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December 04, 2004
Fun With Oliver Willis.
A little bit of manufactured outrage over at the Kryptonite to Stupid place. Storm in a teacup over Michele Malkin....she uses her married name professionally but when copyrighting her books uses her maiden name, Maglalang. OK, OK, snarf snarf, she’s criticized Theresa Heinz Kerry over similar matters...what really amused me was this:
For the record my full name is the super-British sounding Lloyd Oliver Willis, Jr. I'm Oliver because the name sounds better than Lloyd, and I'm a Jr.
Oliver is rather more French than English and the Willis is OK. Yet the other two parts identiy Ollie as resolutely non-Brit. Lloyd, over here, is a surname, not a given name. The only public figure I can think of is Lloyd Grossman, and he’s a Yank. Lloyd’s Bank or Lloyd’s of London (I know one of the spellings is incorrect but not which one), the insurance market, but Lloyd as a christian name? Unh Unh. The use of surnames as given names is something that we Brits actualy laugh at Americans about. It’s as identifiable (not perfect but remarkably accurate) as being able to identify race in the US by first name. You’re pretty sure of the skin colour of a Washington, a Chantelle or a Jose (please please get a grip. This is not racism, it’s observation. Distinct cultural groups do use different names, as Oliver implies with his "Super British" comment. Over here you can do the same with age groups ....Ednas and Alberts are almost certain to be over 70 years old.)
What really gives it away is the use of Jr. We just don’t do that. In Icelandic the daughter of Thorvald named Helga becomes Helga Thorvaldsdottir, in Russian Helena, the daughter of Vladimir becomes Helena Vladimirovna, in American Oliver, the son of Oliver Willis, becomes Oliver Willis Jr. In English, he’s Oliver Willis.
I’ve always though that one of the things that would benefit the US Democratic Party is knowing a little more of the big wide world out there.
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Comments
Quite right. The trouble with US Democrats is that they're so narrow-minded and insular, thinking that the world ends at the stateline - they don't even seem to know much about, er, the middle of their country...
Posted by: Blimpish | Dec 4, 2004 5:09:03 PM
I'm new to your blog so I might be missing something, but haven't you forgotten Lloyd George? He was as Welsh as the name you bear and it is most certainly used as a forename in the Welsh part of my family.
Tim adds: Err, David Lloyd George you mean?
I agree that as a Bathonian I might have, um, disregarded, what the Welsh call themselves:-)
Posted by: mrs mcmuffin | Dec 4, 2004 6:21:45 PM
Obviously that should not be 'you', but him. Forgive me, I am too stupid.
Posted by: mrs mcmuffin | Dec 4, 2004 6:34:08 PM
Bollocks. I may as well just shoot myself now. Must remember never to comment on any blog ever again unless I have actually thought about what I am writing. But why do I care, you're from Bath anyway and Lloyd really is used as a first name, so there!
Tim adds: Steady on there old chap. Suicide when you’ve only just got here is not, what, um hey? Welshness is not, despite objective reality, a reason for such behaviour.
Posted by: mrs mcmuffin | Dec 4, 2004 8:28:16 PM
Blimpish,
There are more left-leaning people in Middle America than popular conception would like to realize. The state with the longest record of giving its votes to the Democratic candidate isn't "the PR of Massachusetts" or any of the states on the "left coast". It's my home state of Minnesota, which Kerry continued to win again this year.
Posted by: Ben F | Dec 4, 2004 10:48:43 PM
I know. I was being facetious.
In Minnesota, I seem to recall, they've even been known to elect Socialists? And wasn't Wellstone a Senator for Minnesota?
That said, you seriously do get the feeling that big-city liberals don't know (and don't care) quite that much about Middle America - just as Middle America conservatives don't know quite that much about big-city life. Although I think the conservatives probably know more, because the main media sources are in the big-cities.
Posted by: Blimpish | Dec 5, 2004 1:27:37 AM
FWIW the use of surnames as given names here in the States was once a regional custom. In the South it has been a custom to give a child the mother's maiden name (or other family surname) as a given name. That includes surnames like Leslie and Lloyd which have become fairly common given names over here. With the renaissance of the American South the custom has spread.
It's also been a practice for immigrant families to give their children very proper-sounding given names frequently using surnames. The British movie actor, Leslie Howard, was originally Leslie Howard Stainer and the son of Hungarian immigrants. Laszlo, perhaps.
Posted by: Dave Schuler | Dec 5, 2004 8:09:29 PM
My parents are Jamaican (a former part of the good old brit empire), and named me as such. I can safely say U.S. naming conventions had nothing to do with my name.
Posted by: Oliver | Dec 5, 2004 10:10:57 PM
Using the mother's maiden name as a middle name used to be common in Britain, and still occurs even now - I work in the same office as someone with a "surname" for a middle name.
A particularly good example is Edwin Abbot Abbot, the author of "Flatland". His parents were cousins, and shared the same surname. He still got his mother's maiden name as a middle name, and also a pun as well - the supposed author of the book is "A. Square" - Abbot Squared.
Posted by: David B. Wildgoose | Dec 6, 2004 10:17:30 AM
