male names, usually by the addition of suffixes generally thought of as feminine, e.g., Philelle, Ulyssia, Lloydine, Alexanderene, Oscaretta, Alburtis. Others are diminutives of male names, often given a feminine flavor by combining them with accepted women’s names, e.g., Bennie Mae, Ji
mmie Lou, Mary Jo. Yet others are surnames converted into given-names, e.g., Beverly, Sidney, Shirley, Dabney, Powell, Shelby. And still other are geographical names – sometimes used unchanged, e.g., Manila, Sonora, Elba, and sometimes modified to please a whimsical fancy, e.g., Texana, Utahna, Arzonia, Denva, Melbourine, Okla, Venazualia, Hiburnia. All these processes, though they have been carried further in the Fancy Names Belt than anywhere else, have roots in the past. The ancient German man’s name of Albert produced Alberta at a very early date, and there was a saint thus called in the Third Century. So with Julia, which comes down from Roman times and was borne by a saint of the same era. So, again, with Philippa, Theodora, Henrietta, Caroline and many another. So, even, with Sophia, which was originally one of the Names of Jesus, and hence masculine, though it was transferred to women in Apostolic times and has been accepted by Holy Church ever since.5 Mary Jo and their like may be traced to the day before surnames, when it was common to distinguish between two women of the same name by appending their fathers’ given-names. Nor is there anything precisely new about giving girls surnames as given-names: it apparently came in simultaneously with the custom of using such names for boys. Camden says, in fact, that Douglas was thus adopted in England shortly before his time, and Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton (1540–1614), had a daughter of that name who became the wife of Sir Arthur Gorges, the cousin and companion of Sir Walter Raleigh, and was herself the subject of a poem by Spenser.1 This use of surnames as given-names for girls has always been commonest in the South, where it marks the gentry rather than the plain people. But in recent years it has flourished lushly among the lowly of Oklahoma.
Another large class of non-canonical girls’ names is produced by adorning old names with new and mellifluous terminations, e.g., Carrine, Marcellette, Olgalene, or by making collision forms of two or more, e.g., Gracella, Alouise, Hannora, Mariedythe, Harrietta, Agnella, Abbieann. With it goes a long series of novel abbreviations, e.g., Affie, Berthie, Oshie, and another and longer of rococo spellings, e.g., Cylvia, De Lores, Wroberta, Jayne, Mable, Dasy, Scharlott, Jaann,2 Phaye. Such spellings were once fashionable in the great Babylons of the East, with Edythe, Kathryn and Sadye as familiar examples, but in late years they have passed out there. In the Dust Bowl and its colonies, however, they continue to flourish, and some of them are of a great boldness, e.g., Feby (Phoebe), Gladdis, Rhey and Qay. In some cases their forms suggest that mere illiteracy may lie at the bottom of them, as for example in Anner, Cloteel, Drewceller, Milderd, Kathern and Roxaner,3 but it is much more common for a highly self-conscious artfulness to be manifest, and the same is also visible in the lavish misuse of particles, capitals, apostrophes and other such alarms and delights to the eye and psyche, e.g., ClarEtta, Da Rue, M’Amis, De’An, Du Wayne, G’Ola, Je Nanne, Ja Jayne, La Doris, DeDonda, AlMeda, E-Vetha, Lo Venia, McNara, Del Rose, El Louise, Le Olive and La Lahoma.4 The last example presents a case of doubling of la, not at all infrequent in my material, and the two cases immediately preceding show masculine articles used before feminine names. How one is to account for such forms as Garguerite, Maomi, Orene and Omelia, in which old names are turned into new ones by the simple device of changing the initial letters, I do not know. It may be ingenuity that operates here, and it may be only ignorance.
