Kelsie Harder obituary in Sunday New York Times

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_http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22harder.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&
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(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22harder.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin) 
...
Kelsie B. Harder, Name Expert, Dies at 84 
By _DOUGLAS MARTIN_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/douglas_martin/index.html?inline=nyt-per)   
Published: April 22, 2007
 

 
Kelsie B. Harder, whose ruminations about why his parents gave him what  
sounded like a girl’s name provoked such enthrallment with proper nouns that he  
became a leading onomastician — a student of names and their origins — died on 
 April 12 at his home in Potsdam, N.Y. He was 84. 
The cause was congestive heart failure, said his wife, Louise. 
Dr. Harder wrote or edited more than 1,000 articles, books, reviews, notes  
and poems, and presided over organizations like the American Name Society, 
whose  magazine he edited. He advised the Random House Dictionary and other 
lexicons  and headed the usage committee of the American Dialect Society. 
As a toponomist — an onomastician who specializes in place names — he was  
director of the Place Name Survey of the United States, and in 1990 gave the  
keynote address at the _Library  of Congress_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/l/library_of_congress/index.html?inline=nyt-o
rg)  on the 100th anniversary of the United States Board on  Geographic 
Names. 
His large achievements began with baby steps, literally. Dr. Harder learned  
that his parents had wanted to give him an unusual name and liked the sound of 
 Elsie, his sister’s. They stuck a “K” in front of Elsie. Dr. Harder, like “
A Boy  Named Sue” in the song, spent a lifetime explaining that he was not a 
girl named  Kelsie. 
“We are at the mercy of our name givers,” he said in a 1987 interview with  
The Post-Standard of Syracuse. “These things influence us for the rest of our  
lives, and we have nothing to do with it.” 
Dr. Harder, who taught English for a generation at the _State  University of 
New York_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/state_university_of_new_york/index.html?inline=nyt-org)  at Potsdam, was more 
than a crusader for the rights  of the unfortunately named, although as the 
author of two books on baby names,  he accepted the challenge. He warned that 
boys named “Jr.” ended up on  psychoanalysts’ couches. He noted that many baby 
boomer girls had names like  Heather and Tammy, which he said recalled those 
of Playboy centerfolds. 
“It was about that time that the man of the house got into the naming  
business,” he said in an interview with The Chicago Tribune in 1988. “I don’t  see 
how the women would have done it.” 
His own experience, along with vast research, informed his work. One of his  
first articles was on the language of playing marbles. He also wrote about the 
 language of his native Perry County, Tenn., including “The Vocabulary of Hog 
 Killing,” and investigated how Sober Street in a town near Potsdam got its 
name  when it wasn’t. 
Kelsie Brown Harder was born on a farm on Aug. 23, 1922. His father taught in 
 a one-room school. Kelsie, a bright child, was promoted three grades beyond 
his  age in elementary school.  
When older children bullied him, he refused to go to school for a year, a  
decision his parents supported. 
He fished and hunted, telling his family years later that he was such a good  
shot he considered it a waste of ammunition if he went out with 10 bullets 
and  came back with only 8. 
During World War II he worked for the War Department as a civilian, then  
served in the Army. He used the G.I. Bill to attend _Vanderbilt  University_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/v/vanderbilt_uni
versity/index.html?inline=nyt-org) , where professors blanched at his 
country-bumpkin dialect, his  wife said. 
He graduated magna cum laude in English, with minors in philosophy and  
Spanish. He then earned a master’s degree in English from Vanderbilt and a  
doctorate in English from the _University  of Florida_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_florida/index.html?inline=
nyt-org) . He taught at Youngstown University before joining SUNY Potsdam  in 
1964. He received two Fulbright grants, one to study in India and one for  
Poland. 
One of his best-known books is the “Illustrated Dictionary of Place Names”  
(1976). Tidbits from the dictionary: Ellwood City, Pa., is named for Col. I. 
L.  Ellwood, one of the earliest manufacturers of wire fencing. Iowa comes from 
a  Sioux word for “the sleepy ones.” Hope, Ark., is named for Hope 
Loughborough,  daughter of James Loughborough, a director of the Cairo and Fulton 
Railroad. 
Sunlight Basin, Creek and Peak in Wyoming all came to be when prospectors  
lost in the fog glimpsed light. The names of the Upper and Lower Sysladobsis  
Lakes in Maine mean “rock that resembles dogfish” in an Indian tongue. He found 
 five towns named for Lincoln, but not Abe, and five Franklins not named for 
Ben.  Yankeetown, Fla., got its name from migratory northerners. So did 
Crackertown,  Fla., but that didn’t last. 
In 1992, Dr. Harder, Wolfgang Miedler and Steward A. Kingsbury edited “A  
Dictionary of American Proverbs,” which among its 15,000 entries has seven  
versions of “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” 
His works also included an article urging deeper research on negative words  
that are reduced to their initial letters like S.O.B. (he cited use by 
_President  Truman_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/harry_s_truman/index.html?inline=nyt-per) ) and B.O. (kindly citing no one). 
In addition to his wife, the former Louise Maron, Dr. Harder is survived by  
three sons, Gerald, of Hanford, Calif., Dennis, of Norwood, N.Y., and Frank, 
of  Hammond, N.Y.; two daughters, Anne Leslie Bedell, of Milford, Pa., and 
Marcia  Louise Harder, of Washington; his sister, Elsie Carrie Boyd, of Linden, 
Tenn.;  and 11 grandchildren. 
He is also survived by his son Kelsie, of Reno, Nev., who at least is not a  
Jr.



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