the Shandy-Lack theory revisited

[Jonathan Lighter]

A yakking-head loomed up on my TV screen some weeks ago (tuned to Fox News, of course) to emphasize just how true this theory was, though as I recall she was pushing the notion that given names made at least as much difference as surnames.

  She had book, website, etc.  Name too, but I didn't catch it.  A search of the Fox News website for "baby names" and "successful names" doesn't find anything, but I swear she was real.

  JL "Bringer of Wisdom's Light"

George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: George Thompson
Subject: the Shandy-Lack theory revisited
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To refresh your memories: some time ago I called your attention to the Shandy-Lack hypothesis of Onomastic Determinism, first proposed by ca. 1770 Walter Shandy in the novel Tristram Shandy, and elaborated ca. 1950 by the British ornithologist David Lack. Shandy held that one's name determined the future tenor of one's life, and Lack, by citing a number of ornithologists whose names were the names of birds or parts of birds, showed that it specifically determined one's career choice.
A mounting accumulation of additional evidence -- for instance a story in the NYTimes a few years ago that cited a fisheries expert named Herring -- justifies referring to this now as a theory.

In any event, the August 24/31 2007 issue of the Times Literary Suppl. reviews a book on the bad effect of 500 years of destruction of habitat and bounties put upon supposed pest species has had on English wildlife. The book is called "Silent Fields", and is by a naturalist named Roger Lovegrove.
Need more proof be called for?

(Published by Oxford U Pr., and sounds fairly interesting.)

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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