Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Fela Kuti came from a well-off family of public intellectuals and studied music at one of the most prestigious conservatories in the world. I'd always enjoyed his music but never looked into his biography beyond the basic "they threw his mom out a window you know" stuff

Allspice is just one single spice and not a Five Spice+ mixture

xp
I really liked Michael Veal's biography of Fela back when I was absolutely obsessed with him (so maybe take this rec with a grain of salt). Wole Soyinka is Fela's cousin fyi

that "Sandy" is a shortening of "Alexandria" or "Alexander"

Next you'll be telling me you didn't know Eck is short for Alexander.

Wait huh? Every Alexandra I've know has gone by Alex.

Every Sandy i knew was a Sandra.

I know some Alexandras become Sandys but that's a minority innit?

Used to be more common

Alexander -> Sandy used to be pretty big

I guess Sandra is itself a shortening of Alexandra too?

and Xander = Alexander

and Robin Zander = Cheap Trick

Clover, the band that played on Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True and later mutated into Huey Lewis & the News, was founded by Alex Call, the guy who wrote "867-5309/Jenny" (and Pat Benatar's "Little Too Late").

Assume the Sandy discovery related to Ms Denny?

BUt yeah assumed that Sandra shortened to Sandy too.

also the effect of the presence of silica under certain circumstances.

I didn't know, until I read Dan's post above just now, that they threw Fela Kuti's mum out of a window.

xxp but Sandra is also a shortening of Alexandra, as mentioned

years ago i read that linda came from a shortening of saralinda, which i thought was interesting bcz no one is called saralinda any more

anyway i was shockingly old when i learned this theory is false and saralinda doesn't even appear on the linda wikipedia page (it's still true that no one is called this anymore)

fact: the name wendy was coined by j.m.barrie in peter pan, where it derives from fwendy-wendy (i was shockingly young when i learned this and have not yet recovered from the shock tbqh)

I think Sandy, as a diminuitive of Alexander or Alexandra, could be Scottish in origin? Certainly the name Sandy for a man seems very Scottish, but it could just be more common due to Alexander being, historically, a very popular name in Scotland.

it is thought that Barrie took the name from a phrase used by Margaret Henley, a five-year-old girl whom Barrie befriended in the 1890s, daughter of his friend William Henley. She called Barrie her "friendy-wendy", which she pronounced as "fwendy-wendy". She died at the age of five and was buried, along with her family, in Cockayne Hatley.

:(

the odd phrasing of that last sentence is conjuring some surprising images

Cockayne Hatley

Someone should be called this so I can post it in the Great Real Names thread.

"My name? Oh yes, it's..."

Cockayne Hatley is totally one of the villages in the Midsomer universe

lol to help gussie up an amusing fake MM plot involving the burial alive of 5-yr-old margaret henley's entire family per tracer's post i glanced at the wikipedia entry on actual real MM plots: they cannot in fact be parodied, they are nuts

Knew about the Sandy business because of the film director Alexander 'Sandy' Mackendrick (who was Scottish-American)

I guess you guys missed the right-wing 'AOC used to go by Sandy!' bullshit after the dance video kerfuffle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB1d0eey5ho

Knew about the Sandy business because of the film director Alexander 'Sandy' Mackendrick (who was Scottish-American)

When Mackendrick was six, his father died of influenza as a result of a pandemic that swept the world just after World War I.

Was going to say BÖC manager Sandy Pearlman, but it turns out his name is actually Samuel which puts a wrench in that particular wheel

and Xander = Alexander

Lex! And Al/Ally.

Actually I thought Ally McCoist was Alexander but he's actually Alistair, which is, of course, a Gaelic form of Alexander.

There was a saralinda a few years ahead of me in high school - so probably 50ish now - and I thought it was a crazy made up name that no on on earth had but her, like it was some WASPy version of Bobbie Jo or Peggy Sue

the princess in thurber's THE 13 CLOCKS (1950) is called saralinda, which probably ensured a fair few children roughly that age with that name

in fact judging by google ngrams thurber actually invented it and there's a HUGE burst of it on and around 1950

I don't mind "Saralinda" if that's someone's name; seems quaintly charming. And yes, 13 Clocks is a formative work for me.

Sara / Sarai / Sarah are biblical, presumably of Hebrew / middle-eastern origin? And Linda is Latinate ("pretty" in Spanish).

So it's a bit of a centaur, onomastically speaking.

wtf re: Wendy

That is completely crazy to me

Alexandra = Sandra = Sandy is not weird or surprising to me, Margaret = Peg is weirder

A friend of mine was always threatening to name her first-born son Jordache but it never happened, she named him Leon instead

linde also from german and the linden tree

A lot of nicknames appear to date from times when there were just way fewer names to go around.

Margaret (and variants) gave us Peg, Meg, Maggie, Marge, Greta, Gretel (from the German Margarethe) and also Rita (from Margarita).

Sarah gave us Sally and Sal. Mary gave us Molly. John gave us Jack. Ann / Anne gave us Nancy and Nan and probably Nanette as well.

I am totally cool with these nicknames becoming names in their own right! Almost named a daughter some of these nicknames.

I too am surprised by Wendy being such a new coinage.

Almost all of the weird abbrevs come from a vogue at one time for rhyming nicknames, so you shorten it then rhyme like

William will bill
Richard Rick dick
Margaret meg peg
Robert rob bob

The picture must have been infinitely weirder in ancient Rome, where proper names were rather scarcer.

"Hi, I'm Julia. These are my daughters Julia Major, Julia Minor, Julilla, Juliana, and, um, Julia Tertius (I think). Fuck it, I lost track a while ago and just say HEY YOU! KID! CUT THAT OUT."

Hank and jack are two I’ve always found the weirdest, like ppl just really wanted that hard k sound in there

(shoulda said Tertia but whatev)

Foreman has 12 children, five sons and seven daughters. His five sons are George Jr., George III ("Monk"), George IV ("Big Wheel"), George V ("Red"), and George VI ("Little Joey").

So far, none of his children has been named "Grill."

john, sean, eoin, jack

johnny, ivan, ian

... Jock.

Skipping all the baby-name stuff to second the recommendation of Michael Veal's Fela biography. It's a fantastic book. His book on dub - Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae - is also excellent.

Clover, the band that played on Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True and later mutated into Huey Lewis & the News, was founded by Alex Call, the guy who wrote "867-5309/Jenny" (and Pat Benatar's "Little Too Late").

― Bougy! Bougie! Bougé! (Eliza D.),Wednesday, April 15, 2020 12:28 AM (fourteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I didn't know any of this

also of course Elizabeth - Eliza, Liz, Lizzy, Ellie, Nellie, Nell, Betty, Beth, Lisbeth, Elspeth

I have a memory of a family where there were four children who had extremely weird names that could be abbreviated neatly-- Molly's full name was Molybdenum, Eve's full name was Yvohcna (Anchovy spelled backwards). I can't remember that family's last name or the other two children's names, wish I did