Was Evelyn ever more common for men?

There are names that used to be given to boys but have since become almost entirely given to girls. Evelyn is an example of one of these names that has swapped genders. Author Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) is cited as the most famous male Evelyn, proof that Evelyn was at one time considered masculine. Is that what actually happened though? In the rush to categorize names as either male of female we may have skipped over another option: unisex.

Evelyn was the surname of an aristocratic English family in the 1600s. The origin of the surname is usually given as a form of the feminine medieval name Aveline, which had mostly gone out of use as a first name by the 1500s. The English peerage started using surnames as first names at this time and in 1665 Elizabeth Pierrepoint, daughter of Sir John Evelyn, named her 3rd son after her prestigious maiden name, calling him Evelyn Pierrepont. He was Chief Advisor to Queen Anne and was elevated from Earl to Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull by King George I. His position and importance may have inspired other unrelated noble families to name their children Evelyn. The Duke himself named his 3rd daughter Evelyn in 1691. This daughter Evelyn then named her daughter after herself in 1725. That's a very quick turn around for a name going from masculine to feminine. Is there more to this story?

Remember how I said Evelyn had mostly gone out of use by the 1500s? Mostly does not mean completely. There were still women named Evelyn alive when Pierrepont was named. The licence for Evelyn Pierrepont's marriage to Dame Mary Feilding was issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury in June of 1687. That same faculty office issued a marriage licence to Stephen Humphrey and Evelyn Heape almost 5 years earlier in February of 1682. Even earlier in 1680 Samuel Heape married an Eveling Packe. In his own time, Evelyn Pierrepont was not the only Evelyn, but he might have been the only man.

Stephen Humphrey and Evelyn Heape were issued a marriage licence by the Archbishop of Canterbury Faculty Office on February 27th, 1682. The Calendar of Marriage Licences issued by the Faculty Office 1632-1714, British Record Society Limited, 1905

It should not be surprising then to find the same amount of women as men named Evelyn in England's first census of 1841: 42 females and 42 males. This would have still been a very rare name and easily could have remained unisex. Ten years later in 1851 there were 196 females and 88 males. By the time Evelyn Waugh was named in 1903, the 1901 census had recorded over 36,000 people named Evelyn, 95% of them female. 

Was Evelyn Pierrepont given a woman's name? Probably not. The prestige of the Evelyn family likely made the surname association the main association, not the enduring rare use as a woman's first name. Using it after a surname for a son made it unisex. 

There was a similar story over in the United States. In 1850 census there were over 5 times as many women than men, 310 female to 53 male Evelyns. But still, it wasn't common enough to be considered gendered, it was unisex there too. The bigger popularity for girls in the US might be explained by the actions of William Evelyn Byrd Jr. (1674-1744), founder of Richmond Virginia. He named his daughter Evelyn Byrd in 1707, nicknamed Evie. Although born in Virginia, William Byrd spent most of his early life in England, as did his daughter. She was forbidden from marrying her love when she was 20, moved back to Virginia and died unmarried at 29. The story goes "the tap, tap of Evelyn's high-heeled slippers continues to be heard in the corridors of the home from which, long ago, she faded broken-hearted to the grave". Her legacy was also in the names of her later family as there are many descendants named Evelyn Byrd, first and middle or last. Of the 13 descendants named Evelyn (to third great grandchildren), eight are named Evelyn Byrd in some form, and one is an Eva Bird. Only two of the 13 were boys and only a middle name in their case. The Duke Evelyn Pierrepont's descendants in England were a bit more balanced with 5 women and 5 men named Evelyn.

There were other notable influences on the name Evelyn. In 1788 Fanny Burney wrote her famous novel Evelina which would later be linked to the popularity of the names Evelina, Eveline and also Evelyn. In 1855 English poet Robert Browning wrote a romantic poem about a woman named Evelyn Hope. The British Army officer Sir Evelyn Wood was in active service from 1854 until 1905 reaching the rank of Field Marshal and was part of newsworthy events.

Contemporary writers mentioned the name Evelyn, some calling it one of those romantic names the lower classes found in cheap novels. Charlotte M. Yonge in her 1863 "History of Christian Names" warns that parents should choose the feminine Eveline spelling over the masculine surname spelling so that they may "follow the old Eveline of song and romance." Later William Sawyer would write in 1869 for Belgravia (a fashionable London neighbourhood periodical) that "Evelyn is one of the bewildering names without sex." The Evelyn spelling would overtake Eveline in popularity for girls some time in the 1890s (they were pronounced the same, either EVE-lin or EV-eh-lin).

Which brings us back to Evelyn Waugh. His full name was Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh after his father Arthur Waugh. He went by Evelyn his whole life, even marrying (and divorcing) a woman named Evelyn. They quickly became known as "He-Evelyn" and "She-Evelyn" to their friends. He seemed perfectly happy with a unisex name, although even from the beginning of his career there was confusion. He was called "Miss Waugh" by a literary review which angered him, but no one likes being misgendered.

The popularity of Evelyn continued to grow. In 1906 American model Evelyn Nesbit was the subject of the "Trial of the Century" when her wealthy husband Harry Kendall Shaw shot and killed an ex-boyfriend of hers. Although already trending, the name Evelyn reached its most popular in 1915 ranking 10th in the US, and in England peaked around 1908 somewhere in the top 20.

It then went slowly out of fashion but never disappeared. There was a slight uptick in 1982 when the movie Ragtime earned Elizabeth McGovern an Oscar nomination for playing the same Evelyn Nesbit that influenced it the first time. It slowly became more popular and may have been influenced by Rachel Weisz's The Mummy (1999) character, Evelyn Carnahan. The character was based on early 1900s archeologist Lady Evelyn Herbert. Kate Beckinsale also played an Evelyn in the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor. Evelyn's popularity in the US peaked in 2017, and in England and Wales in 2018 in the top 20.

To the question at hand. Was Evelyn ever more common for men? Behindthename.com writes that "in the 17th century when it was first used as a given name it was more common for boys". In truth it was still being used by women when Pierrepont was named. There are women named Evelyn born in the 1600s, the Irish Annals record a few. The mother of Robert Molyns, a Bridgewater MP in the 1550s, was named Evelyn. C.M. Yonge mentions an Eveleen baptized in 1538. I actually can't point to a single point in time when Evelyn was verifiably more common for men after Pierrepont.  Looking at all the notable men named Evelyn from the 18th and 19th century it might appear to have been more common for men, until you remember that the historical record does not represent men and women equally. Finding as many women named Evelyn as I did attached to historical men indicates a high probability of a few more unrecorded female Evelyns. Thanks to historical bias, masculine will be the default for any rare unisex name, unless you are willing to dig a bit deeper.

To set the record straight, Evelyn Waugh was given a historically feminine name that had become unisex, although it likely wasn't intentional by his parents.

There are more names that should probably be reclassified as unisex, including Vivian and Sidney. Like Evelyn, they had mixed gender usage before they become common for only one gender. 

