Awesome! How has Rascal's African name been working out for you guys?
In real life, Lee has a very race-neutral name, common in white and black communities and with a slightly different pronunciation among Spanish speakers. But people who see her and see the name written always pronounce it sort of dramatically instead of the most common way, because she's black. And people who see her and then have to write the name down always assume it's a nonstandard spelling, because she's black.
Mara is going through a phase of not exactly liking her name and wanting to use other versions of it. She's been going by her middle name (black or Spanish; she uses the black pronunciation) on weekends, which is sort of a hilarious trend I'd like to see catch on. The other two have one race-neutral and one pretty black name of their first and middles.
I think Rascal's name lands on people as "oh, Heebie and Jammies made up a name." I can't quite call it an African name, because I think those name-sites that attribute it to Kiswahili are full of it, based on my friend's skeptical "Well, it's faintly similar to how you say 'one' in kiswahili..." It is definitely a co-opted name from a black person, which I'm slightly embarrassed about, but I do love the name.
Then Allan's application showed up. "They scanned through it ... and they saw someone named Jamaal who played basketball, listed Muhammad Ali among his heroes and inspirations, and thought, 'We could use some diversity here, so let's bring this guy on
Regardless of whether or not it's true, I really hope this is basically parallel to the story you tell everyone about how you and jammies met.
My favorite story is that Jammies showed up to the first day of football practice, in 8th grade, and the coach admitted later that he almost cried when he saw him loping up with braces, 90 lbs, name written on tape on his helmet. He'd been so incredibly excited for their new player Jamaal.
"Put down Jamaal's helmet. It's much too big for you."
6: Man, that one really is racist. Expecting "Jamaal" to be black, not so bad -- it's a reasonable guess. Expecting that the black kid is going to be a physically imposing football natural when you don't know anything but 'black'? That's messed up.
I wouldn't say you know nothing but "black." The name "Jamaal" really does seem to suggest athletics to me in a way that many other names coding black don't.
8: Nope nope nope nope nope, totally common. I get told all the time how good the girls are going to be at basketball and it's way more common for everyone I know who has a black boy, from infancy on. "Aww, look at those chubby thighs. He's going to be a linebacker someday!" I know it's still a gendered thing with white kids, but 100% of my friends who have both report that it's drastically more common with black or biracial kids.
totally common
Was this supposed to be a rebuttal to "racist"? Because... well, I've got bad news for you.
"Aww, look at those chubby thighs. He's going to be a linebacker someday!"
Or work in the IT department, if around here is anything to go by.
11, 12: Yeah, what Urple said. And really, if you're looking at the kid and you know them, there's probably some racial thinking going on, but at least you're incorporating what the kid's like physically, personality-wise, and so on. If literally the only thing you know is race, turning that into sports prowess? Common or not, really racist. (Probably not hostile or malicious in any way! The coach probably interacted fine with black kids, mostly! But still.)
Coach probably thought he was getting someone athletic but ended up with someone gritty and scrappy.
I thought only Asians had a work ethic.
IIRC, Jammies was also named after a basketball player. Was it J/m//l Wilkes? Are Jammies and the guy from NPR story named after the same guy?
Sorry, I deleted the sentence where I agreed it was really racist but not shocking. I am really stupid right now and probably not making a ton of sense. Yes, totally racist.
19: Oh, yeah, not surprising at all, just worthy of being put in a different category than merely guessing 'Jamaal' is going to be a black kid (which is stereotyping, sure, but doesn't actually seem wrongful to me).
I wonder if the stereotypes can work to produce athletic results that wouldn't ordinarily be there. My good high school friend was a scrawny, nerdy black guy, who did play football in high school but just barely, he was weak and definitely a scrub. Then he went insane senior year in a bunch of directions, one of which was lifting a lot, and he ended up on the football team of a D-1 powerhouse college. Largely on the bench, no athletic scholarship, but still, on the team. I've never known any white guy like that. Same thing with this super nerdy gay black guy who started at the gym -- when he started he was in my tiny, favorite, often non-existent group of "people who are worse than I am" but in 6 months he was on the gym leaderboards. Either this is like whatever that effect is that we talk about with boys and girls in math that James B. Shearer doesn't believe in or I'm more racist than Jammies' football coach.
I knew scrawny (by football standards) white kids who played at a D-1 powerhouse without a scholarship, but they all had that as a goal well before their senior year of high school.
