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