Sources:

American Name Society article on Evelyn by Dr. Cleveland Evans

https://www.americannamesociety.org/evelyn-historically-popular-for-both-men-and-women/

Feminine names from the Irish Annals

https://medievalscotland.org/kmo/AnnalsIndex/Feminine/Aibhilin.shtml

Robert Molyns, MP at History of Parliament 

http://historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/molyns-robert-1516-74

British Army Officer Evelyn Wood, Wikipedia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Wood_(British_Army_officer)

Name of the day: Evelyn, Appellationmountain by Abby Sandel

https://appellationmountain.net/baby-name-of-the-day-evelyn/

Entry for Evelyn, BehindtheName by Mike Campbell 

https://www.behindthename.com/name/evelyn

Decendents of Evelyn Pierrepont, wikitree

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pierrepont-69

Decendents of William Byrd, wikitree

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Byrd-25

Index Library of Archbishop of Cantebury Marriage Licences 

https://archive.org/embed/indexlibrary3316brit

Belgravia: A London Magazine, Volume 8, page 391, Google Books

https://books.google.com/books?id=WIU3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA391

The History of Christian Names by Charlotte M. Yonge, Project Gutenburg

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/70419/70419-h/70419-h.htm

Explore name popularity back to 1838! Here's Evelyn & Eveline, flourish by Anna Powell-Smith

https://demos.flourish.studio/namehistory/?names=Evelyn,Eveline

The House that Byrd Built, British Empire

https://www.britishempire.co.uk/biography/byrdwilliam.htm

The meaning of the name Samantha

The name Samantha appeared in the US in the 18th century but does not have a clear origin. An educated guess was that it was a feminization of the name Samuel by adding 'anthos' to it, a Greek word meaning "flowering". Leslie Dunkling, who wrote the Everyman’s Dictionary of First Names, is convinced of this origin as he has found several other invented names from the period ending in antha, such as Iantha, Armantha, Salantha and Pantha. 

More recently it’s been hypothesized as an English form of the Dutch Sijmentje, a feminization of Sijmen which is a form of the Germanic Sigismund. The argument is that the early Dutch settlers to New England could have brought it over. 

Not much has been written about Samantha until recently. It was considered unusual even in the 19th century and didn’t make it into name books until after the 1970s. The witch Samantha Stephens on Bewitched started the Samantha trend in 1964 and it spread in popularity in the US, Canada, UK and Australia.

Cleveland Kent Evans, past president of the American Name Society and author of several name books, suggested in a comment on behindthename.com that Samantha could be a form of Semanthe. Semanthe first appeared in the 1637 play “Aglaura” by English playwright John Suckling. The play is set in ancient Persia but does not appear to be based on historical fact. Semanthe could have been invented by Suckling to sound vaguely Greek. The name does not have a historical basis. This name did enter the English pool of classical names used in literature though and is a good contender for the origin of Samantha.

Semanthe was reused for characters in several plays written and performed in London, England. Semanthe was used in the 1682 play “The Loyal Brother; Or, the Persian Prince” by Thomas Southerne, the 1690 play “The Treacherous Brothers” by George Powell and the 1699 play “Friendship Improved, or the Female Warrior” by Charles Hopkins. Each play had a cast of characters with mostly non-historical Greek sounding names. Nicholas Rowe included a woman named Semanthe in his 1705 play Ulysses. Rowe is notable for being appointed Poet Laureate by George I and for editing and publishing William Shakespeare's plays.

The June 13, 1712 edition of the Spectator, a widely read British periodical that ran daily for almost 2 years, used Semanthe in an article arguing for people to pursue activities that lie within their strengths given to them by Nature. It was the style to discuss current issues of morals using classical references and names. Other names used in the same way in the article were Caelia, Iras, Cleanthes and Valerio.

In 1758 the French conversation plays of Madame de Maintenon, the second wife of King Louis XIV of France, were published and then translated into English. Each play is a discussion between women who were given a variety of French names. When translated into English, Semanthe was used as one of the English names along with other romantic and classical sounding names such as Melliora and Cleomelia.

A 1764 novel titled “Cleanthes and Semanthe” used Semanthe as a character name, along with other romantic names like Lucinda. Lucinda, an invention of Cerventes for his 1605 novel Don Quiote would go on to become more common during the early 1800s in the US.

Each literary example has Semanthe being used for a new character who needed a classical sounding name. The first example of the Samantha spelling in print is in Mary Barber's 1735 book “Poems on Several Occasions”. It was a popular book with a forward by Johnathan Swift. Barber was an Irish poet in Swift's circle. She was considered a ‘domestic poet’, notable for being a house wife and writing about her children, but also writing commentary on gender and social issues at the time. Barber is using the name in reference to someone well known for her beauty but I’m not sure to which literary Samantha (or more likely Semanthe) she is referring. Rowe’s Semanthe character from Ulysses seems to be the likely candidate as his plays had numerous editions published and he was the most notable playwright who used it during Barber's time. 

Mary Barber's poem from her 1735 book "Poems on Several Occasions", oldest found use of the Samantha spelling in print

The Semanthe spelling was consistent in print before and after Barber's use so the shift to Samantha may have happened as the name was used by real people.

There were parents in both England and the American colonies who named their daughter Semanthe but it only seemed to have caught on in the colonies. An early example of the name was a woman named Semanthe Dewey, born in 1749 in Westfield, Massachusetts. She named her daughter after herself, Semanthe Brush, who was born in 1772 in Bennington, Vermont.

The tombstone of Semanthe Brush (born Dewey) who died in 1789 in Bennington Vermont.

Over in England in Barnstaple, Devon, a woman named Semanthe Page was married in 1774. She was born in 1745.

Record of the marriage of John Blaney and Semanthe Page in 1774 from the "Devon Bishop's Transcripts, 1558-1887"

Samantha Hatch was born in 1768 in Tolland, Connecticut and died in 1849. Her tombstone reads Samantha but was recorded as Semantha in the 1840 US census.

The tombstone of Samantha Hatch, wife of Stephen Hunt, who died in Tolland, Connecticut in 1849.

Semantha Hunt recorded as the head of her family in the 1840 US census, her husband Stephen having died in 1836.

The 1840 US census only lists heads of households and tends to only record the names of widowed or single women. It has 23 women named Samantha, 7 women named Semantha and no women named Semanthe. The 1850 US census recorded the names of all members of a household. There were 5,834 people named Samantha, 948 named Semantha and 32 named Semanthe. 

The shift towards the -a ending seems to have been faster than the Sam- beginning. A closer look at individuals may show examples of Samanthas being named in honour of Samuels, influencing the spelling shift towards Sam-. A more diligent researcher might be able to find contemporary examples of a Samantha named in honour of a Samuel to support this theory.

What does the name Samantha mean?