There remains the large group that defies analysis and even classification. All that one may say of its masterpieces is that they show a resolute determination to achieve something hitherto unmatched and unimagined, at whatever cost to tradition and decorum. It is as if the ambitious mother of a newly-hatched darling wrote all the elements of all the ancient girls’ names upon slips of paper, added slips bearing syllables filched from the terminology of all the arts and sciences, heaved the whole into an electric salad-tosser, and then arranged the seethed contents two by two or three by three. On what other theory is one to arrive at the genesis of such prodigies as Flouzelle, Glitha, Lephair, Ulestine, Delector, Luvader, Wheirmelda, Gentervee, Margileth and Moonean? They bear no apparent relation to the ordinary nomenclature of the language, but seem to be altogether synthetic. It is easy to imagine the exultation of a poor woman who achieves so shining a novelty. She not only marks off her little darling from all other little darlings within ear- or rumor-shot; she also establishes herself in her community as a salient social reformer and forward-looker and is quickly rewarded with the envy and imitation of other mothers. In the heat of this creative urge, alas, she sometimes contrives something that may wring snickers from city slickers, e.g., Faucette, Vomera, Uretha, Melassia, Fondanell, Onema, Leyette, Glanda, Morene, Phalla, Ova, Merdine, Eutris, Gelda, Tryphena or Coita, but her friends and admirers are unaware of any cryptic meaning or suggestion, and so is she herself.1 These are names wholly new to the human record, and she thinks that they are pretty ones, and even gorgeous. The woman next door who, in revolt against the stereotyped, can fetch up nothing better than Echo, Fairy, Dreamy, Kewpie, Kiwanis, Dewdrop or Apple is plainly of an inferior order of advanced thinker.
Most such inventions, I gather from the documents, come from mothers in the lower income brackets, but by no means all. Some of the most extraordinary specimens on my list are taken, not from the police news in the Bible Belt newspapers, but from rosters of college students and the elegant gossip of the society columns. Indeed, the impulse to make strange names for their daughters sometimes seizes upon women on the highest cultural levels, and as a result not a few female Americans of considerable dignity bear them. In AL41 I made note of a lady professor in California named Eschscholtzia – whether in honor of the California poppy or of the Russian naturalist who was its eponym I do not know. Irita, the charming given-name of the charming woman who is editor of the New York Herald Tribune’s Books, was concocted, according to her own account, “with no excuse except that it pleased my parents’ fancy.”2 Tallulah, the name of a very successful actress, is geographical and has been borne by ladies of her family, the Bank-heads of Alabama, for several generations. The four daughters of the late Owen Cattell, one of the editors of Science, are Coryl, Roma, Quinta and Jayjay.3 Miss M. Burneice Larson, director of the Medical Bureau in Chicago, finds her name so spelled because her mother objected to the way that Bernice was pronounced by the Cornish miners of the Michigan copper country where she was born, to wit, Búrniss, and determined to do something about it.4
I have noted the frequency of strange given-names among lady professors, especially in the South; the same frequency seems to prevail among librarians. One named Ullainee is reported from Illinois, and others named Vannelda, Zola Mae, Azaleen and Mirth have been found below the Potomac. Still another lady of the craft, Tommie by name, is said to have once suffered the embarrassment of being booked to share a room with a he-colleague at a professional convention. In Canada there is a female public official, now retired, whose given names are the simple initials, O P. In Oklahoma there is a female pianist named James.5 In 1940, writing in the Reader’s Digest upon the strange names borne by some of the wives of Southern congressmen, e.g., Clarine, Ivo,6 Nobie, Merle and Lady Bird, I fell into the error of including Ocllo, and was politely called to book by its bearer, Mrs. Ocllo Gunn Boykin, wife of a representative from Alabama. It is not, in fact, a given-name of native manufacture, though it is unusual: it is that of the sister and consort of Cachi, one of the legendary founders of the Inca dynasty of Peru, and was bestowed upon Mrs. Boykin because of her grandfather’s admiration for that dynasty.
