ARCHELAUS
Archelaus takes a relentlessly upbeat
look at operating a small greeting card
business in Washington, DC.
ARCHELAUS
Archelaus takes a relentlessly upbeat
look at operating a small greeting card
business in Washington, DC.
Posted on Thursday, October 22, 2009, at 9:37 am, by Dr. Allardyce Hurlbutt.
The recent media obsession with the story of “balloon boy” Falcon Heene seems as good an excuse as any to have a look at the use of bird names for people. Although more common overall than fabric names, most examples from this group are quite rare.
(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.)
The turn-of-the-twentieth-century fashion for flower and gemstone names was accompanied by a minor flurry of bird names. The records thus reflect modest numbers of children named things like Swan (874), Starling (749), Dove (606), Bird (591), Lark (353), Wren (324), Canary (281), Myna (221), and Heron (158). Note that Swan, Starling, Lark, and Heron were used primarily for boys, Dove, Bird, Canary, and Myna for girls. Wren appears to have been given in roughly equal numbers to babies of both sexes.
This tiny boomlet of bird names also gave a boost to the old Norman French name Avis (9,804), owing to the coincidence of avis being the Latin word for “bird.” Already ranking within the top 1,000 American names for girls by 1880 (the first year for which the Social Security Administration makes naming statistics available), Avis reached the height of its popularity in 1912, when it ranked 238th. It dropped out of the top 1,000 in 1967.
Mavis (7,386) was the only other name from the group to enjoy comparable success, appearing in the top 1,000 in 1895, 1898, and then consistently from 1900 to 1964, although it never rose higher than the 270th position. (For the ornithologically challenged, I would note that mavis is another name for the song thrush.)
Being a traditional nickname for Robert, Robin (10,082) did not participate in the fin-de-siècle bird group as such, waiting instead until 1932 to enter the top 1,000 as a name for girls. It then went on to become the only bird name to attain genuine popularity, reaching the rank of 25th in both 1962 and 1963, after which it fell into decline, dropping out of the top 1,000 altogether in 2005.
Raven was a rare name until recently, entering the top 1,000 for girls in 1977. Used primarily by African Americans, it peaked in 1991 at 150th.
Alondra (60), the Spanish word for “lark,” edged into the top 1,000 in 1993, only to fall out again the following year. Then, in 1995, a Mexican telenovela called Alondra propelled it all the way to 213th. It peaked in 2005 at 120th.
Here are some of the less popular bird names:
A few monosyllabic bird names, like Duck (186), Hen (173), Loon (39), and Cock (3), are found coupled overwhelmingly with Asian surnames, suggesting that the avian connection is an unintended linguistic coincidence. Also, in some of the older records, Hen is merely an abbreviation for Henry.
Occasionally, the use of bird names appears to have been connected to Native American naming traditions, resulting in examples such as Owl Windwolf or Redwing Longknife.
Sometimes, the use appears purely whimsical, as with a South Carolinian named Eagle Feathers Bairefoot.
Calypso Spots wrote on October 22, 2009, at 10:58 am:
I’ve run across people named Raven (personally I think this is more common for neo-pagans and former hippies than for African Americans), Eagle, and Wren. Peregrine is used early on, as in the novel Peregrine Pickle. Dodo is sometimes a nickname for Dorothy. Swan is occasionally a variant spelling of Sven.
Were there any Fringillas (Latin for finch)? An early 20th century Czech writer went by that pseudonym.
Whether parents who named their children Moa knew what a moa is seems questionable to me, but you never know!
Dr. Allardyce Hurlbutt wrote on October 22, 2009, at 11:58 am:
Alas, no Fringallas appear in the Death Index.
Yes, Peregrine is an old name. In addition to The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (published in 1751), there was, for example, Peregrine Bertie (1686-1742), Second Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven.
Although Raven has been used for over a century for a variety of reasons (and for both genders), I don’t think it was random chance that the peak of its popularity as a girl’s name in 1991 coincided with the appearance of the black child actress Raven-Symoné on The Cosby Show from 1989 to 1992.
I see that I inadvertently omitted Drake (214), although, as with some other names (Finch, Crane), many of the recorded instances presumably represent transferred use of surnames.
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