Name books will boil name meanings down to a single origin with a known etymological meaning. As Samantha was associated with Samuel they would share the same origin. Samuel's meaning is given as either "name of God", from the Hebrew 'Shemu'el', or "God has heard" from the Hebrew 'Shama'el'. This has resulted in the meaning of Samantha being given as "listener". If Samantha is instead a Greek inspired named created in the 1600s by an English playwright, it would lean instead on the Greek interpretation of the name components. 

The 'anthe' part could still mean 'flower', while the 'sem' part could be inspired by the classical names Semele or Semiramis. In Greek mythology Semele is the mother of Dionysus in one of his origin stories. She appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses, a work in circulation when Suckling invented Semanthe, and Suckling name dropped Ovid in other poems. Semele is hypothesized to be of Phrygian origin meaning "earth", but that's her whole name meaning, not just the Sem- part. A fanciful new name meaning could be "earth flower". Looking up the possible etymology of Semiramis' name yields more options like "dove", "thunder", and "red" which would all make for exciting name meanings. 

I am happy to stop at simply: Samantha is a form of Semanthe, a name invented by John Suckling possibly modelled on the classical name Semele or Semiramis with the Greek suffix 'anthe' meaning "flower". 

References

Barber, M., & Swift, J. (1735). Poems on Several Occasions.

Campbell, M. (2024). User Comments for the name Samantha. Behind the Name. 

                Behindthename.com https://www.behindthename.com/name/samantha/comments

Campbell, M. (2024). User-submitted name Samanthe - Behind the Name. Behindthename.com. https://www.behindthename.com/name/samanthe/submitted?id=456789

Joseph, A., & Sir, R. (2024). The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 With Translations and Index for the Series. Gutenberg.org. https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12030/pg12030-images.html#section404

Maintenon, M. D. (1758) The Ladies Monitor or Instructions for the Fair Sex, Written in French by the Celebrated Madam de Maintenon, for the Use of the Young Ladies of St. Cyr’s and Now First Translated into English by Mr. Rollos.

Name of the Week: Samantha. (2016). British Baby Names. 

https://www.britishbabynames.com/blog/2016/02/samantha.html

‌Semanthe Dewey Brush (1749-1789) - Find a Grave... (2020). Findagrave.com.

            https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/22439957/semanthe_brush

Samantha Hatch Hunt (1768-1849) - Find a Grave... (2024). Findagrave.com. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/35993982/samantha-hunt

Suckling, S. J. (1874). The Poems, Plays, and Other Remains of Sir John Suckling.

US Census data from FamilySearch • Free Family Trees and Genealogy Archives. https://familysearch.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loyal_Brother

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_Improved

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treacherous_Brothers

‌https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shammuramat

The trail of the name Sigourney

Sigourney is a surname that originates from the French town of Sigournais. It was called Segurniacum in latin which is of unknown origin. Sigourney Weaver is the first person that comes to mind for most of us. The actress played fearless heroine Warrant Officer Ripley in Ridley Scott's 1976 movie Alien. She was born Susan Alexandra Weaver in 1949 and started going by Sigourney when she was 14. She picked the name from a single line in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 book The Great Gatsby. In the book the character Jordan Baker tells Nick to look up her Aunt's name in the phone book to find her, a "Mrs. Sigourney Howard", which would have actually been her aunt's husband's name. The name was likely after Fitzgerald's close friend Reverend Sigourney W. Fay who died in 1919. The reverend's full name was Cyril Sigourney Webster Fay and a quick family tree search showed (besides a bunch of cousin marriages...) he was probably named after his paternal uncle Sigourney Webster Fay, born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1836.

Portrait of Sigourney Webster Fay in 1855 when he was 18 (Boston Athanaem)

The trail of Sigourneys ends here though, as I can find no near relative with this surname for whom he could have been named. The US census of 1861 shows Sigourney was a rare first name, under 20 people, but it was used more for women than men. All were named after 1830. A google books search showed there was one notable Sigourney active at this time, a Connecticut born poet named Lydia Sigourney, referred to mostly by her married name in print, Mrs. Sigourney.

Lydia Sigourney, 1820

She wrote poetry and conduct manuals for women which emphasized a woman's place in the home and the importance of women being agreeable in conversation. She also wrote eulogies and poetry. She was the most well known female writer of her time and inspired many women to become poets and start literary societies. She has now been largely forgotten. My guess is he was named after her. Webster also happens to be the surname of the Massachusetts Senator who ran for President in 1836, Daniel Webster, who was also a famous orator and writer during his political career.

Mrs. Sigourney was born Lydia Howard Huntley and was the only child of Ezekiel Huntley and Zerviah Wentworth. She was named after Ezekiel's deceased first wife, Lydia Howard. Imagine naming your only daughter after your husband's dead wife! It's probably just a coincidence that Fitzgerald chose Howard for the aunt's surname but it is possible he was aware of her poetry. Perhaps she was alluded to as the prim overbearing aunt type in juxtaposition to Jordan Baker's more liberal attitudes. What would Mrs. Sigourney have thought of her!

Sigourney has never been a very popular name in the US and peaked in popularity in 1989 with 43 girls named. That year Sigourney Weaver was nominated for two acting awards at the Oscars and also starred in Ghostbusters II. In 2022 only 6 girls were named Sigourney. Ripley on the other hand, Weaver's Alien character, was given to 206 girls and 107 boys and is trending up for both.

Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ripley in the movie Alien (1976)

The story of Sigourney seems to touch down at pivots in the story of women, from tradiontional yet inspirational poets, to new women flapper girls and finally sci-fi heroines who kill aliens. That Ripley is now trending as a unisex name, for boys as well as girls thanks to Sigourney Weaver is a delightful addendum to this story.

Scarlett, Rhett and... Wiley? The Names of Gone With the Wind

Old period films like Gone With the Wind can have a huge influence on which names we see as classic or traditional. It's often hard to imagine what it was like to hear these names for the first time and how they would have sounded to contemporary audiences. In the case of Gone With the Wind, what modern viewers are missing is that the three main characters, Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes, are all using uncommon surnames as first names. 

Surnames as first names only started going beyond family names and heros in the 1800s and only started becoming popular enough to shake off the surname style individually at the turn of the 20th century. The names in Gone With the Wind fit with the established stereotype of wealthy and privileged men and women using surnames as first names but they weren't individually common names.

Gone With the Wind is set in the 1850s and 60s American Civil War era in the south. The book was written in 1936 by Margaret Mitchell and the movie staring Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable was released in 1939. 

In the book, Katie Scarlett O'Hara was named after her paternal grandmother Katie Scarlett. Having a surname in the middle spot was not uncommon in the south for boys as well as girls. In fact, when middle names started being adopted in the 1800s, they were just as likely to be a family surname as another Christian name. As a first name in general, Scarlett was rare and used by men as well as women. The origin of her name is explained in the book, but movie viewers would have heard her father Gerald O'Hara refer to her as "Katie Scarlett" and the two T spelling in the beginning credits indicated a significance beyond the colour. But WWII era parents did not immediately fall in love with the name Scarlett. It first entered the SSA stats in 1937 but stayed below 200 girls a year until the 2000s. 

