Name-Droppers : Can You Trust Someone Called ‘Oleomargarine’? Parents Should Be Careful When Naming Baby

Whatever happened to baby Mary Jane?

And Beryl and Bertha, and Clarence and Clyde?

Ashley and Jessica and Michael and Christopher, that’s what.

When it comes to naming baby, tradition is taking a battering. Jane may be plain, but parents of the ‘90s prefer something a bit fancier. Like Stephanie or Amanda.

“You know how America is,” says UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian. “People are always trying to experiment. The tennis racket was made with a wooden frame and gut strings until the Americans came along. We’re doing the same thing with names. You can’t stop it.”

Only yesterday, Debbie and Karen and Susan and Linda were hip and happening ‘60s names. Then came the flower children, whose own children entered the world as Moonbeam and Amerika.

The ‘70s boosted Michelle (Who can forget the Beatles’ 1967 ballad?), along with Lisa, Tracy, Kelly, Kimberly and Nicole. And there was a national infatuation with Jennifer, the ill-fated heroine of the film “Love Story.”

For more than a century, such classic boys’ names as Robert, John, William, David, Joseph and James have endured, according to “The Guinness Book of Names.” By contrast, the only girls’ names that have lasted are Elizabeth and variations of Katherine.

But the biblical names--Matthew, Joshua and the like--have overtaken such onetime standards as Philip and Patrick.

As Catherine Cameron, professor of sociology at the University of LaVerne, observed in her book, “The Name Givers: How They Influence Your Life”:

“By the ‘80s, kindergarten lists began to sound like the roll call for the Last Supper.”

Meanwhile, parents of girls began indulging in flights of fancy, fantasy and celebrity-fixation that brought favor to Brittany and Crystal.

One caustic observer has raised the specter that, by the mid-2000s, the nation’s nursing homes are going to be populated by geriatric women named Bambi and Tiffany.

What does it mean, this name game?

A great deal, says UCLA’s Mehrabian, author of “The Name Game: The Decision that Lasts a Lifetime.”

In an interview, he acknowledged that his own first name gets a “mediocre” score on his scale for judging names by qualities others assign to those who have them.

He would have loved a simple Anglo-Saxon surname, he says, but if he had to be Mehrabian, he asks, did he also have to be Albert? His brother, he points out, is named Robert “and my brother is very, very successful.” (Robert Mehrabian is president of Carnegie-Mellon University).

“The good old solid standards, they do terrifically well,” he says. Indeed, James was the male name that most implied success to his respondents. Jacqueline was the winner for females.

Losers across-the-board included Ira, Melvin, Waldo, Blanche, Millicent, Fawn and Flora.

“Our name is very central to the way other people perceive us and to how we think about ourselves,” says Mehrabian. “If you ask somebody, ‘Who are you? What are you?’ the first thing they’ll say is their name.”

In choosing a name for baby, he says, parents sometimes make “errors of tragic proportion,” for example “when they try to be creative or clever or funny.

“Imagine somebody calling their first-born Alpha or trying to have names that rhyme--first-born, Fad; second-born, Brad, third-born, Chad. Or having the first and last names rhyme. How would you like somebody with the last name Kari and he’s called Harry?”

His survey included some surprises, among them that Adolph (as in Adolf Hitler) scored high on success perception. He explains, “Our respondents view him as someone who is a leader, but is immoral, cold, cheerless. If we had done Saddam, I don’t think we’d get a high rating on success but we would probably get equally low ratings on morality and warmth and cheerfulness.”

Just as Mehrabian does not condone the bizarre, he eschews the too-trendy, names that are “over-used.” He mentions Ashley, Michael, Scott and Joshua.

Some now-quaint names like Herbert and Hortense scored high on morality, low by all other measures. Mehrabian explains: “I think some of these old-fashioned names perhaps get associated with grandparents and elderly individuals who are warm and very giving and kind and religious and upright.”

“Names that have childlike, playful qualities are not going to be taken seriously in the business and professional world,” says Mehrabian. He recalls a museum director who would not consider hiring anyone named Candy or Brandy.

Candy Lightner, founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, laughs when she hears this. “I tried using Candace when I hit my 30s and decided to go into real estate. I thought Candy simply was not an appropriate name for a Realtor.” However, she soon reverted; Candace was “so alien” to her.

Lightner thinks “Candy sounds odd for a 40-year-old woman” but now it’s so much a part of her identity, she says, that “I just can’t see changing it for the world.” And, she adds, it has never handicapped her in the business or professional world.

“People do not forget my name,” she says--although she used to take some teasing when Candi Barr, the stripper, was big in burlesque. For the most part, she has found, others “seem to have a real positive feeling about the name. They ask, ‘Are you as sweet as candy?’ ”

Mehrabian, asked the worst name he’s ever heard, doesn’t hesitate: Latrina. He cites other memorable monikers: Cobra, Denim, Fresno, Pitbull and Daiquiri.

Other researchers have turned up these: Rick O’Shea, Katz Meow, Hardley Davidson, Honey Combs, Bunker Hill and Dill L. Pickle. The first-name hall of fame includes Equal Rights Amendment, Jesus-Christ-Came-Into-The-World-to-Save and Oleomargarine.

