Last summer Zwenkau wrote this of genealogy research in one of our open threads:
Lastly, a part of it was wanting to know what-to-name-the-baby (whom we were expecting).
That got me thinking, and I scoured my own family tree and my wife’s for names that we might use when we have a child of our own to name. Until a couple of years ago, my list would have been restricted, pretty much, to Michael, James, Joseph, John, Edward, Patrick, Catherine, Maureen, Agnes, Mary, Anna, Elizabeth, or Patricia, which show up over and over again in my Irish Catholic family. But marrying into another culture and learning I had New England Yankee ancestry going back to the 1620s broadened my options considerably.
I came up with what I thought was a great list, but my wife (for reasons I don’t understand at all) nixed every single name on it. I’m appealing to the court of public opinion, sharing with all of you these beautiful names and the case for using each of them. Today I’ll go through a small sampling of the girls’ names on the family tree. The boys’ names will come in a later edition.
(In case it’s not clear, this is largely tongue-in-cheek. Apologies in advance if any gentle reader bears one of these names.)
Cleora
My great-great-grandfather Joseph in Vermont had a sister named Cleora. She was born in 1844 and died in 1909. She knew some tragedy in her life, losing two sons under the age of four to a pneumonia epidemic in the cold winter of 1882. Her third son had no children, meaning her line has ended.
The case for:
• It’s unique. Cleora, apparently a diminutive form of Cleopatra, was a popular name when my great-great-great-aunt was born. During the first half of the 19th century, as the Pharoahs’ tombs were opened, all things Egyptian were the rage in the United States. But in 2012 there were zero newborns named Cleora recorded in the United States. A real chance to stand out.
• Victorian gothic charm. It’s on the official list of girls’ names for Steampunk. Waltham, five minutes from my house, has a major Steampunk festivalevery year. There’s another one in Salem. Fusing Victorian style with modernity, what could be more New England, or more cool, than that?
The case against:
• My wife has an uncommon name and always has to repeat it, spell it, etc. She refuses to pass that burden on to a child.
• My wife doesn’t like the name (this will be a standing objection to all names in this diary).
• Cleora is a genus of gray moth, which is not all that interesting.
The Cleora cinctaria moth
Sophronia
From the Egyptians we move to the Greeks, just like at the museum. It means "prudent," "sensible," "of judicious mind." Cleora and Joseph’s father had a sister named Sophronia (1809-1874) in Québec. She was handicapped and never married. An uncle of Cleora and Joseph’s married a different Sophronia (1826-1906), born in Québec as well but later moving to Vermont. Their eldest daughter, Cleora and Joseph’s first cousin, was named Sophronia as well and died young (1843-1857).
The case for:
• Again, bringing back a Victorian-era standby.
• Though not as uncommon as Cleora, it’s also unique: Sophronia hasn’t been in the top 1,000 girls’ names in the U.S. since 1900.
• Many people think it’s a beautiful name. Here’s one representative comment from a baby name site: “I love this name and its meaning ("self-controlled, sensible"). Reminds me of the English word sophisticated too. I think of a woman named Sophronia as being very poised and self-assured, exquisite manners, brilliant conversationalist, witty, eloquent and highly educated. Very well-rounded and balanced. Almost otherworldly, as if she doesn't belong to her time - that she is either ahead of her time or from a bygone era.”
• Sophronia was the given name of Phronsie Pepper (the youngest of five children) in the Five Little Peppers books by Margaret Sidney. Mrs. Sidney wrote some of the books in "The Wayside," a house in Concord, Massachusetts once lived in by both Louisa May Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne and now administered by the NPS. I read the books as a kid and live near Concord, where my ancestors were among the earliest settlers. It’s also the name of a Dickens character (Our Mutual Friend). Literature, local connection, genealogy: what more could you ask for?
• Also the name of a very pretty orchid.
Sophronia "Phronsie" Pepper, all grown up
The case against:
• Sophronia Fairweather of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a
witch. I live in Massachusetts, where folks haven’t always been nice to witches. That's all in the past now, but one never knows.
• Joseph Smith of Mormon fame had a
sister named Sophronia, who moved west with him. The Mormons are a bit too Republican for me.
Sophronia "Sophie" Fairweather, witch
Semiramis
Greek writers, as well as those from other traditions, waxed rhapsodic over the legendary exploits of the mythic Assyrian Queen Semiranis, who ascended to the throne upon the death of her husband, King Ninus (or Nimrod). The name was, if not common, not unheard of in the early 19th century, when the classics inspired renewed interest in the United States. n my family tree, there is but one bearer of the name to my knowledge, the daughter of my 4x-great-grandfather’s brother. She was born in Vermont in 1812, married, and moved away to Minnesota.
The case for:
• Semiramis, at least in legend, was a kick-ass woman. When her husband, King Ninus, was killed in battle she pretended to be their son to trick her late husband’s army into following her instructions. She then reigned for 42 years, conquering much of Asia, as well as Libya and Ethiopia.