Katie Scarlett O'Hara

The name of the character Rhett Bulter might have been inspired by South Carolina politician Robert B. Rhett, known for leading the Fire-Eaters and for being "the father of succesion".  The 1850 US census lists only 8 men with it as a first name. It's only become popular in the real world since the 2000s.

George Ashley Wilkes also goes by his middle name but it was a bit more common as a first name than the others, with over 750 people recorded with Ashley as a first name in the 1850 census (about 10 of them were women). But to put that in perspective, the surname Wiley was about 7 times more common, Jefferson and Wilson 10 times more common, and Washington almost 15 times more common as a first name than Ashley. It wasn't even the most common -ley surname being used as a first name. Ashley Wilkes could have easily been a Bailey Wilkes, a Riley Wilkes or Presley Wilkes and been appropriate for the period. Even accounting for 1930s name tastes, Margaret Mitchell might have called him Oakley Wilkes, as that name was about as common for baby boys in her time as Ashley. 

"Oh, Wiley!"

The recent popularity of Ashley might have blinded modern audiences to its surname style, but the contemporary audience was well aware and viewed it as a unisex surname. The book had a small effect on the popularity of Ashley for boys, going from 30 per year to 50, but it also influenced its use for girls. The year 1938 marks the beginning of Ashley trending for girls, starting with 7 and then hovering around 10 per year until the 1950s. It overtook the boys in 1964 with 184 girls named. It was most popular for boys in Georgia and North Carolina in the US, pointing towards Gone With the Wind as the major influence.

If you want to put the fictional Wilkes family naming taste in perspective, don't forget about Ashley's sister, India Wilkes. Her name was about half as common as Ashley but still more common than Scarlett and Rhett. Other surnames you might not have noticed in the film are Brent, Stuart and Beauregard. You can thank Gone With The Wind for Beau as well. It was very rare as a stand alone name and Beau is much more common today than it ever was in the 1860s.

India did not catch on as a name.

Gone With the Wind had a huge impact on our perception of these names. They were uncommon for the time it was written and the period it was written about. The film's place as one of the most iconic films in history gave the names a classic and traditional feel and influenced their modern popularity.

The gender split of Ashley in English speaking countries

 Ashley is a popular name in English speaking countries, but whether it's more popular for men or women depends on the country. The following map was created using name data from each country. In some countries, the full dataset was not available so gaps were estimated using ranking information and calibrating it to population data. In the case of Australia, the Victoria data was estimated using the New South Wales data based on Ashley being in the top 100 girl names in 2008, and not Ashleigh. This estimating should not significantly affect the information presented, since I wanted to show the overall difference in gender split. The other story here is that the Ashleigh spelling was a popular name for girls in places where Ashley is more common for men. That's a another analysis though.

I did split up England and Wales and Scotland because there was a significant difference in usage, but there I had better data. Australia is similar with different states having different patterns of usage. The difference in Australia seems to be that overall Ashley/Ashleigh is more common for women and which spelling was chosen for girls depends on the state.

My Little Nimrod

Nimrod is a biblical name found in the Old Testament and the Torah. He was famous for being a great hunter but also used as a type name of a tyrant as he rebelled against God. This name is popular as a given name in Hungary and not uncommon in Israel. Hunters have been referred to as Nimrods as a type name similar to how flirts are called Romeos, and it has been used to name vehicles like the British Hawker Siddeley Nimrod patrol aircraft and American Nimrod pop-up camper trailers. The composer Edward Elgar named the ninth variation of his Enigma variations Nimrod in 1899 after his editor and publisher Augustus J. Jaeger. Jaeger means hunter in German.

A Ward Industries ad for Nimrod pop-up campers in Popular Mechanics from 1965

But some time in the 1970s in Canada and the US, Nimrod came to mean klutz, geek, moron or fool. The earliest example is in the 1981 Canadian thriller movie Happy Birthday to Me. One teen character yells "Hey! That nimrod owes me 20 bucks." Then in 1982 the American movie Wacko used Nimrod in a series of insults, "Nard. Nitwit. Gonard. Cone head. Oh yes. Dip. Nimrod."

This list goes on from there and includes use in Just One of the Guys, Heathers, Pulp Fiction, Wonder Years, Child's Play 3, George Carlin stand up, Family Matters, and Cheers. It's first appearance in a slang dictionary with the idiot meaning was in 1995, and appeared in a proper dictionary in 2000.

How did this happen? There is a theory that the use of Nimrod as a type name for a hunter in a condescending or sarcastic way in 1960s Looney Tune cartoons might have led younger viewers to mistake Nimrod for a general insult. This was debunked in 1998 in Jesse Scheidlower's online column Jesse's Word of the Day. He mentioned he found two older examples of Nimrod being used to mean jerk from the 1930s, and one Newsweek letter to the editor from 1963. Although not mentioned, I believe those 2 early examples are from the 1932 play "The Great Magoo" by Ben Hecht and Gene Fowler and from the W.C. Fields 1934 film You're Telling Me. I wonder if it's important that jerk and idiot are two distinct meanings, and it is hard to distinguish their meaning when used as an insult. I looked up the references none the less.

In the first example from "The Great Magoo", the character is talking about a man's romantic pursuit of a woman, "The same old Nimrod . Won't let her alone for a second.". I don't think this is an example of Nimrod being used to mean jerk or idiot. It could easily still be a reference to the hunter meaning of the word, as in his dogged determination to chase after a woman. The second example is not as clear. While making a series of golf jokes and puns (including one about the Thousand Islands country club and Canadian Club whisky), W.C. Fields is handed a wobbly club by his caddy, to which he remarks "Little too much whip in that club, Nimrod.". When I watch this now, to me it does sound like he's insulting the caddy by calling him nimrod, meaning idiot. I can't easily link this usage with the contemporary tyrant or hunter meaning. My only guess is that it's an insider's golf joke. The reference to hunters as Nimrods appears in Sir Walter Grindlay Simpson's 1887 book "The Art of Golf". He attributes the obscurity of the sport of golf to the fact that no one writes romantic works with golf as the theme the same way you do with sport hunting. If there was some tension between those that golf and those that hunt, like "Are you a hunting club man or a golfing club man?", then calling someone a nimrod meant they definitely didn't know golf. It's still an insult, but does still rely on the hunter meaning.

The 1963 Newsweek reference is also not a clear example of nimrod being used to mean idiot, but does get closer to jerk. It’s a letter to the editor about the NCAAP suing Quaker Mills over the racist depiction of a black woman on their Aunt Jemima pancake syrup. 

….After they win that case, can whites engage their lawyer to lead in opposition to the advertisers use of that masculine, ear-ringed scrubwoman Mr. Clean? If Aunty’s image slights the negroes, what does the aforementioned nimrod do for whites?  