When the invention and adoption of such names began I do not know, but it must have been long ago. Sydney Smith gave the name of Saba to his eldest daughter, born c. 1800, in an effort to find something striking enough to divert attention from Smith.1 Belva Lockwood, born in 1830, was the first woman admitted to practise before the Supreme Court of the United States, and ran for the Presidency on the Equal Rights ticket in 1884 and 1888; she is one of the saints of the feminist calendar, and many admirers of her generation named their girl babies after her. General George E. Pickett’s secon
d wife was baptized LaSalle, and General Richard S. Ewell’s had the name of Lizinka.2 Cornelius Vanderbilt II, in 1869, married as his second wife, a lady of Mobile, Ala., named Frank Crawford. Lamiza has come to its fifth generation in the Breckenridge family, and has been borrowed outside.3 It appeared in the New York Social Register for 1933–34 along with the following:
Ambolena
Anzonetta
Attaresta
Berinthia
Credilla
Dinette
Edelweiss
Engracia
Etelka
Exum
Fononda
Helentzia
Isophene
Lotawana
Mellona
Mosolete
Symphorosa
Thusnelda
Velvalee4
The process of forming such names, on a level far above that of the unlettered, was described by the Oklahoma City Times some years ago in an article dealing with the five beautiful daughters of a Mrs. Arthur Wilbur White of that city, to wit, Wilbarine, Yerdith, Norvetta, Marlynne and Arthetta. A group photograph of them was included, and under it one of the bright young men of the Times wrote “not a trite name in the bunch.” I quote:
Mrs. White … started early, with the first daughter, Wilbarine, 20-year-old junior at Oklahoma City University. That’s a name you won’t find in most folks’ family trees. Mrs. White thinks you won’t find it anywhere. She made it up. Got part of her idea from her husband’s middle name, and then added a few letters for the sake of euphony.
When the next daughter came along, Mrs. White couldn’t let her down. So she set about manufacturing a name. This time it was Norvetta, who is a junior at Classen high-school. Mrs. White smiled as she recalled the time she had getting that name together. She liked the name LaVeta, but she had to have something different. So she used part of her maiden name, North.
It was too late to turn back when the third daughter arrived, and besides Mrs. White likes to manufacture names. Yerdith, 11-year-old pupil at Harding junior high-school, is proud of hers. Yerdith, Mrs. White explained, is a composite of Yvonne and Edith, with a little letter twisting to make it sound pretty.
When the fourth daughter showed up, Mrs. White wanted to show her favoritism for the name Marilyn, but Lindbergh was pretty much in the public eye. So – she shook her name basket. And up came Marlynne, who’s 10 years old and in the 5B grade at Wilson school.1
Six years ago another daughter arrived by stork express, and Mrs. White thought it was time father was remembered again. So, the baby of the family, a first grader at Wilson, is Arthetta.2
That the fashion for artificial names may be spreading is indicated by the fact that they have begun to be listed in the handbooks for puzzled parents got out by enterprising publishers. In one of these books, for example, I find Adabel, Arvia, Cerelia, Rosel, Sidra, Thadine and Xylia,3 and in another Airlia, Darlene, Gelda, Marette, Xanthe and Zella.4 But even in the heart of the Swell Names Zone the older girls’ names have not yet gone wholly underground, and elsewhere they hold out stoutly. I turn, for example, to a list of 346 recent graduates of the Capitol City High-school of Oklahoma City, about equally divided between girls and boys. Among the former, despite the throng of Frenas, Phillie Joes, Narasonas and Twylas, I yet find two Katherines and Helens, three Margarets and Dorothys, four Ruths, nine Marys and no less than seventeen Bettys. These old names have been facing the competition of successive waves of newer ones for centuries, but they still hold out. Ernest Weekly once undertook an examination of the names of women dead before c. 1750, embalmed in the Dictionary of National Biography: he found that Agnes, Alice, Cicely, Joan, Matilda (or Maud), Margaret, Elizabeth and the related Isabel “recur almost monotonously” – and all of them continue to flourish to this day.1 There are recurrent crazes for naming girls after the heroines of novels and movies and the stars of stage and screen, but they do not last. The old names go into disuse for a while, and then come back triumphantly. “The only thing that has kept girls’ names from collapsing into sheer frivolity or worse,” wrote a Canadian observer in 1935, “has been the astonishing recrudescence of Ann and Jane.”2 Both have flourished with occasional short eclipses, since the Fourteenth Century. So have Amy, Beatrice, Blanche, Mary, Philippa, Helen, Emma, Katherine and Sibyl. Dr. Morris Fishbein reported in 19443 that one-twenty-fourth of all American women were then named Mary, with Elizabeth, Margaret and Helen following in order. He added, however that Mary was apparently receding somewhat, with Elizabeth threatening to run ahead of it, and Helen, Dorothy, Margaret, Marie, Katherine, Louise, Ruth and Eleanor following.
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