• Nearly every stupendous work of antiquity by the Euphrates or in Iran seems to have ultimately been ascribed to her. Herodotus ascribes to her the artificial banks that confined the Euphrates.
The case against:
• Dante placed Semiramis with the lustful folks in the Second Circle of Hell: “The empress was of many languages. To sensual vices she was so abandoned, That lustful she made licit in her law, To remove the blame to which she had been led. She is Semiramis, She succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse; She held the land which now the Sultan rules.”
• Despite this, she is created with inventing the chastity belt and the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus identified her as the first person to castrate a young man into eunuch-hood. That level of sexual hypocrisy and control I’ll leave to the Republicans.
• She seemed to inspire a lot of suicide. According to the legend as related by Diodorus, she was abandoned at birth by her mother, the fish-goddess Derketo, who drowned herself. Later Semiramis married Onnes, one of King Ninus’s generals, but so impressed the king during the battle at Bactra that he wanted to marry her himself, forcing her husband Onnes to commit suicide.
• Armenian tradition considers her a homewrecker and harlot who invaded Armenia when its king, Ara the Beautiful, would not marry her. Ara was killed in the ensuing battle, and Semiranis, reputed to be a sorceress, disguised one of her lovers and claimed Ara had come back to life because of her prayers.
• Her husband, Nimrod, was a nemesis of the biblical Abraham whose name gave rise to an insult most often hurled at Elmer Fudd.
Section of "Semiramis staring at the dead Ara the Beautiful," by Vardkes Suriniants (1860-1921)
Demencia
The name of a cousin of my wife’s great-grandfather in Puerto Rico.
The case for:
•You got me. I’m stumped.
The case against:
• The name means “dementia” or “insanity.” My wife thinks that ends the discussion and I tend to agree.
Not the name I want to give to my daughter
Dolores
The name of several people in my wife’s large extended family in Puerto Rico.
The case against:
(I’m reversing the order here):
• The name means “sorrows” or pains.” For that very reason J.C. Rowling called one of the most unlikeable characters in the Harry Potter series Dolores Umbridge. Not too cheerful, particularly to my wife, who’s a native speaker of Spanish.
• Despite being more common than other names given so far, it’s still a pain to spell as people must decide between the original “Dolores” and the English variant “Delores.”
• As I said, not as uncommon as the others. As of 1990 Dolores was still the 171st most common name among U.S. women. But it peaked in the 1930s and is on the way down. It hasn’t been among the 1,000 most common names given in this country since the 1970s.
The case for:
• There are some wonderful people with this name, including Cesar Chavez’s colleague Dolores Huerta, the principled feminist activist Dolores Alexander and the singer Dolores Keane, from the excellent Irish folk group Dé Danann.
• The “sorrows” and “pains” is short for La Virgen María de los Dolores, "Virgin Mary of Sorrows.” So it’s in honor of Mary, not just gratuitous suffering.
• Mission Dolores, in San Francisco, is a beautiful place. Its graveyard contains the bodies of many early Irish immigrants to San Francisco, members of my family included. That combination of Irish and Spanish-speaking influences reflects my little family well.
Dolores Huerta with the United Farm Workers pickets
Mission Dolores in San Francisco
Mehitable
A common name in Puritan New England, so I have no shortage of Mehitables on my family tree. But the most recent one was born in 1723.
The case for:
• It means, “God rejoices.” That’s nice.
• Mehitable Lamb, the title character in Massachusetts writer’s Mary Wilkins Freeman’s 1892 story, is no snitch. Her friend Hannah wanders off to her aunt’s field to pick early apples, instructing Mehitable (perhaps one of the last to have this name?) not to tattle-tale. When Hannah doesn’t come home, the adults freak out. But Mehitable won’t tell where Hannah went. Even after being whipped she doesn’t break. That’s hardcore. In the end Hannah’s aunt discovers her in the orchard and brings her home. All is well. Bonus points since Wilkins Freeman wrote another story about a girl named Fidelia, my 3x-great-grandmother’s name.
• Mehitable May Dawes was the wife of William Dawes, who road through Roxbury (a place with significance for me) and met up with Paul Revere on the ride to Lexington. Dawes was the brains of the operation; he’s actually captured the guns Hancock and Sam Adams were hiding in the country. His quick thinking allowed Samuel Prescott to continue on to Concord when Revere was arrested by the British.
John Singleton Copley's portrait of Mehitable May Dawes sits in the Evanston History Center near Chicago. The center is located in the home of Dawes descendant, and Vice President under Coolidge, Charles Gates Dawes.
The case against:
• Over a century ago this name already was considered a dud. Margaret Horner Clyde’s
1908 story,
A Shared Thanksgiving, begins: “If it were not for the name! But one cannot disown a niece who is also a namesake. Besides the common misfortune of being saddled with the name Mehitable might prove a bond of sympathy.”