Karl Kirkman, Pastor, Friedens United Church of Christ, Browns, IL 

The writer is ridiculing the case by suggesting that Mr. Clean is somehow just as offensive to white people as Aunt Jemima. There is no obvious reason why Mr. Clean would be referred to as a hunter and the derogatory meaning of idiot does make sense. The clue here was that the writer was a pastor. Taking the tyrant meaning into account, for which examples can be found back to the 16th century, it looks like he means to say Mr.Clean is some sort of tyrant tormenting the poor white folk with his image, and does follow the exaggerated tone of the letter. 

Was it then really the Looney Tunes cartoon that is the origin of the mistaken idiot meaning? As you can see, using Nimrod to insult someone is not a recent development, but all of these examples do rely on a connection to the biblical Nimrod, either as a hunter or a tyrant. If someone wasn't familiar with the Biblical Nimrod reference, any insulting use of it could have lead to someone mistaken the word to mean idiot.

An early example is in the 1940 movie His Girl Friday, "Get the governor on the phone. He's not there... He's duck shooting.... Blasted Nimrod! Fishing, duck shooting..." In the 1947 movie Unconquered with Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard, the male lead Chris condescending says to Abbey "There, my little Nimrod, is your wolf" after they find out the source of a eerie howl is a small dog, mocking her animal identification skills. 

 

"There, my little Nimrod, is your wolf." Unconquered, 1947

It's been pointed out before but technically it's not true that Bugs Bunny called Elmer Fudd a Nimrod.  In 1948 the Looney Tunes short "What Makes Daffy Duck" it was Daffy Duck, not Bugs Bunny, who called Elmer Fudd "my little Nimrod", possibly as a reference to the line in Unconquered. Kids cartoons often made reference to popular media and I think it's telling that this usage has the same format of "my little Nimrod". The title of the short itself is in reference to the controversial book "What Makes Sammy Run" by Bud Schulberg. Bugs Bunny does call someone Nimrod but it was Yosemite Sam as he fills the role of hunter. The 1951 Looney Tunes short "Rabbit Every Monday" (title based off the 1949 comedy film "Chicken Every Sunday") has Bugs Bunny feeling remorse for having fooled Yosemite Sam into walking into a hot oven, saying "I couldn't do that to the little Nimrod". These are still examples of Nimrod being used as a slang term for a hunter, and aren't examples of a new use for the word. 

Daffy Duck in the 1948 Looney Tunes short "What Makes Daffy Duck"

Unlike the previous film examples, these cartoon shorts started appearing regularly on American and Canadian television in 1955 with the syndication of Looney Tunes and the start of The Bugs Bunny Show in 1960. If the slang use of nimrod to mean idiot started in the 50s and 60s with children, it makes sense that examples of this new use wouldn't show up in media until those kids were old enough to start writing scripts and producing media. They would be working age in the 1980s when the first non-hunter usage is recorded. Meanwhile the only notable use of Nimrod in reference to the hunter meaning was on camper vans and an episode of Hogan's Heroes in 1969 when Colonel Klink is passed off as the British spy code named Nimrod. With Klink being inept, this would have not clarified the meaning to younger viewers if they already thought it meant idiot. The lack of opportunities for the meaning to be corrected was important in the propagation of the new idiot meaning.

The Looney Tunes shorts were shown in British theatres too, and also aired on British television but idiot did not become the predominant meaning of Nimrod there. This is probably due to the exposure to other associations with Nimrod, like Elgar's Nimrod Variation. It's a piece of music played every year during the National Service of Remembrance, a lineup that hasn't changed since 1930. The Nimrod Variation has been described as an unofficial British anthem. Brits may have been inoculated against mistaking Nimrod for an insult. 

Nimrod continued to be occasionally mentioned in reference to the hunter in other British media as well. The 26th season of Doctor Who had a character named Nimrod in the Ghost Light serial (1989). An episode of Lovejoy in 1994 explained the great hunter meaning. As late as 2010 Nimrod was used as the name of a circus pony in the title of a children's book published in the UK. Eventually the idiot meaning of Nimrod did cross over to the UK, and it was well known enough to cause a person named Nimrod grief. In Israel, Nimrod is used more commonly as a personal name so someone connected to that Jewish community might have actually known someone named Nimrod, although I have been told it's more popular among secular Israelis.

The occasional post-1980 examples of Nimrod still being used in reference to the Biblical Nimrod in North America are intriguing exceptions to the new American meaning of idiot. The X-Men comics and cartoons had a Sentinel robot programmed to hunt mutants named Nimrod in 1985. Neil Gaiman named one of his serial killer characters Nimrod in his Sandman comic in 1989. Power Rangers named one of it's monsters The Nimrod in 1994. These exceptions all have two things in common: their creators were not born in North America and they were Jewish. Neil Gaiman and Christopher Claremont (X-men comics) are British born and Shuki Levy (Power Rangers) is from Israel. I am assuming they were not aware of the new American slang meaning of idiot or did not think it was relevant when choosing the names of their characters. Their Nimrod characters were all bad guys too, which matches closer to both the Jewish and Christian religious depiction of Nimrod as a tyrant. 

Even though we don't have proof, it is very likely that Looney Tunes did play a role in influencing the idiot meaning of the word nimrod. The usage of "my little Nimrod" in Looney Toons was likely inspired by contemporary popular films. It might have been distinct enough at the time to be parodied and could indicate that the awareness of Nimrod as a type name for a hunter was not prevalent even among the adults. The spread of the mistaken meaning may have been helped by the absence of the word being used in other cultural contexts, which is why the same mistake was less likely to be made in the UK.

In 1997 Green Day released their album "nimrod." stylized with a lower case initial letter and period. When asked about it in a 1998 interview Billie Joe Armstrong said, "It's some guy from the old testament. For some strange reason it turned into a curse; it's another name for dork.". The album art features men in suits with their faces blanked out, a striking loss of identity.

Green Day's 1997 album cover for nimrod.

Sources:
Pop-up Camper History 
English Corpora
The TV and Radio Database

Spears, R. A. (1995). NTC’s Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. (2000). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Interview with Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong, NYROCK.com, 1998

Webarchive, The Maven's Word of the Day , May 7 1999

How did the name Cohen get so popular?

Cohen is a Jewish surname that has recently started trending as a name for boys in the US, Canada, and the UK. It’s problematic because it’s closely associated with a special religious group within Judaism. I’m not Jewish, so I’ll paraphrase a reddit comment from r/namenerds on the subject:

Cohen is offensive because it isn’t just a surname, it is a hereditary title. Cohens (Kohanim in Hebrew) were the priestly class during the era of the Temple in Jerusalem, and were responsible for directing daily religious practices. ... Kohanim traditionally have special responsibilities within Judaism: they cannot marry converts or divorcees, and cannot come into contact with dead bodies. Because it is a hereditary title associated with special privileges, no Jew would ever use this as a first name, and it is in extremely poor taste for gentiles (non-Jews) to use it for the same reasons. It comes across as being extremely ignorant of our culture at best (a lot of people have never met a Jewish person before) and intentionally antisemitic at worst.