It means to me that the black kid who is truly not interested in sports would be even more alienated than I was, for instance. I was big and coordinated, and actually enjoyed playing pickup games, but couldn't summon any seriousness or ambition about sports achievement in a sports-mad HS. But I had a lot more support at home and alternative aspirations than I imagine many black kids have. Even cultural heroes like Paul Robeson were often athletes when they first attracted attention. Even now the role models are shockingly likely to be sports figures.
22: I'd believe it. Consistent hard work gets you reliable results athletically -- if black kids are more likely to believe they have athletic potential, they're probably more likely to put the work in.
Nobody has mentioned how adorable the guy in the linked story is. Reverse racism claims another casualty.
OT -- and sort of on-topic too maybe -- years later someone else makes my joke about people not being ready for a black point guard - and TNC lols!
https://twitter.com/tanehisicoates/status/595782940468064256
ended up with someone gritty and scrappy.
I just read a fellowship application from someone who wants to improve teaching standards in our department by incorporating the latest research results on the importance of "grit".
Just a story: we were at the park, and my older son, who thinks he's a fast runner, was playing with an adopted African-American kid. My son suggested they race, the black kid blew him away (my son stopped in shock and said "Hey!") and the kid's dad turned to me and said "He gets it from me."
My wife [one of Obama's children's first name + lastname common with american Black people], gets this all the time. The funny thing is that name isn't actually Black, it's Hawaiian, it just has a similar sound-pattern to lots of common Black names.
She used to work in a non-profit where she was the only white full-time employee, which lead us to brainstorming a Black remake of The Office and definitely one of the episodes would be about hiring a white person with a black name. I think it's pretty clearly a good idea for a show.
From my name people first think that I'm a cat, then when they see my last name together with my first name, tend to think I'm black. My college roommate freshman year was the most shameless about it. Then there was the time I got an interview for a position as minorities liason or something like that -- it was awkward, but eventually the interviewer admitted that he had assumed I was black.
35: I think that's an entirely understandable mistake, Meowsers X.
36: Jeez, man, did you have to write it out? Can somebody googleproof 36?
18: yep. But aside from that, Jammies' parents could not be more different than the ones in the story. Actually I know almost nothing about the biological dad who named him, but I seriously seriously doubt being different or special was part of the equation. As hard as that is to believe, I think it was either sincere or boy-named-sue logic, but not special snowflake.
Oh god, I hate grit so much. Jesus Christ are we enamored of it at heebie u.
Knecht, "stereotype threat" is the thing where people themselves perform differently because their self-expectations are affected by (being reminded of) stereotypes about groups they belong to. The threat of being stereotyped by others is something else. Ambiguous terminology is the best!
Oh, and here I thought Peep was named Toonces El-Shabazz.
From my name people first think that I'm a cat, then when they see my last name together with my first name, tend to think I'm black
...when in fact you identify as tortoiseshell.
30 is funny.
Also: it is racist to assume black people are athletic...but it was hard not to draw that conclusion over years of PE in public schools. #notallPEstars
a fellowship application from someone who wants to improve teaching standards in our department by incorporating the latest research results on the importance of "grit".
You could give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they actually have read the latest research results and so they mean they want teachers to stop thinking grit is some important student variable.
Aha, I always figured he was from a Baha'i family, like Khalil Greene.
46: what research are you talking about?
I think grit is alright, but the practice of intentionally skinning everybody's knees goes a little too far.
This grit thing is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in years. The worst I can say for it is that it seems to have been designed deliberately for its David Brooks-compatibility. The horror, of course, is that some clown will no doubt try and import it into the UK soon enough.
Actually, self-binding notice: I need to sickburn some grit papers on my blog in order to deny the availability entrepreneurs memespace by nonkinetic effects. (I love the fact that sentence would have been not just incomprehensible but inconceivable as recently as 2005.)
it is racist to assume black people are athletic...but it was hard not to draw that conclusion over years of PE in public schools
It would indeed be hard not to draw the conclusion that the black children in American culture are on average more skilled athletes than white children. It would also be hard not to draw the conclusion that children from many Asian cultures are not on average better math students. It would also be hard not to draw the conclusion that Hispanic children are not on average better at speaking Spanish. The only racist things would be thinking that any of these things (1) is a priori true for every child or for any particular child, or (2) are somehow biologically determined and not just manifestations of cultural/social influences.
