Onomastics

Onomastics, or naming, is a topic of some fascination for me, and I have written about it often over the years. Some cultures require that children be named after some relative, others forbid that they take the name of someone still alive. I am named after my mother's brother.  Had I been a girl it would have been her sister, Cynthia. Some brands of puritans kept using a name for a child no matter how many of them died young, especially if they wanted to preserve the father's or a grandparent's name. Tracy's family uses Douglas as a middle name often, and the lore is that the Yorkshire family had lots of Scots ancestry and the name was passed down because of that. Scots and Borderers had a lot of exchange over the years, both angry and friendly, so it was not surprising when DNA confirmed this. In Romania and other cultures, people are called by their middle names, so my son John-Adrian (who now goes by JA or John) was Adrian Ionut, while Chris was Dorel Cristian until he was 14, and is still Cristi when he goes back. 

I started early on with this blog, and one of the things discussed have been pathological names. Crystal (and especially variants) had a long run in the 80s and 90s populating the caseloads of social workers, and Amber came later.  It was pronounced enough that I twice had social workers named Crystal immediately move to reassure me that they were okay and that they could be worked with. I was distressed when we visited England in the late 90s and I read an article describing how destrissed elementary school teachers were on learning their class had more than one Fiona.  I loved that name.  Still do. I'm glad the pathological mothers here didn't share that fondness.  There are plenty of nice people with names that somehow are shared with age mates that are terrors, but the patterns are pretty clear.

Here are some I have posted in the early years. I will probably group the later ones for another reposting in the future.

Changes in fashion since my era. I regularly had two or three David's in my classes, but no kindergarten has had one in years now.

Boy's names become girl's names, but no vice-versa.

Incredible stability of naming in English, now vanished. First names in English, 1200-2000. I should have included Aethelwulf and Eomund and the like. 

Some examination of both the trends since 1940 or so and why they occurred.