Name Geeking: because you asked

[hrj]

My little rant about the obnoxious "name pet peeves" people love to tell generated a couple of questions about the origins of the trend for names of the form "Le-X" or "La-X". Questions like this are one of the reasons I once thought to start a blog on interesting name topics ... but then I came to my senses and realized I didn't need another hobby. But here is a brief contribution to the sort of thing that blog might have covered.

fosveny asked:

So, maybe you can tell me if this relatively new trend of people naming their kids with given names of "LeSomething" or "LaSomething" is just that they like the way the French locative surnames look/sound and are following the trend of changing surnames into given names (with the assist taht always comes from famous people with those sorts of names), or if there's something else going on?

This is part of a rather complex set of intersecting trends. The extremely short version is: French surnames contribute to the origins (generally due to family associations or associations with famous bearers) but names of this type then contribute to an innovative reanalysis of a much broader selection of names as belonging to a synthetic dithematic construction pattern and new names are generated (or previously obscure names are raised to popularity) that have a similar look-and-feel. Famous bearers have influenced the specific popularity of a small number of names in this group but the primary driving factor is the popularity of the synthetic strategy itself.

The somewhat longer (but still much abbreviated) version is: it begins with the popularity of a handful of names of French surname origin that had shifted to being used as given names (plus a couple of feminine names with the same look-and-feel that didn't originate as La + X but may have been re-analyzed as such). These names were popular from at least as early as the second half of the 19th century.

A few of these names had their highest popularity in the mid 19th century (e.g., Lafayette and Lavin(i)a) but most of this group peaked in popularity in the 20s and 30s (e.g., Leroy (m), Lamar (m), Lavern(e) for both genders, Lavon(ne) for both genders, Larue (f)). Latecomers to this group include Lamont (m, first hitting the charts in the 30s no doubt due to 30s radio-drama character Lamont Cranston), Ladonna (f), and the somewhat anomalous Lawanda (f) which looks more like it belongs in the next trend.

Then there arises a second fashion for names with this look-and-feel beginning in the 60s and peaking in popularity mostly in the 70s and 80s. These names derive from a variety of sources.

The most familiar and interesting type is part of a much larger pattern of dithematic names where the prototheme is an unstressed monosyllable primarily of the form CV- and the deuterotheme is either an independent name (e.g., Shawn, Tonya, Tanya) or is reanalyzed as a deuterotheme from another multisyllabic (typically trisyllabic) name with an unstressed first syllable, e.g. Latasha, constructed as La+tasha with the deuterotheme reanalyzed from Na+tasha, or Latricia, constructed as La+tricia, from a reanalyzed Pa+tricia. Another contributing source for the look-and-feel are multisyllabic (typically trisyllabic) names beginning in "La-" that have been shifted in pronunciation and spelling from a name with a different vowel in the first syllable (aided and abetted by the tendency in American English for all unstressed vowels to fall together as schwa). An example of this group is Latisha (from Leticia).

Notice that this later, more synthetic trend involves more women's names than men's names, although Lashawn hits the charts as a man's name and Levar/Lavar appears in the same time period (although I haven't tracked down its origins or inspiration).

The data source I'm using as my primary reference for the chronological trends (SSI baby name data, processed and presented via Baby Name Wizard) has no indication of ethnicity-specific trends. Based on other research (unfortunately more qualitative than quantitative) I'd say that the early 20th century group is not driven by any particular ethnicity, although specific names in the group may have been more popular among certain ethnicities (e.g., Leroy seems to have been significantly popular among African Americans) however the 60s-80s trend is strongly associated with African American naming fashions, as is the larger innovative dithematic construction strategy I mentioned (which is too complex to get into at the moment).

And because I put it together in order to sort out my examples, here's a chart of some of the most popular names in this look-and-feel group taken from the SSI data. The color bar shows the period during which the name (or some name in the spelling-variant group) fell in the 1000 most popular names for that decade. The darker color shows the decade when it was at its maximum popularity (or in the case of Lamar there are two local maxima). The column labelled "Max #/million" is the representation of that name (group) per 1,000,000 names (of either gender -- so if the name is purely masculine, then in effect its the rate per 500,000 names).




I was so not supposed to stay up past midnight working on something like this on a weeknight.

Comments

[joycebre.livejournal.com]

ok, I didn't comment before, but the new naming thing that truly has me puzzled is the spelling names backwards. Apparently Semaj is becoming very popular as a boys name.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

That would be yet another name-blog column! :) The exact origins of creative trends (as opposed to the forces that drive new trends to popularity) can be very difficult to track down. The backwards-spelling trend seems to have come to recent attention primarily for Nevaeh. In the case of Nevaeh the distribution and motivation for popularity seems to come most strongly for evangelical Christians (of all ethnicities) and parallels a slightly earlier and less dramatic fashion for Heaven as a name. (If I were looking at it as a long-ago historic practice, I'd be tempted to interpret the backwards version as a taboo-avoidance approach, but I'm less confident about that in a modern context.) But if you look at the online buzz about backwards spelling as a way of deriving new names, it currently seems to be driven by baby-name sites and bloggers as a "creative idea" rather than emerging from random independent decisions. So this may be a case where the original idea had a very specific motivation but then the manipulative process was added to a general toolkit.

