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Monday, November 5, 2012

You're Named Where?

People name their children all sorts of things. Some choose a more traditional route with age-old standbys like Mary and George or John and Sue. Other people opt for a more unique name by changing an older name's spelling or adding punctuation marks or creating a new name entirely. The brilliant few, in my humble opinion, have chosen to name their offspring after actual things: plants, bodies of water, and, of all things, the United States. It appears this trend has been going on for some time. Check out this chart enumerating state names appearing in the US Federal Census over the years:


Name
Most Popular Census Year for State Name
Number with State Name That Year
Alabama
1880
1,682
Alaska
1930
177
Arizona
1930
2,158
Arkansas
1880
363
California
1880
518
Carolina (North and South)
1910
26,030
Colorado
1900
61
Connecticut
1930
8
Dakota (North and South)
1930
205
Delaware
1900
324
Florida
1930
5,576
Georgia
1930
108,629
Hawaii
1900
10
Idaho
1920
87
Illinois
1920
334
Indiana
1870
2,772
Iowa
1920
1,541
Kansas
1920
873
Kentucky
1900
69
Louisiana
1900
1,833
Maine
1920
3,152
Maryland
1940
3,314
Massachusetts
1900
2
Michigan
1910
33
Minnesota
1880
138
Mississippi
1870
105
Missouri
1900
9,035
Montana
1930
615
Nebraska
1930
358
Nevada
1930
2938
Hampshire (New)
1880
18
Jersey (New)
1900
343
Mexico (New)
1910
89
York (New)
1880
1,415
Ohio
1940
286
Oklahoma
1910
145
Oregon
1900
282
Pennsylvania
1900
53
Rhode Island
1920
4
Tennessee
1880
4,476
Texas
1900
1,445
Utah
1940
419
Vermont
1920
609
Virginia (Virginia and West)
1940
473,973
Washington
1870
21,977
Wisconsin
1920
14
Wyoming
1930
70


Have you ever met anyone actually named, for instance, Pennsylvanian Bullard? Real lady--she appears in the 1920 US Federal Census with her husband Jeff. Here are a few other real people we've come up with who are named after US States:

  • Dakota Fanning is a child acting star from Georgia.
  • William Faulkner named his first daughter Alabama after his aunt Alabama (Minter 127).
  • Nevada Barr is an author whose father named her after a character in a book he liked (MWP).
  • Montana McGlynn was a member of the reality TV show The Real World season six.
And because fiction can be more satisfying than real life, here are some fictional characters with US State names:
  • Alaska Young in John Green's Looking for Alaska
  • Nevada Smith in Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers
  • Montana Wildhack in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
  • Wyoming Knott in Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
  • Arizona Ames in Zane Grey's Arizona Ames.
  • The daughter named KIM in Edna Ferber's Showboat:
    And as Kim Ravenal you doubtless are familiar with her. It is no secret that the absurd monosyllable which comprises her given name is made up of the first letters of three states - Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri - in all of which she was, incredibly enough, born - if she can be said to have been born in any state at all (Ferber 1).
My favorite "stumble upon" in this search is by far this family:


Were they just patriotic? Or were the parents so pleased to find a like-named soul that they chose to continue the tradition? I suppose we'll never know.

Ferber, Edna. Showboat. G. K. Hall & Co., 1981.
Minter, David. William Faulkner: His Life and Work. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1980.
http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/dir/barr_nevada/index.html

1 comment:

  1. this is a great post. I love it. It deserves more attention. I had no idea naming kids after states was such a thing.

    ReplyDelete

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