Have people taken the actual grit test?
55: Now I have. I am grittier than 30% of the population!
49: If I'm giving the applicant the benefit of the doubt I assume it is research that he or she has been conducting.
It would be hard not to not misinterpret urple's hardly not unclear use of negatives.
Personally I think Hispanic children are perfectly able to speak Spanish.
My grit score is 3.13! I am grittier than at least 30% of the US population!
I'm more gritty than 10% of the U.S. and less gritty than urple.
Or LB, but that was less of a surprise.
I thought Spanglish-speaking kids often struggled in Spanish classes, it being a foreign language to them.
I am actually concerned about the grit thing, because evidence suggests I am raising a child with a serious grit deficiency. I love that kid but, when the going gets tough, he's the first to bail.
He probably gets it from me. Apparently I am grittier than 10% of the population.
I suspect serial blog commenting could be an effective filter for non-gritty types.
Also, here is the original grit paper (before they had named it). If the senior author's name sounds familiar, there might be a reason for that.
If I had more grit, I could pretend to work 80 hour weeks.
I really wasn't trying to game the grit test:
Your grit score is: 2.38
You are grittier than at least 1% of the US population.
Sounds right.
I'm not taking the test, so that I can hold on to my profound hope that it's all about whether you've got, like, a lot of plaster dust on you.
I am as gritty as Ogged. It's frankly amazing that I have the grit to tie both my shoes.
69 - I got a 1.88, meaning I'm grittier than an even smaller fraction of the US population. I win!
I have laughed several times during this thread.
I got two questions into the grit quiz. Self evaluation points like "Setbacks don't discourage me." cause a nearly violent loss of interest in me. Probably this means I do not have grit.
But people who see her and see the name written always pronounce it sort of dramatically instead of the most common way, because she's black.
Someone at the time of the first Obama inaug said that the creepy pastor guy who gave the benediction pronounced "Sasha" and "Malia" as if he wanted to eat them.
I am actually surprised that I'm grittier than anyone at all. I mean, if I were, this is where I'd expect to find them. I do stick with long projects, which must be where I made my leap into the second quartile of the population.
The grit test seems like it really needs to disaggregate (a) how much perseverance you have when facing difficulties/obstacles in achieving a goal or result that you are personally interested in achieving, and (b) how much commitment you have to slogging through things you don't want to slog through but feel a need to because of external factors. Because I think I'm high (or at least not low) on (a) but low (or certainly not better than average) on (b), and the quiz seemed to jumble all that together.
(I think the formal vocabulary is distinguishing responses to intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivations, but I may be misusing those terms.)
I am grittier than 10% of the population. Although honestly I think this test needs to be cross-referenced with all kinds of self-esteem/realistic self-evaluation stuff. I tend to be pretty "I am feeble and useless, may as well admit it" about myself on personality tests, but I don't think this is standard practice.
I don't actually see the practices in my daily life as dramatically different from my peers' (although perhaps I have surrounded myself with gritless people) and what does the whole "new projects distract you from old" thing mean anyway? How old is the project? What was the project? Why was the new thing distracting?
In short, this was pretty stupid, but it also made me feel bad about myself. Win-win!
Now that I think about it, setbacks actually discourage the shit out of me, even though my self-image of myself is that they don't. So probably I'm less gritty than previously indicated.
Also, I think setbacks have discouraged me a lot less since I went to therapy, but they were abnormally crippling before that.
Basically, I think I'm doing pretty well at this grit thing given my childhood, non-standard gender presentation, etc.
A problem with the grit test - minority stress. I think a lot of people (many of whom have it far worse than just being a visibly gender-non-conforming person in a liberal state and a liberal workplace) use up a lot of "grit" on a daily basis just dealing with all the bullshit that racism/misogyny/poverty/etc hands you. One could be quite gritty indeed yet still not do well at long-term projects.
I think this whole thing is actually kind of structurally racist, both because it fails to account for minority stress and because it seems to overvalue/overemphasize the "resilient" marginalized person.
69/71: Same here. To be exact, 2.13, but apparently they don't calculate the percentile more exactly than 1 percent. That's not very gritty of them. I thought I was bad, but I didn't think I was THAT bad. How have we all not been fired? Maybe we're just much more self-critical than everyone else about this particular thing. Maybe, thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect, we're all actually better than average.
Grit of 1.5! Just call me "smooth" instead.