I’ve always wondered how such a name could start trending. Then a movie title caught my eye while reading about actor Adam Baldwin (you know, Jayne from Firefly). In 1989 he starred in a thriller movie called Cohen and Tate. Baldwin plays the brash younger assassin named Tate who is teamed up with an older, more professional assassin called Mr. Cohen (played by Roy Schneider, you know, Chief Brody in Jaws). I only watched the trailer but his surname seems to be the only Jewish thing about the character. He is referred to as Mr. Cohen but also simply as Cohen. Of course I had to check the baby name stats. Did this movie inspire the Cohen baby name trend? 

The movie was released in the US in January of 1989, and that year Cohen was given to 8 boys in the US. But it was given to 13 boys the year before in 1988. Can a movie’s trailers and promos inspire a baby name? What other Cohen related media happened in 1988? Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen released his eighth and most popular album in the US, “I’m Your Man”. It’s not a slam dunk in name influence terms but after 1988 Cohen started slowly trending.

There was another Cohen kicking around at this time. Terry Pratchett’s second Discworld novel The Light Fantastic (1986) features a character named Cohen the Barbarian. He appears again in the 1994 book Interesting Times. He starred in his own book in 2001 in The Last Hero. I’ve read all these books and Cohen (or Ghenghiz Cohen) is a likable character. He’s a satirical take on the barbarian tropes in fantasy, and his name is a parody of Conan the Barbarian. He’s not Jewish. I can’t tell if Pratchett was subverting all sorts of Jewish stereotypes with this character name, or merely chose it for the puns. Either way by 2001 Cohen was being given to 50 boys a year in the US. 

Then it happened. The event. The first episode of the American teen drama The O.C. aired in August 2003. It stars Adam Brody as Seth Cohen, the awkward but good looking, nerdy but charming, outcast but lovable teenager who befriends the troubled Ryan Atwood after he’s taken in by his father. Seth is Jewish! Well, his father is Jewish. His mother is Catholic, named Kirsten (that's a Scottish version of Christian). I didn’t watch The O.C. but I’ve read articles by Jewish authors describing how refreshing it was to see regular Jewish customs just being part of the every day family life of the Cohen family. The O.C. was written by Josh Schwartz who is Jewish and based much of the character of Seth Cohen on himself. On the show, Seth is often referred by his surname, Cohen, by his girlfriend and friends. Adam Brody won multiple Teen Choice Awards for his portrayal. I’ve seen Seth described as the Jewish “manic pixie dream boy” which would explain some of his appeal. He may have normalized Cohen as a name and the name stats support that. 

The O.C. ran from 2003 to 2007. In 2003 Cohen was given to 89 boys, up from 72 the year before. In 2004 it jumped to 315, and by 2007 it was up to 774. The latest US statistics in 2021 had it being given to 1186 boys and 40 girls, ranking in the 200s. It’s not just the US either. In England and Wales it started out with 8 boys in 2003, and peaked at 167 boys in 2017. 

I’ve heard that people choosing Cohen aren’t aware that Cohen is a particularly Jewish surname. A couple of the early influences weren’t obviously Jewish but Seth Cohen definitely was and Leonard Cohen was open about his faith. Americans in media have had to change their Jewish surnames to avoid antisemitism because Jewish surnames were identifiable, or at least known by those with antisemitic beliefs. According to creator Josh Schwartz, the original family name for Seth's family was Needleman. "Originally, when I started writing it, the Cohens were called the Needlemans so they were even more Jewish,". It was 'scaled back' to Cohen.

There are now about 28,000 American kids born in the last 20 years with some variation of Cohen, Kohen, Coen or Koen as their name (another couple thousand in Canada, and over 3,500 in England and Wales). There are other origins for these different spellings. There are lots of Dutch cyclists named Koen or Coen, pronounced closer to kun or koon. Cohen is also found as an Irish surname but more often spelt Coen. I've heard mention Cohen is an Australian indigenous word for thunder but I can't find a good reference. I'm convinced their popularity now in the US has been lead by the influence of Seth Cohen of The O.C. .

References: 

Huffpost.com "Seth Cohen: Manic Pixie Jewish Boy", 2016

HAAM.org, "Can Jewish Stereotypes in TV be used for good", 2018

IMDB.com, "Cohen and Tate"

Darkgreener.com, Popularity of Cohen in England and Wales

Reddit.com, comment on "Meaning of the Name Cohen?"

Huffpost.com "'The O.C.' 10th Anniversary: Creator Josh Schwartz On Mistakes, Mischa Barton's Exit, Chrismukkah & More", 2017

The Victorians called trendy names "romantic names"

 I have been enjoying articles on britishbabynames.com tagged "Twas Ever Thus". They are all clippings from old newspapers, magazines and sections from books on the topic of baby names from 100 to 200 years ago in the UK.

There are many articles written on the theme of how ridiculous it is when the lower classes chose upper class names. They should be choosing John not Frederick, Sarah not Eugenie, James not Theodore. But the article writers also look down their nose at the working class who choose "romantic names".

Here's a quote from a 1869 London periodical called Belgravia:

"Apropos of romantic names, I have it from a registrar of great experience that these are enormously affected by the lower orders, who get them from the romances in the penny papers."

Examples of these romantic names from the Victorian era included Yolande, Gladys, Beatrice, Ethel, Gertrude, Blanche, Eva, Dora, Mabel, Amy, Evelyn, Maud, Florence, Marguerite, and May.

The writer from 1869 also drops this little tidbit about names used for both sexes:

"Happily there is one folly in christening which has never strengthened into a fashion, namely, that of confounding the names proper to the two sexes. This has been done to a slight extent, however. I once knew a lady named Charles; Joey has been bestowed on a female infant; and Brown, the author of Britannia's Pastorals, is said to have married a Miss Timothy Eversfield, of Den in Sussex. Evelyn is one of the bewildering names without sex."

So there you have it. Not only was Evelyn a trendy Victorian name for girls, it was also unisex (plus it was also the alternative spelling of Eveline, a spelling which C.M. Yonge warned against using in 1863).

Twas Ever Thus. 

Source:  Belgravia, "Concerning M. or N." page 389, United Kingdom, 1869

Ursula is a Drag Queen Inspired Name

Growing up, I never questioned the name of the sea witch in Disney's The Little Mermaid. Ursula always made sense to me, an ugly old-fashioned name for a witch, like Dolores, Mildred, or Gruntilda.