Oddities recorded in recent years by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services include Atom, Ben-hur, Denial, Dynasty, Super Starr, Man, Me, Passion and Porsche.

Sue Browder, who lives in Cerritos, is author of “The New Age Baby Name Book” and the mother of a daughter, Erin, 17, and a son, Dustin, 20. She chose those names because they were unusual; both have since found popularity.

When she named Erin, Browder says, “I thought nobody will know for sure when she applies for a job if she’s a boy or a girl. I thought, ‘Hey, this will be a good one for the resume.’ You multiply that thinking times a million. . . .”

(Certainly, there is precedent for this trend. To combat 19th-Century bias against women writers, French novelist Amandine Dupin called herself George Sand, while English novelist Mary Ann Evans took the pseudonym George Eliot).

Browder says other mothers have told her they didn’t want to burden a daughter with a name that’s too cute, or too feminine. “Forget Bambi,” Browder says. “I could never name a girl Bambi. Bambi is a deer.”

As for scuttling tried and true girls’ names, she says, “I think we just get tired of them. There is the theory that, as society and culture change, our names change. And certainly women’s views of themselves are changing.”

She suggests that the spate of strong, one-syllable masculine names may be a reaction to the “feminist challenge.”

Browder’s given name is Sue but, “As I’ve gotten older and more professional, I would like a more professional name. I wish my name were Susan.”

Her book has a chapter on “Choosing a Name That Reflects Your Roots,” a trend she applauds. “As we become more a world culture, we become less suspicious of names that are a little bit different.” But, she says, she would caution non-Anglo and immigrant parents who want their children to enter the mainstream against bizarre names.

American TV is beamed around the globe and, not surprisingly, Browder says, girls worldwide are being given soap-opera names.

One reason Arlene and Doris and Phyllis and the rest have lost favor, Browder believes, is that today “we have more of an urge to express our individuality. We have more and more people and we want to find ways to stand out.”

Good old emotional associations also play a role when parents choose a name. A name will bring to mind someone from their past that they couldn’t abide. For Browder, it was Arvid. “He was my bully across the street. He picked on me and made me cry.”

In a study published in 1988, Catherine Cameron of the University of La Verne studied about 60 boys in a home for juvenile offenders and found that these boys were twice as likely to carry the burden of their fathers’ names than boys in the general community. Another finding was that, within their own community, these “juniors” were twice as likely to have been abused.

She concludes: “If you lived up to your parents’ expectations, everything went swimmingly, but if you disappointed (them), you were more likely to be unsuccessful.”

In her book, Cameron points out how once-respected names have been sunk by association: Mortimer (as in Snerd), Elmer (as in Fudd), Elsie (as in the cow) and Dennis (as in Menace).

Names, she says, lose their luster as they become commonplace. In the ‘30s and ‘40s, Shirley Temple’s popularity spawned thousands of little Shirleys, while in the ‘70s college campuses were “littered” with Debbies, a reflection of the popularity of Debbie Reynolds.

There is a theory, Cameron says, that “boys are named more conservatively and more traditionally because they are expected to have a ‘more serious’ role in life.” But she sees “a strong push” for naming girls boy-girl names like Whitney.

Names also reflect class distinctions, Cameron believes: “The leaders in society, the prestige people, would never christen a child Joe or Bob. They would always use Joseph or Robert.” And studies have shown that Joseph or Robert would rise further, faster, says Cameron whose children are named Robert and Catherine.

“Probably Norman Schwarzkopf, if he were ‘Normie,’ might not be as likely to become a general.”

When a name is adopted by the lower classes, Cameron says, it “ceases to carry the status that it once had . . . people who like to think of themselves as the leaders and shakers are not as likely to call their children by trendy names.”

The upper classes frequently use family names as first names, as in Huntington Hartford IV, says Richard Zweigenhaft, a professor of psychology at Guilford College in North Carolina. The message in HH IV: “You are a rich person and not only privileged but special.”

Says Zweigenhaft: “Having an unusual name is not necessarily bad for a kid.” But, he emphasizes, that name must have “an implication of specialness, as opposed to strangeness.”

His studies cite a tendency within the U.S. psychological community to generalize and oversimplify in analyzing the psychological impact of unusual names. In his writings, he has made the distinction between desirable and undesirable names:. “Obviously, to have the unusual name Courtney is not the same as having the unusual name Berleana.”

Zweigenhaft thinks names that reflect a family’s heritage can be positive. Names such as Kunta Kinte and Kizzy, popularized by the 1970s television series based on Alex Haley’s “Roots,” make a statement about centuries of struggle and determination. Black Americans today shun names like Leroy and Ruby, which came to be derogatory stereotypes.

Selase Williams, chairman of the Pan-African Studies department at California State University, Fullerton, says, “Clearly, in terms of personal development, to have an African name is a very positive thing for African Americans.

“This is a very important break” from the past, Williams says. But he cautions that “it might very well work against them. . . .

“When you’re reading resumes, it’s very easy to determine whether someone is Japanese or Irish or Italian or French by their last names. With African Americans now assuming African names, they too can be identified more easily, either for good or bad. It will be a double-edged sword.”

