Death of a Name: Mildred, Bertha & Todd

the only Maurice in the whole school. But maybe the name has a better rep Now, Okay, I'm gonna ask each of you question, and that's what I've come back to find out. I started off slowly, though, asking about other names which peaked long ago. When I say the name Mildred, what do you think of um London? I think of an old British person? Yeah, agreed me to. Okay, what about what about the name thought an old lady? That's fat? I agree? I agree, I agree here, I

must confess I get what they're saying. In the twenty one century, names like Mildred and Bertha conture certain images. Is it the is it the fun? I think that? Yeah? Just all together? Yeah? What about the name Todd A tall person that plays golf, kind of like um middle age like in his forties, calf um brown hair. I think they're kind of weird to finally I mustered the courage to ask them about my name. What do you

think of the name Maurice? I think of like an old French dude, like a young person who travels a lot. Maybe doesn't have a home, on the run from the law. Why is he Maybe he just kind of like stays in hotels and just goes everywhere, like some like singer. Maybe that's like they're not really known. Yeah, they're like a local kind of person, but they still change, they

move a lot. I don't really not really known a local kind of person out But it turns out there is a traveling singer named Maurice van Hoap, and Maurice is also a portly frenchman in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Help don't help me, I need to help, But the name Maurice maybe permanently on the way out. We Maurice's reached the height of our popularity in the nineteen twenties, when there were an average of about sixteen hundred born annually. Now just a few hundred come into the world each year.

What makes a name rise and fall in the ranks? It makes a name pretty in popular to one generation and unique or downright ugly to the next. From CBS Sunday Morning and I Heart, I'm Maurice Rocca and this is mobituaries. This mobent the death of a name. I knew a kid in elementary school named Jeff Heebner. He was friendly, he was good at soccer, he was cool. He could introduce himself with confidence because he was a Jeff. He perfectly embodied his own name. I, on the other hand,

always felt awkward telling people my name. Maybe it was because growing up I knew of only three other Maurice's. There was children's book author Maurice Sendak, who wrote the classic Where the Wild Things Are? They're was the Maurice from that Steve Miller band song The Joker Speak, And that was kind of cool. But that was canceled out by French entertainer Maurice Chevalier. I'm a little girl of

five or six or seven. I can't rasister join yourself that song he sang in Gigi Ken Folly, little girl. I can't believe he hasn't been canceled for that, but that was pretty much it. I was born Maurice Albert Rocca. My mother tells me my father was the one who really wanted to name me Maurice. She would have preferred Gabriel. My father is no longer living, so I can't know for sure, but I think he wanted something on the gentler side, since Rocca can sound brusque. But I didn't

like it. At one point, I thought maybe I should go by al. I mean, which are being crazy? I mean, like, when I think about it, I'm not crazy. It just would it sounded sounded odd al Roca. I talked to one of my former teachers about it. That day I visited Wood Acres. Her name is Ms Vanisi, and she was one of my all time favorites. She was patient, kind, and impossibly glamorous. More about that in a bit. Turns

out she could have made a pretty decent therapist too. Now, you said you didn't like your name, So were you teased in school? You know? I don't know that I was ever teased for my name. It just felt so different, it felt foreign. Everything changed when I graduated from Wood Acres to Pile Middle School, and oddly enough. It was thanks to the aptly named Jeff Heebner. I know him, I mean I remember him. He was very blond, very blond.

And when I went to Pile, it's kind of scary all the elementary schools feeding into the big junior high and the fizzed teacher there and of the first days did roll call and said, you know, when I get to your name, if you have a name you prefer, I got us. I'll write it in the in the book. And then she said Maurice rock I said here, and then Jeff Heepner said, he's not Maurice, He's Mo. And that's kind of how I got my started. I was going to ask you, so Jeff just came out with it,

and you preferred it, obviously. Yeah, I kind of liked that. It was easy. Yeah, kind of popped. But now I love when people call me Maurice. So you have to call for this episode, I'm Maurice. I wasn't sure and what just call you? Whether I should call you Maurice. And if there's anyone who would understand this kind of confusion over one's own name, it's miss Vanisi, Mildred Vanisi.