Ursula the sea witch from Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989)

So imagine my surprise when I was reading old baby name books from the 70s and 80s (pre-Mermaid) and every entry for Ursula reads something like “this name brings to mind a hot, sexy, alluring European woman”. That really doesn't seem like a good name for a sea witch. The predominant Ursula association before 1989 was Ursula Andress, the sexy European bond girl from the first James Bond movie Dr. No (1962), who played roles like Aphrodite in Clash of the Titans (1981).

Ursula Andress in Loaded Guns (1975)

Why would they give an old sea witch a name that most adults watching with their kids would associate with a Hollywood sex symbol? I didn’t find anything specific on the internet about why the Disney creators chose Ursula for the sea witch but I did find that her character design was based on the drag queen Divine. And who do drag queens like to emulate and name themselves after? Sexy Hollywood icons, like Ursula Andress!

Andress in the movie She (1965)

Ursula is a drag queen inspired name! Just look at Andress in a fancy headdress! It makes total sense. To be fair, I think it also works as an old fashioned European name, which makes it a clever choice by the creators.

All of this went completely over my head as a kid, as it probably did for a whole generation who grew up watching The Little Mermaid and who didn't know about Andress. So now for me the name Ursula is associated with an evil witch, and the name itself sounds ugly and old fashioned with no attractive associations in popular culture like it used to have. 

You can see the change happen with the character Ursula Buffay, twin sister of Phoebe Buffay on the tv show Friends. She was originally just an absent-minded blond waiter in the second season of Mad About You (1992). Ursula in this case matched with the earlier associations with the name. But when they brought her into Friends (1995) she became the evil twin which matches the new association with the name. The nice and friendly Ursula from the George of the Jungle (1997) movie got her name from the 1967 animation of the same name, and I wonder if Ursula Andress may have been the inspiration then. In the video game Metal Gear Solid : Portable Ops (2006), Ursula is the name of evil split personality of beautiful Elisa. The only outlier is Ursula Hanson from Super Troopers (2001), but the writers there are GenX, so I imagine they might have been still thinking beautiful blond Ursula when they cast Marisa Coughlan.

That’s my theory anyway. And I think it adds to the idea of Ursula being a gay icon.

Why are people naming boys Artemis?

If you are only familiar with Artemis as a Greek goddess it can be hard to understand how it can be seen as a name for boys. Artemis Fowl gets blamed for making Artemis sound masculine but he wasn't the first.

There was Artemis the male cat in Sailor Moon, Artemis Gordon in the movie Wild Wild West, and Artemis Entreri, an assassin in the Forgotten Realms franchise. For me, that is too many to be just a coincidence. Is there a historical precedent?

You do find a few older American graves on findagrave.com for men named Artemis mixed in with the women. Occasionally their names will also get spelled Artemas or Artemus.

Artemas is a biblical name. In the letters to Titus, Paul mentions him as one of his disciples. The etymology is often interpreted as a version of the Greek name Artemidoros which means "gift of Artemis". One of the early American Revolutionary War heros was named Artemas Ward.

Artemus is a form of the Latin name Artemius, from the Greek Artemios meaning "devoted to Artemis". Saint Artemius was martyred in the 4th century and he is considered a Saint in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian churches.

You can imagine how Artemas, Artemus, and Artemis might get mixed up in English. They are obviously related but their usage as first names was too rare to establish an awareness of the difference. That's less likely to happen with common names like Jessie and Jesse but even with a popular name they get confused for the same name. Someone unfamiliar with Artemus might have also "corrected" the spelling to the more familiar Artemis.

Does that mean there are a bunch of men named Artemis in the US? No, not according to the SSA name database. No more than 16 are recorded before 2000, with double that many probably missed by the privacy cut off of 5. In the mean time, Artemis for girls was pretty rare as well, with about 300 women named between 1930 and 2000. If you add in men named Artemas and Artemus, the ratio is closer to 2:1 male to female. The Artemis Gordon in the 1960s tv show The Wild Wild West (and the 1980 tv movie AND the 1999 Will Smith movie) was in truth an Artemus, probably inspired by the previously mentioned Artemas Ward. The appearance of boys named Artemis in the data lines up with the Wild Wild West productions so I'm guessing the mix up started there.

That's the American context, but what about the Greek context? In Greece, there are two uncommon names that get transliterated as Artemis into English: Άρτεμις which is feminine and Αρτέμης which is masculine. They both are pronounced the same, Artemis, but have a different syllable emphasized which is lost in translation. AR-te-mis vs ar-TE-mis. Their usage is due to that same Saint Artemios, but are shortened forms. You'll also find Artemio in Italian or Spanish, Artjoms in Latvia, Артём (Artyom) in Russia and Артем (Artem) in Ukraine.

Artyom and Artem are particularly popular in Russia and Ukraine (currently top 10) due to veneration of the 16th century child saint Арте́мий Ве́ркольский (Artemyy of Verkola). (Fun fact, his mother was named Apollinariya which is another saint name derived from a Greek god. Apollo is the twin of Artemis.)

So whether you mishear Artemus as Artemis, or run into a Greek man named Artemis, there is a chance a modern person might know a man named Artemis. This, and all the other previous male usage, might have led the author of Artemis Fowl to assume it was a well known unisex name. I think Eoin Colfer was a little surprised with how much confusion the name choice caused, which he addressed in the 3rd book.

So yes, Artemis is a female goddess from Greek mythology, but as a name for a real person it has a lot of history as a masculine name too, or at least, history of being mistaken for a similar male name. We probably just reached a tipping point with Artemis Fowl. Artemis is now trending as both a girl's and a boy's name in the US. This happens so rarely for feminine names that it's kind of amazing. Usually this story is about how a masculine name started getting used for girls.

Addendum: In 1997, an episode of Seinfeld had this exchange between Jerry and George, discussing who the last American president with a beard was:

George Costanza: Artemis N. Falkmore.

Jerry Seinfeld: You made that up, right?

George Costanza: Yeah. But it sounds like a president name, doesn't it?

According to one of the most popular American sitcoms, Artemis sounds like an old fashioned man's name.

Words from Men's Type Names

A type name is an eponym that comes from a given name that is used frequently by a generalized group of people. The most popular one at the moment is a Karen, used to describe a middle aged entitled woman. Most type names fade and lose their associations but some of them have stuck around. They evolved into words we still use today. Here are a couple that come from men’s given names or nicknames.

Hick – One of the many medieval short forms of Richard in England was Hick or Hikke. Often the leading R would get changed to an “H” as in Hob for Robert or Hodge for Rodger. Richard was a very popular name and Hick came to be used as a general name for any hosteler (innkeeper) or hackneyman (hires out coaches or horses). By the 1700 it had become a name that describes an awkward provincial person, and then by 1900 was being used as an adjective, as in “hick town” for a rural town.

Rube – After the Protestant Reformation in England, Old Testament names started to become popular as an alternative to New Testament and Saint names which were perceived to be too Catholic. Reuben was popular and was shortened to Reub or Rube. By 1804 it was being used as a type name to refer to a farmer, rustic or country bumpkin.

