Brand naming kids

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated  Mon, 29 Mar 2004 06:36:35 -0800,  Dave Wilton
<dave at WILTON.NET> writes:

>  I know of at least one woman named "Saran" who is not named after the
>  plastic. I'm not sure when she was born, but it was definitely before 1953
>  when "Saran Wrap" hit the market. The OED2 has Dow using "Saran" in a 1940
>  patent application. This earlier use may predate the woman's birth, but use
>  of the term before 1953 would be pretty arcane and unlikely to be the
source
>  of her name.
>
>  This website (http://www.bubbaboo.com/meaning-of-baby-names.asp?n=SARAN)
>  ascribes an African origin to "Saran," meaning joy. This is repeated in at
>  least one other baby names web site. "Saran" was also the name of a 4th
>  century Irish chief.

I once worked with a black woman named "Saranne Dix".  She was born sometime
between 1945 and 1950.  Unfortunately I never asked her about the origin of
her given name.

She was the victim of a classic case of miscommunication.  She owned a boat.
One day a coworker took down a phone message "Saranne, please call your
marina.  Urgent".  Then he thought, "there's only one reason your marina needs you
in  a hurry" and gratuitously added to the message "Your boat sank".  Poor
Saranne almost had a heart attack, but fortunately it turned out the marina had
"merely" lost her rent check.

Also, about the name "Mercedes":  The German automobile pioneer Gottlieb
Daimler  set up an automobile company aaround 1890, which he named "the Mercedes
Company" after his daughter.  Eventually his company merged with one founded by
Karl Benz to create Mercedes-Benz.  [L. Sprague de Camp _The Heroic Age of
American Invention_ Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1961, no ISBN, page 217].

The only other woman I know of named "Mercedes" is Mercedes Lackey, who is
not a porn star but rather a science fiction writer who was born in 1950.
(Aside to Mark Mandel---she is also a filksinger and filk writer).

I seriously doubt that the writer Ford Maddox Ford or the comedian Ford
Sterling (of the Keystone Kops) was named after the automobile.  I don't know about
"Chevy Chase" (is that his real name or a pseudonym?), which could be from
the Washington DC suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland.

"Boaz" or "Boas" is the surname of a well-known anthropologist and also of a
mathermatician (the latter revealed that "Nicolas Bourbaki" did not exist,
only to have the mathematicians who wrote under that pseudonym claim that Boas
did not exist.)

      - Jim Landau

Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with
ketchup.