Friday, February 18, 2005
Name that song
My NameVoyager is designed to give you a sense of names as history. In certain cases you can see the stamp of a single individual -- type in Shirley to see the huge impact of Shirley Temple in the '30s. At the opposite extreme, you expect fo find names sunk by a negative personal association. So one of the most examined names in the Voyager is Adolph.
I wouldn't have thought of that one. My wife and my ex-wife had songs with their names as the title around the time they were born, but not quite at the right times. I also mark the decline of 'Ernest' as predating Hemingway.
Likewise, mine is the 789th most popular name in the decade I was born, and fell out of the top 1000 by the 1970s. My cousins who use the Latin form were much more popular in the 1950s but dying off now (#745 in the 1990s.)
At least, when I was born, King was more popular than Regis.