Zany – The Venetian diminutive of Giovanni (the Italian form of John) was Zanni and was used as the name of a buffoon character in comedic plays. The Zanni would mimic the actions of the principal in an exaggerated way. It was also used as the name of any unnamed character that wasn’t one of the main comedic characters. It was basically the Italian version of Jack. One of Zanni’s other traits was carrying around the props of the other characters, so another more archaic meaning for a zany is a toady or servile follower. This is probably closer to the meaning Shakespeare meant in the play Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Jacket - In medieval France, Jacques was used as a type name for a French peasant, from the French form of the Greek Iocubus, the same root as the English Jacob and James. Jaques or Jakke was then used to describe a type of tunic that was short and quilted for defense. The word existed in England in the 14^th century and jacket is likely a diminutive of this to describe a short coat with sleeves for men by mid 15^th century.

Yankee – In the 17^th century there were a lot of Dutch colonists in New Amsterdam (now New York) and they referred to those rotten Englishmen over in Connecticut as Yankees, possibly from Janke or Janneke, the diminutive of Jan, the Dutch version of John. Or it was the English who were using it to refer to those lazy Dutch colonists. Either way it has been used derogatively and reclaimed a couple times, notably in the song Yankee Doodle, written by the English to make fun of the Americans during the American Revolutionary War, and adopted by Connecticut as the state’s official song.

Jockey – Jock is the Scottish variant of the name John, and the diminutive Jockey was used to refer to any person or fellow in the 16^th century, like Johnny. It then became used to refer to a person who rides horses in races by the mid 17^th century. The verb ‘to jockey’ which means to trick, outwit or gain advantage comes from the related profession of horse trading. A jock, an athletic man, comes from the word jockstrap, “athletic support”, but jock in this sense is used as slang for penis, like the English “dick”.  

There is a whole list of words that stem from the name Jack being used as a type name, but those are clearly connected to the name and less obscure. Others which were also used as type names before they were used for tools are billie (club) and jimmy (pry). I made a list of Words from Women's Type Names as well.

Source: etymonline.com

American Media Influences on the name Crystal

Crystal has been around as a woman's name since the 19th century in the US. It was given to between 80 and 120 girls a year up until the 1940s. It rose very quickly in popularity in the 1970s and I was very surprised to find that it broke into the top 10 girls names (#9) in 1982. I'll be honest, and I apologize to anyone who may have this name, but it has always sounded like a stripper's stage name to me. Since I don't frequent strip clubs, this association must have been shaped by television and movies. I went on the hunt for the reasons of this impression. 

The first bump in the name's popularity was likely due to Joan Crawford's portrayal of seductive perfume counter girl Crystal Allan in the 1939 film The Women (It's all about Men), a popular all-female cast film based on a 1936 play by Clare Booth Luce. She is the mistress who eventually marries the antagonist's ex-husband. Then in 1946 scream queen Evelyn Ankers plays a stripper named Crystal McCoy in the murder mystery Queen of Burlesque. Only two references in and I've already found a stripper named Crystal. The name was also used for one of the main characters in the film noir drama Three Strangers that same year. Geraldine Fitzgerald played Crystal Shackleford, a woman who lures two strangers to stand before a strange Chinese idol to make a wish. The name did get a small boost that year but neither character endeared the name to many people. It was also the first year the Krystal spelling appeared in the data given to at least 5 girls. 

Joan Crawford as Crystal Allan in The Women. Source

In 1951, Crystal might have gotten increased usage in and around Michigan due to a set of quadruplets born to the Rosebush family of Oakwood, Michigan, one of who was named Krystal. This won't be the last time alternative spellings of Crystal influence the name. In 1957 the role of Crystal Allan was played by Joan Collins in a remake of the 1939 movie called The Opposite Sex, although this version included men in the cast. There was a small increase in 1963 which I can only attribute to Barbara Eden's character Crystal Simpson in an episode of Rawhide. She is a conman's assistant who performs a harem dance to distract the crew, and was notably performed before Eden was cast as Jeannie in I Dream of Jeannie. 

Barbara Eden as Crystal Simpson in a 1963 episode of Rawhide. Source

Crystal increased in popularity steadily from 1970 to 1976 likely due to the growing success of country music singer and sex symbol Crystal Gayle. Her first single in 1970 influenced the name in the southern states initially and by 1976, the year of her first widely successful album titled Crystal, the name Crystal was already a top 10 girl's name in several states (West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina) and top 20 in others (Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky). 

Crystal Gayle on the cover of her 1976 album Crystal. Source

The character that pushed it over the top in the rest of the US though was Linda Evan's portrayal of Krystle Carrington in the soap opera Dynasty, which ran from 1981 to 1989. Krystle was the former secretary and now sweet and caring second wife of Blake Carrington, the moral opposite of his ex-wife Alexis, played by Joan Collins. It is interesting that at this point the popularity of Crystal started to stall or decrease in the states where it was already popular. This suggests either it became considered too mainstream in those states, or that the Krystle character did not match up with how the name was viewed, initially associated with the fiery home town country singer Crystal Gayle. The character might have endeared the name to some parts of America, while spoiling it for others.

Linda Evans as Krystle Carrington on the soap opera Dynasty. Source

Looking at the characters given the name Crystal up until this point, they all have an element of an ambitious woman from less privileged backgrounds. Sometimes she's clever, sometimes kind, but usually she's using her sexual attractiveness to her advantage. Whether you thought that was something to be admired or treated with contempt probably predicted whether you liked the name enough to give it to your daughter.

It was in the late 1980s when the term "crystal meth" started becoming known more widely as slang for crystal methamphetamines and I wonder if that hastened the decline in popularity of Crystal. The Krystal spelling got a small bump in popularity in 1985, perhaps due to the singer Krystal Davis who had a hit song "So Smooth". In 1995 the movie Showgirls had a stripper named Cristal played by Gina Gershon. 

Initially when I saw how the name was popular in states lowest on the American socio-economic spectrum, it seemed obvious why it would have a low class connotation. In 1995 when the writers named the Showgirls stripper Cristal, the majority of American Crystals of all spellings would have been under 25 years old and the name was already dropping quickly in the popularity charts. It seems a bit too soon for all the real world Crystals to have had a chance to influence the associations with the name, they seem to have been doomed from the very start no matter what profession they chose as adults.

End Note: After researching this name, I am a little disappointed that the soap opera character Krystle gets all the credit for the popularity of Crystal on the Wikipedia page. I would give Crystal Gayle a lot more credit, especially in the south. She was inspired to chose her stage name by the southern fast food chain Krystal and for the association with bright and shiny stones. The restaurant chose its name during the depression to inspire cleanliness. The terms 'crystal clean' appears to have had 19th century Christian religious associations, but that's a rabbit hole for another day.

Sources: Nancy.cc "What gave the baby name Krystal a boost in 1951?" , Wikipedia: Crystal Gayle , Wikipedia: Crystal (name)