This grit thing is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in years.
Indeed. "Just sliding by" doesn't get nearly enough respect, IMO.
79 -- dude I got the lowest possible score and I'm definitely not suffering from either minority stress or non-conforming gender presentation.
Holy shit fuck you Nathan Williams! I am the least gritty!
I've had reasonable professional and personal success in my life. Maybe grit doesn't actually matter.
It will sound like bragging if I say that I didn't even make it through the grittiness test, right? The second question annoyed me and so did the bullshit about "Don't just measure yourself about people you know but against the woooooorld!" and so I quit. I'm probably a little more gritty than that implies.
I got the lowest possible score and I'm definitely not suffering from either minority stress or non-conforming gender presentation.
Who needs grit when you have privilege?
The most gritty people wouldn't take the time to take this test.
The least gritty people would get discouraged by all the choices and not finish the test.
The second question annoyed me and so did the bullshit about "Don't just measure yourself about people you know but against the woooooorld!"
You read the instructions? I couldn't be arsed.
A problem with the grit test - it's nonsense.
92: But you told us it was the "actual grit test"!
That quiz was hilarious. "To give you your grit score, we need to gather all this demographic information. Here is your grit score, with zero demographic content. Yeah ok we just lied." Click here to take our gullibility quiz! Your credit card will not be charged.
I really should put together something like that: "gullibility has been shown to be a significant predictor of future income and life outcomes from birth on," etc.
I mean, she found that among incoming West Point freshmen -- which is to say, people who have already gotten into West Point -- that those who got the lowest grit scores -- which is to say those that, when given a test administered by the Army cheerfully acknowledged that they give up when the going gets tough -- were slightly more likely to give up when the going got tough. WHAT WHO HOW REDO ALL SCHOOL CURRICULUM NOOOOOOW.
Also? People who say that they doggedly stick to a task no matter how boring and pointless it may seem do better at the National Spelling Bee. WHAAAAAAAAAT
93: right. Make what reverse inferences you will to the very concept of "grit" as a stable personality trait.
You guys are not very gritty. (4.38, 90-99%)
That's not fair. The National Spelling Bee is only boring and pointless compared to everything else in the known universe.
But surely tenure and a Genius grant can't be wrong!
I ungrittily missed a close tag in 95. Oh well!
I suppose it's sort of like a Cosmo quiz. Take this quiz to find out if you love your man! 1. When I look at my man, I feel: (a) Meh. (b) He's OK! (c) Love!
This calls for some re-branding. Someone should replace "grit" with "will", propose a "Triumph of the Will" based curriculum reform, and see how long it takes education administrators to catch on.
Well, grit is an important dimension if you are intent on developing a model workforce of soldiers with excellent spelling skills. Seems limiting, tho.
I was, for the record, a champion speller.
The grit test was weird. Yes, I do sometimes switch to other projects, after about eight or ten years. Obsessions run their course!
I have been going to track meets to watch my nephew. The athletes are predominately Black. To my surprise, if you see a white athlete, you can guess that they'll do reasonably well. I don't think the white kids who are bad at track stick with it
101 is unfair. There were a bunch of Cosmo quiz writers, and at least one of them could write witty and indirect questions. I didn't keep track of bylines, to see what the writer's done lately,unfortunately, maybe there was no author credit at all. This would be the mid-90s.
The grit test works better if you mentally replace "projects" with "occupy the Sudetenland".
What is the measure of "success" that "grit" is supposedly better than IQ at predicting? Income? Academic grades? Self-reported life satisfaction?
Capacity to smooth splintery wooden surfaces?
Allegiance to our capitalist overlords.
Undergrad Ivy League grades, success in the first semester at West Point, success at the National Spelling Bee. Those are the big three that the edifice was built on.
Tendency to advertise in the back of Archie Comics in the 1970s?
1.75, taking the silver from TRO. I suppose I should pat myself on the back for finishing the test. Hey look, a squirrel My next project will be a brief study of Sciurus griseus.
See, 111 would make a lot of sense, but then I would think that the quiz linked above doesn't seem very well designed to accurately measure a person's level of grit.
83 - but that doesn't prove anything; it may suggest that you are authentically ungritty and other people do who suffer from minority stress are actually much much grittier in relation to you than they appear.
Does "had quite a lot of professional success" count if your "profession" is being an admin but you are considered by many to be the Best Admin? I put this down to my pleasant speaking voice more than anything else, though.
