Won’t You Take Me To Funkycollegetown?
The New Haven Advocate explores the trend of naming children “after funky college towns situated in otherwise boring parts of the country,” as exemplified by Madison and Austin, choosing Ann Arbor as the next college town name ripe for appropriation. Otherwise boring parts of the country?
I’m curious as to how this trend got started because I have seen 1000 Madison’s but most of them are with parents who couldn’t tell you where Madison is located much less whether its a boring part of the country or not.
posted by Anonymous on May 5th, 2005 at 12:48 pmNot to mention the fact that the name “Madison” comes from “Madison Avenue” by way of Daryl Hannah.
posted by Constantine on May 5th, 2005 at 1:08 pmYou could also name your kid Felch
posted by Anonymous on May 5th, 2005 at 1:55 pmOr a greek sounding name “Diagus”
posted by Anonymous on May 5th, 2005 at 1:56 pmPeople really name their kids after college towns? I can’t recall the last time I met a Fort Collins, a Chapel Hill, an Athens, an Ithaca, or even a Eugene.
posted by Nick on May 5th, 2005 at 2:08 pmApparently the tendency to name girl children “Madison” (popularized by the movie Splash) is specifically a red state phenomenon. In the blue Gore/Kerry states, the leading name for baby girls is currently Emily.
It’s beyond peculiar that this naming tendency correlates very closely, by state, with presidential voting.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on May 5th, 2005 at 3:22 pmI have a friend who gave their son a middle name of Danger so the kid could say, “Danger is my middle name”.
posted by Anonymous on May 5th, 2005 at 3:37 pm“Danger”… that’s beautiful. While I determined that I should NEVER have children, I always wanted to name one “Fire”… “and remember kids, don’t play with fire”
posted by imbecile on May 5th, 2005 at 4:07 pma long time ago…probably in some type of stupor..i thought it would be great if you named your dog…Here.
as in…come here, Here.
posted by saa on May 5th, 2005 at 4:13 pmGo..Here.
get the fuck out of here, Here.
yeah ann arbor really sucks. looks like there isnt anything to to in the a2 other than to eat and work out just spinn your wheels. if they named a girl an arbor they could say they were eating out in ann arbor or whatever this place f@#$ing sucks!
posted by jack on May 5th, 2005 at 5:40 pmFor what it’s worth, the first white child born in this county was named Alpha Washtenaw Bryan, born Feb. 27, 1824.
“To memorize [sic] the event, and as all pioneers in those days were well up in their Greek, he was, by Allen and Ramsey, of Ann Arbor, christened Alpha Washtenaw.”
–Chas. Chapman, History of Washtenaw County
posted by Laura on May 5th, 2005 at 7:13 pmI always though the city name or surname for a first name trend was started by 80’s female porn stars. Madison? Savannah? Sydney? Shelby? Morgan? Sounds like a porn star to me.
posted by Clem Idiom on May 5th, 2005 at 9:18 pmI shall name my child Melvindale.
posted by OFWinsurgent on May 5th, 2005 at 11:41 pmSupposedly one woman traveling on I-94, about 30 years ago, saw the sign for exit 159 (M-52: Chelsea, Manchester) and took the adult movie name Chelsea Manchester.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on May 6th, 2005 at 1:20 amthese are good name stories larry.
posted by Dan Faichney on May 6th, 2005 at 1:46 amI guess the implant connotation took the appeal out of any plans to go with the adult alias “saline.” at least in this case…
Most of the people naming their kids Madison and Austin have been to neither town and had neither one in mind. Beside, if the New Haven Advocate is right, shouldn’t there be a bunch of little New Havens running around?
On another note, New Haven Advocate writers are a bunch of assholes, idiots, and bores. If you ever see one at a party, back away quickly lest you get cornered for the next hour while your drink gets warm and your eyes glaze over.
posted by Anna on May 6th, 2005 at 8:57 amThe easiest answer to why Ann Arbor (and New Haven) won’t become “names”? They’re two words.
posted by js on May 6th, 2005 at 10:04 amLarry- I would venture that the correlation of naming tendencies and presidential voting is not so peculiar at all. It’s about economic class.
posted by Joy on May 6th, 2005 at 10:15 amI guess it’s not surprising that there are more Anns than News, since UM is a much bigger school.
posted by Anna on May 6th, 2005 at 10:16 amEconomic class — by state??? I’m sure there are probably interesting demographic differences between Bush voters as a group and Gore/Kerry voters as a group, but it’s considerably muddier to compare, say, blue Illinois with red Indiana, or blue Pennsylvania with red Ohio.
I know the national media liked to convey the impression that wealthy suburbanites voted for the Democrats and blue-collar industrial workers voted for Bush. But the experience on the ground, here in Michigan, belies this! Gritty, working class communities like Detroit, Hamtramck, Taylor, Melvindale, Wyandotte all voted for Gore and Kerry. Affluent suburbs like Grosse Pointe, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Grosse Ile, etc., all voted for GWB.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on May 6th, 2005 at 10:55 am“I know the national media liked to convey the impression that wealthy suburbanites voted for the Democrats and blue-collar industrial workers voted for Bush.”
Is this a joke? I don’t think they conveyed that at all.
posted by Dale on May 6th, 2005 at 10:59 amSteven Levitt, cited in Slate and The Atlantic (which is what jogged my memory about the name “Madison”) supports the claims here that names are tied to socioeconomic status — but says you’re all wrong about the “Red State” Madison effect: “Madison” is in the top 5 girls names in affluent white families.
For poorly-educated families, if memory serves, it’s names like “Angel” and “Precious”.
http://slate.com/id/2116505/sidebar/2116508/
posted by Thomas Ptacek on May 6th, 2005 at 11:36 amLeave it to Slate to even bring up something like class differences in child-naming. Bleck.
posted by Anna on May 6th, 2005 at 1:31 pmLarry and Joy,
Here is an interesting link on presidential voting and economic class. Aggregation, baby, aggregation:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/04/rich_state_poor.html
Levitt’s original point was that discriminating against someone based on their “black sounding” name might be economically (though not legally) justifiable if their name carried meaningful socio-economic information.
It was all in response to a great paper by Bertrand and Mullainathan showing that people with certain (”black sounding”) names are discriminated against in the labor market.
They were right and Levitt was wrong.
That is all.
posted by peter on May 6th, 2005 at 1:52 pmon second thought, I think I will name my child Luna Pier.
posted by OFWinsurgent on May 6th, 2005 at 2:17 pmI wonder how many “Greenway”’s will be showing up on school rolls in the coming years.
posted by peter on May 6th, 2005 at 2:23 pmI’m really torn between Champaign or Urbana. Urbana Jones does have a certain interesting sound, but it would be sure to be confused with Indiana Jones.
posted by Anonymous on May 6th, 2005 at 8:34 pmThe best college town/porn star name of all:
Happy Valley
posted by Delgado on May 7th, 2005 at 8:21 pmLarry, I don’t think that the national media claims that “wealthy suburbnites” supported Kerry (or at least the more sophisticated national media), but they suggest that highly educated professionals did. That would include many residents of Ann Arbor. I’d be curious about a breakdown of how other upper-middle class Detroit suburbs voted — Royal Oak, Huntington Woods, etc. — especially those with a significant number of baby boomer professionals.
I agree that blue-collar voters likely voted for Kerry/Edwards, but I’m guessing not in the same percentages as they supported Democrats back in the 60s and 70s.
posted by PeteM on May 16th, 2005 at 10:44 pm