Despite what those kids said, earlier. Mildred Vanisi is not British, but the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, and there was a custom I doubt if it's still in existence, that the firstborn I was the firstborn is named either for the father, mother by the father's father. Of course, depended upon the sex. My grandmother's name was Camela, and I'm sure that my parents, being first generation, wanted an anglicized name. Camela's were called Millie.

Millie is Mildred. Growing up, Ms Venisi didn't know any other Mildred's and she didn't really like her name. Lucky for her, she too got a nickname that eventually stuck. Somewhere along the line. I started being called Millie. Not by family, my mother and father. I was still Mildred, but my generation, my friends started calling me that. My sisters called me Millie, and so now I introduced myself that way. It happened, just sort of happened. I think

the name Millie flows better. It's a little more musical than Mildred. I just think Mildred is She's not thoroughly modern Mildred and that wouldn't sound good. That just wouldn't sound good. I also never thought Mildred was an appropriate moniker for Miss Vanisi, with her luxuriant mane of dark curly hair, her Jackie Oh sunglasses, her Georga's jeans or were they Gloria Vanderbilt? Look? All I know is that no other teacher looked like she just walked off the

setup and Aaron spelling nighttime soap. Honestly, Miss Vanisi was so fabulous I could barely contain myself. I don't know if you'll remember, so if you don't, it's kind of like a confession. I guess. But I remember in fifth grade waiting outside the All Purpose Room for lunch. But when you walked by, I said, Hey, what shaken, Millie? You wheeled around and and I think you said something like, don't you ever call me that again? I Miss Vanisi?

I probably did, tim teacher. The name Mildred reached its peak in n when more than eighteen thousand babies were named Mildred. It was the sixth most popular girl's name that year, popular enough that there are a number of notable Mildred's throughout history. Mildred J. Hill was the composer of Good Morning to All, the melody of which became the Happy Birthday song. And then that movie Mildred Pierce with Jeremy Crawford that must have been in the forties.

Now I'm sure of one thing, at least, I want my daughter back. Mildred Giller's an American who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Germany during World War Two, also known as Axis Sally. She was indicted after the war and charged with trees and Okay, so that's not a good Mildred. That's not a good Mildred. But I think I've heard of access Sally. But after hitting its popularity peak in the early twentieth century, Mildred slowly slid down the list

of the thousand most popular names. In only eighty three newborn girls were named Mildred in the US. Recent users on one baby naming website dismissed the name as sounding too much like Mildew wrote another makes me think of dreading something I was the only milled with in all my years at school. There was a period of time when a lot of girls were named Karen, and there was another period of time or a lot of girls named Janet. I don't know, but I just think that

names have cycles, and maybe something triggers it. She so often was when I was growing up. Mildred Venisi is right coming up. I'm going to talk with linguistic John mcwardur about what makes names pretty, prickly or popular. But first in memorium for another name that left us, Hortense. We hardly knew you despite your French origins. Your name lacked the crisp, bright bubbliness of champagne and the addictive

qualities of your country's cheeses. Disney must have had a thing for you, because Hortense mcdock is Donald Duck's mother. Donald gets an ostrich named Hortense, and his uncle Scrooge McDuck named his horse Hortense. Alas, Disney was never going to create a princess Hortense as a name. You're just not pretty. You barely cracked the top four hundred names in the US around the turn of the twentieth century, and you slid off the top one thousand after Now,

Ordensia does have a nice ring to it. It's the Spanish version of Hortense or Dnsia also means Hydraine job. To be clear, I'm not suggesting anyone named their daughter Hydraine jaw Hortense. You are strictly a past, tense, gone, and yes forgotten. To understand better why names come and go, I talked with an expert, Columbia University Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and linguished John mcwardo, How did you become a John? I'm John Hamilton's mcwardo the fifth and John

Hamilton mcquarter the first was a slave. So I was named because of that relentless succession and the idea that you don't break it. And as a matter of fact, I know if my father hadn't been John Hamilton quarter the fourth, I would be named Bruce. That's what my mother would have chosen. And I would have named my son John, except he's a girl, and so the name had to stop with my two girls. So she has my middle name Johnna. In Italian, you've had Johnny and

Jihanna in English Johnette, none of them. That just sounds like a tiny little bathroom. We live in an efficiency. We only have room for a John. A. Mcward was born in n when John was the second most popular name in the country, and the name John isn't going away. It's still in the top thirty names for boys in the US. But if you go back in time to the early twentieth century, John was far and away the number one boy's name. America was producing John's in mass quantities.