Some names chosen by black American parents include Kofi and Kwame for boys, Ama or Ami for girls. Williams’ own given name, Selase, is Ghanian. One of his daughters has an African name, Bibi.

Among American Jews, there is a definite trend toward names that identify a child as Jewish. Fairly recently, even many Orthodox Jews were shunning such names for fear that they would prove handicaps to their children.

“The American Jewish community is increasingly concerned with its sense of self,” says Rabbi Daniel Gordis, a Conservative Jew who is dean of students at the University of Judaism. “There’s much less of the concern you had 10 or 20 years ago of trying to fit in. Jews feel relatively secure.”

As a result, Gordis says, the new agenda for Jewish parents is to “let ourselves and our kids know who we are.” He and his wife named their daughter Talia and their son, Aviel, both Hebrew names.

Twenty-five years ago, he adds, “an overtly Jewish name probably would have made it more difficult to make partner in a Wall Street law firm than it would today.”

Popular Hebrew names include Ayala, Ury, Ari and Shoshana. Among Reform Jews, secular Israeli names such as Maya and Aviv are finding favor.

A name that is out of style can be a lifelong burden.

Bertha Kelly, a local writer and longtime publicist, says of Bertha: “I don’t like it at all. I feel that Bertha is either a large elephant, a Swedish maid or a large gun.”

She was named for her mother. “I was not able to change it. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. My middle name is Margaret and I wanted to be called Maggie Kelly, which I think is a great name.”

Because she is a Bertha, she adds, “I feel before people meet me, they right away have a picture of a very large lady,” a problem she was aware of when making business contacts by telephone. “I tried to talk like a thin lady. I tried to sound young and active.”

Kelly says, “To this very moment, I wish I could change it. But if I started calling myself Maggie, who else would do it? No one.”

There’s one thing about a name: If you can’t live with it, you can change it.

Petitions for filing a name change are available at the County Courthouse. A Superior Court judge must approve the new name (Jesus Christ and Santa Claus, for example, wouldn’t make it). It costs $223 and takes six to eight weeks.

Consider these famous name-changers: Woody Allen (nee Allen Konigsberg), Fred Astaire (Frederick Austerlitz), Chubby Checker (Ernest Vans), Madonna (Madonna Ciccone), Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier), Elton John (Reginald Kenneth Dwight) and Michael Caine (Maurice Joseph Micklewhite).

And Lassie was born Pal.

COUNTY NAME GAME These were the most popular names for boys and girls born during 1990 in Los Angeles County:

Boys

1. Jose

2. Michael

3. Daniel

4. David

5. Christopher

Girls

1. Jessica

2. Stephanie

3. Jennifer

4. Maria

5. Elizabeth

Source: Los Angeles County Department of Health Services

WHAT’S IN A NAME? UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian asked about 1,000 parents and potential parents, American-born and between the ages of 20 and 30, to identify the qualities that would be most important to them in their children. They then ranked 1,800 given names by how strongly they suggest these qualities.

The survey, done over the last 2 1/2 years, is the basis of his book, “The Name Game: The Decision That Lasts a Lifetime” (National Press Books), published in November.

Success

BOYS’ NAMES

1. James

2. Madison

3. Charles

4. Alexander

5. Kenneth

Success

GIRLS’ NAMES

1. Jacqueline

2. Katherine

3. Samantha

4. Victoria

5. Lauren

Morality

BOYS’ NAMES

1. Moses

2. Solomon

3. Abraham

4. Joshua

5. Jonah

Morality

GIRLS’ NAMES

1. Prudence

2. Hope

3. Esther

4. Agnes

5. Abigail

Health

BOYS’ NAMES

1. Chad

2. Rick

3. John

4. Steven

5. Mark

Health

GIRLS’ NAMES

1. Brooke

2. Samantha

3. Kim

4. Tanya

5. Jessica

Warmth

BOYS’ NAMES

1. Moses

2. Joseph

3. Jonah

4. Steven

5. Joshua

Warmth

GIRLS’ NAMES

1. Beth

2. Ann

3. Hope

4. Rose

5. Emma

Masculinity

BOYS’ NAMES

1. Conan

2. Buck

3. Duke

4. Rex

5. Chad

Femininity

GIRLS’ NAMES

1. Bunny

2. Zsa Zsa

3. Barbie

4. Fifi

5. Maryann

O.C. FAVORITES

These are the most popular names for boys and girls born in 1990 in Orange County.

Rank Boys Girls 1. Joshua Jessica 2. Jonathan Christine 3. Brian Nicole 4. Mark Stephanie 5. Christopher Kristina 6. Eric Samantha 7. Kevin Natalie 8. Andrew Jennifer 9. Juan Crystal 10. Daniel Jasmine 11. Anthony Ashley 12. Joseph Erica 13. Kevin Amanda 14. Aaron Lynette 15. Alex Sandra 16. Trevor Brittany 17. Christian Tiffany 18. Brendon Bianca 19. Sean Gabrielle 20. David Sarah

Source: Orange County Health Care Agency