Undergrad Ivy League grades
Among kids already admitted to Ivy League colleges or among the general population? Because it it's the former... that doesn't necessarily seem like a generalizable result.
I got a pretty high score on the test, but I think it's entirely because they forgot that "sticks to projects and goals that you have" is not equivalent to "sets more than the bare minimum of goals". "Gritty" and lazy doesn't seem like the grittiest combination.
People who take this seriously should be embarrassed.
118: If it's the latter, it would be damned hard to measure.
114:
Actually an interesting story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_%28newspaper%29
122: yeah, I get that, but in that case if you got a robust correlation with "grit" scores I might at least pay attention.
Back to the OP, the guy's childhood described a particular kind of hippy naming practices that I am conscious of having an impatient bias against, the types who saddle kids with "Lark Song, River Rocks, Sky Blue, and more than one Rainbow." Maybe I'm hostile because I suspect I missed this bullet by an uncomfortably fine hair as my patents went hippy very soon after they were done having us so our names are boring but hey not millstones. At any rate I hadn't realized how deeply engrained my facile assumptions of hippy dippy parents were until the kid told us the name of a new and adored dance teacher last fall - two words describing natural phenomena (think Limpid Aurora) - and I was momentarily consumed with irritation at this person's downwardly mobile Mendocino goat farming parents. Then I met her, she's black, and her parents instantly didn't irritate me anymore.
"We've secretly replaced U. Penn's incoming class with a sample of rejected students of various levels of grit. Let's see if they notice."
I may be from the next town over from that Jamaal. And I played soccer all the time against kids from there. And there really were a lot of strange names.
I have an ethnic name which fits my ethic background, and my freshman year college roommate thought it was a black name. This proves that suburban Cincinnati is the whitest of whitebread areas.
I am grittier than 60% of people, which sounds about right. I also get less gritty by the year. I was probably grittier than 100% of people around age 10,* and it's been dropping off slowly ever since.
*Thanks mostly to my grandmother, whose parenting style was like if the Tiger Mom and Nietzsche co-wrote a parenting manual. Ironically, my grandmother is a very hardcore socialist, but her parenting makes most people assume she's a fascist, because of (inaccurate) ethnic stereotyping. Turns out telling a child with skinned knees "strong children never cry" comes off creepy when both people are blonde.
Or 102. The motto can be, "it's not fascist if we make poor black children do it."
and I'm definitely not suffering from either minority stress or non-conforming gender presentation.
It's alright, Mary, we know you're butch, girl.
I'm pretty sure commenting on unfogged is inversely correlated with grit.
Turns out telling a child with skinned knees "strong children never cry" comes off creepy when both people are blonde.
Not just then, really.
""They scanned through it ... and they saw someone named Jamaal who played basketball, listed Muhammad Ali among his heroes and inspirations, and..."
This does not seem like the most innocent of misunderstandings...
What's the grit score if we bail on that test before answering the second question?
BOGF has a prodigious grit score, based on the amount of black grit embedded in her knee. I suppose it may have worked its way out by now, but it was there, and quite visible, for years after she skinned her knee.
Socialist in the plots, fascist with the tots.
Self evaluation points like "Setbacks don't discourage me." cause a nearly violent loss of interest in me.
My brother!
Gritty in the streets, Walter Mitty between the sheets.
Trotsky in the I don't know what, Joan Crawford with the tots. I have clearly lost my gift for this.
Grit it out, Smearcase! You can do better.
I have nothing but delight about spurring the resurgence of these, um, things. Is there a name?
Language Log calls them snowclones. That is, any phrase where you're taking key words out of a cliche and substituting something else, like "Orange is the new black".
143: So, what do I call my army of identical snowmen now?
144: Mister Whiskers King Jr.
144: Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons is canonical.
Circling from snow back to blackness, I have a very white friend who did some research in a fairly notorious blighted urban neighborhood, and he said the best heckling he got was when someone shouted at him "snowflake in the hood!" I think that is awesome and a great action movie title. Macau|ay Cu|kin can play the lead.
Adorno with the Yids, De Man with the kids.
125 IKIMHMHB, my little brother's HSGF was named Lori, but she had a sister named Flowers Streaming Love From Heaven. They were sufis (of the modern kind) and once borrowed camping gear from me for Pete Townsend.
Speaking of whom, anyone want an earworm?
