—  Marriner S. Eccles to Elbert G. Bennett upon being told that Wall Street would relent in its opposition to his appointment as chairman of the Federal Reserve if he would consent to the weakening of a New Deal banking bill; quoted in Sidney Hyman, Marriner S. Eccles, Private Entrepreneur and Public Servant (Stanford, 1976), 175. Eccles went on to be confirmed despite the bankers’ opposition. The headquarters building of the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., is named after him.

2011: “Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.”

  —  Kathryn S. Wylde, member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, reproving New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, for his unwelcome investigation of the mortgage securitization scandal; quoted in the New York Times, 22 August 2011. It is difficult to avoid the inference that Wylde regards blatant, widespread fraud by the banking industry as defensible.

  —  John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558).

(Note: In the discussion that follows, numbers appearing in parentheses indicate how many people with a particular name were listed in the U.S. Social Security Death Index at the time of writing.)

Among the metallic elements, it should be no surprise that the precious metals Silver (363) and Gold (254) have been the most popular. Tin (428) would rank first, except that almost all cases represent East Asian names, the correspondence with the English word tin being purely coincidental. A mere half-dozen exceptions represent likely metal names, and even some of those could be data-entry errors for “Tim.” Other, unambiguously metal names, however, include Iron (62), Copper (7), Lead (6), Nickle (6), Radium (2), and Zinc (1). While Chromium (0) does not appear in the Death Index, Chrome (1) does. The name Mercury (38) seems just as likely to allude to the Roman god, or to the planet named after him, as to the metal bearing his name.

Not surprisingly, few metalloids show up, for they make decidedly peculiar names: Antimony (1), Boron (1), and Tellurium (1).

The non-metallic, tetravalent Carbon (21) is chemically in a class by itself. As the basis of all life on this planet, it seems at least as suitable a name for a child as any other element in the Periodic Table.

Among the halogens, Chlorine (54) is the most common, followed by Fluorine (2), and Bromine (1). With regard to Chlorine, one suspects that many parents giving this name were unaware of the chemical element (most instances date from before the chlorination of drinking water and swimming pools became common). Presumably they were merely devising what they felt was a pleasant name for a girl. The halogen Iodine (0) does not appear in the Death Index, but “Little Iodine” was the name of a bratty character created in the 1930s by the cartoonist Jimmy Hatlo.

Relatively few children seem to have been named for gasses: Neon (12), Argon (9), Oxygen (1), Radon (1), and Xenon (1). While Helium (0) does not appear in the Death Index, the protagonist of Yuz Aleshkovsky’s novel A Ring in a Case (1992) is named (according to the book’s English translation) “Helium Revolverovich Serious.” This eccentric usage brings to mind the fact that in early Soviet times, Radii (the Russian word for radium) was sometimes used as a boy’s name to express enthusiasm for scientific progress.

If I may stray from the Periodic Table for a moment, metallic alloy names include Steel (22), Bronze (10), and Brass (3). The mineral Silica (5), while abundant in nature, is not common as a name for people. The organic compounds Benzine (1), Gasoline (1), and Petroleum (1) are suitably rare as names, although “Petroleum V. Nasby,” it should be noted, was the pen name adopted by the nineteenth-century American humorist David Ross Locke (1833-88). Surprisingly, Ether (712) turns out to be the most common name in this entire post.

As one might expect, the names in this group can prove especially peculiar in conjunction with their owners’ surnames:

• Red-Gold Angel
• Gold Beard
• Gold Lemon
• Gold Smith (9)
• Gold Virgin
• Gold Whitehair
• Iron Hull
• Silica Despot
• Silver Bean
• Silver Bell (2)
• Silver Buckles
• Silver Bull
• Silver Dollar (3)
• Silver Eagle
• Silver Hooks
• Silver Jester
• Silver Money
• Silver Pigg (2)
• Silver Smith (3)
• Silver Ware
• Tin Bishop
• Tin Falcon
• Zinc White

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