• Likewise, in 1887
Olivia Lowell Wilson’s story,
The Romance of an Apple-Dumpling, “Mehitable had inherited, with this trying name, her grandmother’s fair skin and sunny hair, with the complexion of a rose-leaf.” Then again, Olivia Lowell Wilson thought “Birdie” was a name “breathing of poetic fancy,” so what did she know?
• Nobody who have any clue how to pronounce it. It’s “meh-HIT-uh-bull,” which sounds too much like “hittable.” But I can imagine people saying “Meh-hi-TABLE,” "Meh-hi-TAH-bluh," or all sorts of things.
• In
Don Marquis’s series “Archy and Mehitabel,” the titular Mehitable was an alley cat who fraternized with a typing cockroach. I’m an open-minded guy but I don’t want cockroaches in my house. Though I do give the cat credit for being friends with one.
Archy and Mehitable, typewriter-loving cockroach and alley cat
Hephzibah
Another common name in early New England. I have several in the family, including one 7x-great-grandmother.
The case for:
• The name is Hebrew for “my delight is in her,” sweet sentiments toward a little daughter.
• It appears twice in the Bible: as the name of King Hezekiah’s wife, whom he loved dearly, in 2 Kings 21; and as the name given to God’s chosen people in Isaiah 62:4: “Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah.” Who wouldn’t want to escape being forsaken and desolate? I cheered out loud when entering California from Nevada.
• Though unique now, it was a common name in colonial Massachusetts. For those of us who are learning late of our colonial New England pedigree, and are fearful of not fitting in with the DAR crowd, what better way to make a statement?
• There’s a boomlet of sorts: After many a year where Hephzibah was given out only three times per million babies, that number soared to 6 children per million in 2010 and 12 children per million in 2011 and about 20 last year. Make room on the bandwagon.
The case against:
• One of the few people alive with this name (best known for taking a year off from sex and writing about it) has had a rough go of it: “My moniker is so uncommon it's impossible to read – literally. I once gave an interview to a radio presenter who called me Hezbollah for 40 minutes.”
• Another one doesn’t even use it: “In my family, there is a strong tradition of passing along family names; I am a seventh generation Hephzibah, although I go by my middle name.”
• It’s the name of a town in Georgia. I live in Massachusetts, so if I wanted to name a daughter after a town I already have Beverly, Chelsea, Dana, Lynn, Marion, Sharon, and Shirley to pick from closer to home.
The British journalist and writer Hephzibah Anderson
Azubah
I have two direct ancestors with this name; they were grandmother and granddaughter, the granddaughter having been born in 1782. The name belongs to two women in the Bible, the wife of Caleb (First Chronicles) and the wife of King Asa (Second Chronicles and Kings).
The case for:
The case for:
• Hmmm. I have two direct ancestors with this name. They were probably nice people.
• It’s unique, having never ranked among the top 1,000 baby girl names in the United States.
• How many names cover from A to Z in the first two letters?
The case against:
• It means “deserted,” “abandoned,” or “forsaken.” Depressing.
• In fact, in the biblical quote above about Hephzibah (“Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah.”), the “Forsaken” and “Desolate” was represented by “Azubah”). Ironically, Hephzibah was the name of my elder Azubah’s mother. Was she supposed to grow into a Hephzibah like in the Bible?
• I can already imagine middle school classmates making “ass” jokes.
The most common place to find someone named Azubah these days might be in a small New England cemetery
Zilpha
This was another biblical name that had traction in early New England, especially from about 1700 to 1830 or so. It was about the 900th most popular name for a girl in the U.S. in 1880, then dropped out of the top 1,000. The most recent of several Zilphas on my family tree, born in 1824, was a first cousin of my 3x-great-grandfather. And she went by “Polly.”
The case for:
• Zilpha Elaw, in the early 1800s, was “one of the first outspoken black women in the United States.” Born free in 1790 near Philadelphia, she showed great personal courage, traveling around the slave states of Maryland and Virginia to preach despite the risk of being kidnapped and sold into slavery at any time.
• Author Zilpha Keatley Snyder, who’s almost 87, has written 43 books in the past 50 years. She’s still active and the kids still love them. That’s impressive.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder meets a fan
The case against:
• In the Bible, Zilpha was the mother of Jacob’s sons Gad and Asher. Their tribes controlled much of present-day Lebanon and a good chunk of Syria. That seems like a headache. Plus, Zilpha was Leah’s hand-maiden. In this day and age, having kids with a guy who’s married to someone else is not much of an aspiration.
•The name means “frailty.” That’s even worse.
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There are more great female names on the family tree (Nackey, Silence, Lettice), but I’ve gone on long enough. What do you think? Any keepers on this list? What are the best (or, rather, worst) names you’ve found on your family tree?