A Sociological Eye

A good eyeroll is more vital than ever at a time when every day brings American news that makes a kind and virtuous person want to tear out their hair. So have a chuckle at this! In 2017, in the wake of Donald Trump's first being elected, the name "Maverick" suddenly entered the top hundred names for babies presumed boys, riding an explosive trend in popularity. About the origins of this name: "Maverick" was the last name of some 1800s Texas lawyer. He had a client who didn't have the cash to pay his bill, so the client gave Maverick 400 cattle instead. The befuddled Mr. Maverick had no interest in managing cows--he was happy with his job as a lawyer. So he never had them branded and just set them loose to wander the local lands and graze. This led to most of them being stolen, but the idea of Maverick's cattle roaming free and unbranded struck cowboys of the era as romantic. They started calling any unbranded wandering bovine they came across "a ma...

This is a chart showing you the number of babies given a certain name over time in the USA—the name my father was in fact given. His name was Dick. Ok, that was the name he always used, but his actual given name was Richard. That Dick is a nickname for Richard seems peculiar to many Americans today, but here’s how that emerged: a classic Medieval nickname for Richard was Rick (as it remains today!). Rick was a shortened version of the name, which at the time was pronounced rather like “Rick-hart.” And in Medieval England, new nicknames were coined via rhyming—hence Rick became Dick.  In the 1930s when my father was born, Richard was the fifth most popular name for children designated male at birth. But plenty of parents skipped the formality of naming their kid Richard before calling him Dick. They just named their children what they intended to call them. And you can see in the graph that Dick (as a given name) peaked in popularity in 1934. You can see similar patterns with other ...