Brand naming kids

[Patti J. Kurtz]

Spellings are also influenced by celebrity names-- my name, Patti, was
spelled that way because of the popularity of singer Patti Page at the
time.  (my Mom even admits that  : )

(And it's NOT "Patricia," a fact which confounds people continually)

Patti Kurtz
Minot State University

laurence.horn at YALE.EDU wrote:

>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Brand naming kids
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>At 6:36 AM -0800 3/29/04, Dave Wilton wrote:
>
>
>>As for another name, my mother is named "Shirley," and my grandparents
>>absolutely insisted that unlike all those other "Shirleys" of her
>>generation, she was *not* named after Shirley Temple. In many (most?) cases
>>I don't think that children are directly named after such celebrities. The
>>name is just "in the air" and the parents like the sound of it.
>>
>>--Dave Wilton
>>  dave at wilton.net
>>  http://www.wilton.net
>>
>>
>
>I can support this claim from my own experience in selecting "Meryl"
>for my daughter's name in '84, as previously noted.  There is, of
>course, a continuum between "X was named after Y" and "X was named
>partly as a result of the name being in the air through the celebrity
>of Y".  In fact, the post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc evolution of the
>expression "to be named after" underlines this.
>
>Larry Horn
>
>

--

Dr. Patti J. Kurtz

Assistant Professor, English

Minot State University

Minot, ND 58709





Sometimes, we have to bow to the absurd.



Captain Jean-Luc Picard

The Long Ladder