American Language Supplement 2

by H. L. Mencken

  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.