Keep in mind that modern society does not have a monopoly on startling creative fashions in given names. 12th century England saw a brief explosion of "fancy" Latinate names for girls. The rise of surnames-as-given-names in England seems to have begun as a purely mercenary practice: naming a child after the surname of a godparent or relative in hopes of attracting large gifts and inheritances. The Reformation was the main driver for the adoption of random and obscure Old Testament names. And let us not forget the rare but memorable Puritan phrasal names.

"And let us not forget the rare but memorable Puritan phrasal names"

[tafelspitz.livejournal.com]

Such as 'Sword of the Lord'?

Backwards spelled names

[scotica.livejournal.com]

If you do decide to pursue the backwards spelled names thing, look for Senga (Agnes) in Scotland. If I recall correctly, there were at least college student aged women with that name in the 1990s when I was there, with backwards spelling told to me as the explanation of origin.

[countess-e.livejournal.com]

Just because I haven't said so lately--watching your mind work is a treat and a privilege :-)

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

All I can think of is James Thurber's mention of a Juanemma:
"Juanemma Kramer was one of my favorites. Her mother loved the name Juanita so dearly that she worked the first part of it into the names of all her daughters -- they were (in addition to a Juanita) Juanemma, Juanhelen, and Juangrace."

I would point out that I also dated an otherwise wellmeaning man who objected to my fondness for the name Johanna (prounced YoHanna) as a child's name, and admitted on cross questioning that it was because the name "sounded Black" to him.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

This being Thurber, one does wonder whether the story is strictly news reporting or enhanced for entertainment purposes. On the other hand, it's not that much different from the stereotype of Catholic names being all "Mary Somethingorother". Or different from Anglo Saxon parents naming all their kids with compounds based on the same prototheme. Or ... there is very little new under the sun in name fashions.

[ursula]

Your chart isn't showing up.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it was there last night when I posted it. I think it was there this morning when I was looking at comments. On poking around a little, it looks like a whole bunch of my lj-hosted images are missing. (When I'm doing image-heavy essays I ususally put them in my website and cross-link.) This may be a larger LJ problem.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Ok, now thoroughly confused. It didn't show up when I logged in on my work computer (at lunchtime, of course!), but it does display on my home computer. Since they differ in both OS and browser, there's no telling what the distinction is.

[ursula]

Firefox still isn't showing me anything. Chrome gave me a large box with a "missing image" icon. I was able to click through to your photo gallery, which gave me another missing image icon; clicking on that icon let me download the original image, which appeared to be a 2.9-MB .tiff file.

I wonder if starting with a smaller file would make a difference?

[xrian.livejournal.com]

What Liz said. You can geek at me anytime ;)

[kiya]

I have a cousin named Larissa - I suspect these days that the name was chosen as a Classically based name that was also similar to the La- names in the African-American community.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Larissa doesn't quite fit the main AA pattern. It shows up later and seems to be an echo of the popularity of Lara about a decade earlier. Not to say it might not be picking up momentum from more than one fashion. That's part of the problem with analyzing modern name fashions: many of them are complex braids of a number of contributing factors. I think maybe next I'll go back and finish up my essay on the Aidan/Caden/Braden/Jadon/etc. phenomenon which is an excellent example of this.

[gunnora.livejournal.com]

I hope you post these on occasion as topics occur to you. I guess I have turned into an onomastics geek, because I enjoy it.

My most interesting modern name was a baby my mom delivered (my mom was an OB/GYN). The mother named her son "Uniroyal", because while in labor on the way to the hospital, she saw a billboard advertising the tires and liked the way the word sounded. It kind of harks back to a whole genre of "bad Indian name" jokes, but this one was for real.

The other modern name I love is the (possibly apocryphal) fellow whose mom named him "R B". First name was the letter "R", middle was the letter "B". His family pronounced it "Arby". However, the military geeked out. On the paperwork for his dogtags, they returned it with a note that he had to put his full names. So he wrote down "R (only)" and "B (only)". His dogtags then read "Ronly Bonly Jones". I dunno if I love this story mostly because of working for the guvmint, but it's really the mindset!

[eowyna.livejournal.com]

This gives me some perspective on the unusual name of a co-worker's daughter (and Olympic hurdler in the Athens Olympics), Lashinda Demus. Thanks!

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

Very cool. (I had a Lavonda classmate born in the early '60s.) Although I do find myself wondering if Lavinia, Lavina and maybe Lavon/Lavonne, and even maybe Lawanda really all came from the same source. Are they really more different from each other than Lashawn & Lashanda for example? Or were they separate because by themselves they had enough "hits" ?