A boy named Marion

John Tierney writes about Bad Baby Names and the effect they might have on a well adjusted individual by citing that famous psychologist, Johnny Cash.

During his 1969 concert at San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash proposed a paradigm shift in the field of developmental psychology. He used “A Boy Named Sue” to present two hypotheses:1. A child with an awful name might grow up to be a relatively normal adult.

2. The parent who inflicted the name does not deserve to be executed.

I immediately welcomed the Boy Named Sue paradigm, although I realized that I might be biased by my middle name (Marion). Cash and his ambiguously named male collaborator, the lyricist Shel Silverstein, could offer only anecdotal evidence against decades of research suggesting that children with weird names were destined for places like San Quentin.

This problem is probably less of an issue now than it was back in the 60’s, as now Americans who have foreign roots, regularly use traditional names. Orthodox Jews (and sometimes not so Orthodox Jews) are more inclined to use Hebrew names now, too, as a consequence of this greater tolerance.

(For example, using a neat function at the Social Security website, I found out that the name Moshe was the 840th most popular name in 1977 but in 2006 was the 662nd. Moshe did peak in 2003 at 598 and has dropped a bit since then. Another interesting notes is that in 1986, the year that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein died, Moshe surged to 646 – and was 603 in 1987.)

Still it’s not really non-English names that Tierney’s writing about, but unusual names like:

By scouring census records from 1790 to 1930, Mr. Sherrod and Mr. Rayback discovered Garage Empty, Hysteria Johnson, King Arthur, Infinity Hubbard, Please Cope, Major Slaughter, Helen Troy, several Satans and a host of colleagues to the famed Ima Hogg (including Ima Pigg, Ima Muskrat, Ima Nut and Ima Hooker).The authors also interviewed adults today who had survived names like Candy Stohr, Cash Guy, Mary Christmas, River Jordan and Rasp Berry. All of them, even Happy Day, seemed untraumatized.

The impetus for this discussion, Tierney’s middle name, “Marion.” He’s apparently still traumatized :-) by the playground taunts he had to endure:

Not too much ribbing? That surprised me, because I had vivid memories of playground serenades to my middle name: “Marion . . . Madam Librarian!” (My tormentors didn’t care that the “Music Man” librarian spelled her name with an “a.”) But after I looked at experiments in the post-Sue era by revisionists like Kenneth Steele and Wayne Hensley, it seemed names weren’t so important after all.

Of course the other approach he could have taken would have been to point out that no one messed with Marion Robert Morrison.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.