"IKIMHMHB" - I am way more than usually stumped!
I know I may have mentioned here before, I believe, but other people have offered other versions. (And I think it's often AIMHMHB for as I may have....)
"IKIMHMHB" - I am way more than usually stumped!
"I Know I Must Have Mentioned Hat Band"
Speaking of whom, anyone want an earworm?
I like his performance of "Pinball Wizard" at that event and was glad to see that the same person uploaded a good quality version of that.
This thread has made me muffle snorts of laughter several times, which is a problem because I'm proctoring a final exam.
These are all so great, but Jesus makes it so clear, peep, that your adoring public demands that you take up a Beatrix Potter drag persona.
Fluffy du Bois
Jingles Jackson
It strongly appears that peep's parents used the "what is your pornstar name" formula to select their offspring's name.
Grit of 1.5! Just call me "smooth" instead.
Goddamnit--1.63, so close.
Proctor in the exam room, proctologist in the examination room.
144: "yule tide", once you have enough.
Buttercup, you sound even more like a Ken MacLeod character. From The Cassini Division, probably.
153.2 -- I got that record in 1980 or so, and was glad my youtube search turned WGFA up. You know Tom Robinson's 1967?
152 -- I was going with "must" since all my stories have appeared on the internet by now.
Princess Fluffykins Hussein Obama.
I cannot stop with these.
When I lived in Louisiana 15 years ago, I called around trying to get an appointment with a dentist. They asked my name and then said they were not taking any more patients. I am white and named Amos. I finally managed to get an appointment with a dentist and everyone looked surprised when I walked in since I was the only non-black person there. This was one of many depressing things about my two years in the south. I really could not wait to move back to the Northwest.
I have a great urge to drop peep's real name among the phony. (Or maybe I already have.)
174: It's not that I think a "We are Siamese if you please" joke would be inappropriate, I just can't think of a good one.
|| we have an election over here today and it is entirely possible that we won't know who's won for MONTHS. Can has election thread? |>
I really can't imagine someone who's doing West Point and who's not just a quitter (how?) but willing to admit to it, publicly. It strikes me that person's psychology must be deeply weird.
The only friend I have who went to West Point told us he had a big announcement to make and so we all assumed he was finally coming out but instead it was West Point, back when those were mutually exclusive. That's my only point of reference but yeah.
My dad got an appointment to USMA in ~1970 or so. Apparently he decided *very* quickly that he was a hippie.
174 gets it right.
Or, Mittens Womack.
||
Can the DC people remind me where we are supposed to meet tomorrow? The thread has dropped off the front page.
Ah, checking, Hank's Oyster Bar. 6-ish.
>
177 Ed Miliband in the streets, Ed Balls in the sheets.
ttaM, that's the way it was trending. But I've asked Heebie to bump up the post so we can be sure of it. (Any other propiertor can do so too, of course.)
Oh hey, cat name story: A friend/colleague who was curator for an architectural history dept. in a museum was talking on the phone with someone about that person's cat, whose name was apparently Moshe Safdie, which she thought was unusual, but also a really cool name for a cat.
It later came out, of course, that the cat was named Mr. Softy.
They neutered the cat and then mocked it for not being able to get an erection. The bastards.
173: I appreciate your restraint.
Princess Fluffykins Hussein Obama -- I like this so much I'm thinking of a name change. IRL, of course -- I wouldn't dare to piss LB off by changing my pseud.
How many mouse orgasms is a cat erection worth?
But seriously, yeah, those hippy names. Ironically, most of the kids I grew up with whose parents were *serious* hippies gave their kids names like "Adam" and "Andrew" and "Alice," but I did know a couple of Willows, a couple of Bronwyns, a Che, and a bunch of less memorable hippy kid names. At least around here, it seems like you were just as or more likely to get a throwback ethnic name like I did rather than a West Coast natural phenomena name.
I have cow orkers named "Lovelie," "Precious," and "Sparkle". Sparkle's last name is alliterative too.
Lotta "Dylans" too, which makes sense.
Ooh, a funny anecdote: Old folkie guy was reminiscing on FB that he went into a South Mpls. house party one time and there was some kid out in the hallway of the apartment building playing guitar. So he goes into the party and naturally asks someone what's going on with the dude in the hall. Comes the response: "Oh, that's Bobby Zimmerman, they make him play out in the hall 'cause no one can stand his singing."