It was like the model t of names. In fact, if you were born in that era, it was really common for you to have a name that was in the top ten. People just seemed to want to fit in. You go back to that time and there is a sense of what a normal American person is that would

strike us today as almost bizarrely homogeneous. And that's not to say that there weren't some ripples going on around the edges, but there was a certain sense that America was, you know, turkey and apple pie, and that's what one was. One was very, very very white. Well that's so interesting because aren't that those are competing impulses, right. I want my child to have a name that makes him or her special. I also want my child to have a name that makes him or her fit in and and

so and back then no special. I mean, if you think of somebody naming their child in eighteen sixty five, most people did not want something that would make the child feel special, or it would be something going on with the middle name, something that was less known, you might play with it. Even when I was in school in the seventies and eighties, I remember the popular names were really popular. I mean in junior high I was drowning in Jennifer's. Oh, they were everywhere. That's right. What

was going on? Jennifer? And that's right, there's so many Jennifers. It's just it was a tsunami of them school Jennifers. But the days of a few names dominating are over. At its peak, a full five percent of all newborn male babies were named John one in twenty Fast forward to and the top names for females and males, Olivia and Liam, made up only around one percent of babies born that year. In other words, the most popular names

are less popular. Parents today shoot for originality. There's a sense that if you're going to name a child, you spontaneously reach out and you think, how can we have a little bit of fun with this, and you don't want to torture your child. I once knew this poor little boy. His parents had named him Rotunda Thanksgiving Jones, and it was because he was born when John F. Kennedy was laid out in the rotunda and they named him Thanksgiving just because, and of course he was made

fun of. It sounds like a song and I've forgotten Gershwin musical because therefore sounds like that Rotunda Thanksgiving you can and this guy really had made and so it was a tragic thing. But you want your child to be somewhat different, probably not too different, but I think most people think not the average thing, unless it's named after a grandparent or a father or something like that. John mcwarter says that trend towards uniqueness and away from

uniformity tracks with broader changes in American society. I think it's very much a spirit of individuality, and of course many people would say that the spirit of individuality is

part of what being an American is. But there's an extreme that happens, and I think it happens after the nineteen sixties with the sense of what was called the Me generation in the seventies, and then the greater respect for and awareness of the diversity of American nous is that you get that really becomes default starting in the eighties. That's when a certain browning of the culture happens. Think about four is when the Cosby Show becomes a big hit.

Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America and Miss America. Beverly Hills Cop is almost the biggest selling movie in the country. You know, this is the clinnest and nicest police car I've ever been in my life. That's and that's just black diversity. I think we become much more comfortable with America not just being my three sons starting in the nineteen eighties. As a part of that change, there's a shift in naming traditions, especially among Black Americans.

Eight is a particularly interesting year for naming kids. That year, sixty of black girls are given a unique name, one that no one else has. Mcward points out that after the Civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties, afrocentrism gained traction in the seventies and eighties. So once you get past integration as the watch cry, and there's a certain kind of in some ways healthy separatism that's afoot, then it becomes natural to be comfortable making up a name.

And so what happens, frankly is I've often thought that black girls in particular tend to have more interesting names because it's considered okay to just make it up and what you get are all of these beautiful African style names for people born in the United States. And it's all rather pretty, but it really explodes, especially with the sense of Africa and the African heritage rising in the

nineteen seventies. That's when you get little girls named Mikiba. Well, I'm going to impress you right now and tell you, and I'm sorry if it sounds boastful. In college, I was in a production of a Little Shop of Horrors with Katangi Brown now Jackson, I would Seymour, thank you very much. She one of she was run at and she was fantastic. She was fantastically Yeah, and she yea Crystal. I'm suddenly forgetting glass of one's name. But anyway, she

was gonna into improv comedy together. But her name, I know you've written about improv. Wow, she thinks really funny? Is she funny? She is? I'm telling you we will because we are going to make sure that hearings are now, you know, simulcast on Comedy Central. I think she's that funny. I want to know that about her. Yeah, that's a

perfect example that her name is Katanji. If she were a generation older, her name would probably be Caroline, but now it is Katanji Brown Jackson, and that's ordinary starting especially with women of her generation. It's nice to see. I mean, Katanji is a much more interesting name than Caroline. But one group of people, we expect original names from celebrities. It's practically a rite of passage. The first time I can remember this happening is in two thousand four, when

Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin named their daughter Apple. At the time it was weird. Now totally normal. Kylie Jenner has a daughter named Stormy, and it's not it's not with a y, it's with an eye at the end. And Elon Musk has one that can pronounce it's a bunch of symbols. I think by the way I looked it up, it's pronounced x ash a twelve. All of that is because they are public figures, and so for them,

naming is a public act. And if it's going to be a public act, then you want to do something that's gonna stand out rather than something that's gonna bore people. If somebody, like when Paltrow sets off a tradition, next thing, you know, everybody's doing it. So it's sort of a celebrity contagion. And I think I would put it just that way. What Jay Z and Beyonce blew Ivy. That's really beautiful, but it's not African. It's not the usual tradition.

That's something they came up with all by themselves as people who knew that everybody was watching them having that child. So that's where you get that tradition, and that seems to actually cut across races with celebrities too. Yeah, it's it's a show, it's a it's a kind of display. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Most parents aren't going to resort to naming their kids after a combination of math, Aircraft, and Elvin symbols representing artificial intelligence,

which is what Musk's baby's name represents. But throughout history, parents have often taken naming cues from pop culture. Well, I'm going to quiz you on it right now. Actually it's really fun, so I'll start off really easy. Shirley saw a dramatic spike between five because of of Little Shirley Temple, And if you think about it, nobody is named Shirley before then, and then all of a sudden. Everybody's grandmother is named Shirley by the late twentieth century,

and now the name is impossible, Meet little Shirley. Never Michelle entered the top twenty in nineteen sixty five, because that was the same year. It has to be because of that song, the Beatles song nobody is named Michelle. Maybe in Frances you're just kind of guessing, but not here, I mean new Michelle's. We've got a lot of Michelle's running around, women named Michelle women, but not here, not

before then. What you're saying like, there's no first lady named Michelle, And if you think about it, there was a first lady to Michelle. Good point right, only only after and she's named around that time. Michelle Polk. No Michelle Quinciata, no suffragette named Michelle. You know that's that's right, it's Michelle kt S. The name Layla first appeared in the top one thousand in nineteen seventy two. No, why that Eric Clapton song. Yeah, I'm not as good at

modern pop. It's fine. I love that you and I have the same definition of modern pop. Nineteen seventy two. Everything ends. This is a strict question. Rosanna shot up in two because of that Toto song. Right. Yes, I interviewed Patricia Arquat that song was named after her sister, also an actress. But Patricia pointed out to me that her sister's name is really pronounced Rosanna Rosanna Arquette, and I'm so they got the pronunciation of her name wrong.

Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States that iowa faith After Reagan became president in the eighties, the name Reagan not not Ronald as much, but the name Reagan surged in popularity, landing

in the top one hundred by two thousand twelve. Now here's what I think is fascinating is that Republican parents were more likely to pick the name Reagan for their kid if they lived in a district that was purple, that was that was sort of evenly split between Democrats

and Republicans. Then make a statement exactly, then, if they weren't a deep red Republican enclave, right, then they don't need to stand out, they don't need to stake their individuality exactly, And of course they weren't thinking of this consciously. So much goes on subconsciously. I doubt any of those families said so many people around here vote Democratic, that

let's name her Reagan. It was just part of the warp and wolf of their psychology because of sensing themselves as a minority or as not more than half of their district. Well, that's fascinating. Yeah. And if you're in a purple district and you name your kid Reagan, do you plant the kid on the front lawn during election time?

That's right, mommy? How long do I understand here? Spend some time with the Social Security Administration's baby named database, and you'll see a sort of pendulum swing over the last century, especially among girls. Half of the most popular girls names started with vowels in the eighteen eighties. Then we're all consonants. By nifty Anna and Emma became Patricia and Deborah. Now vowels are back in a big way.

It makes you wonder why. Certainly, in terms of how we perceive beauty, at least in English and in related languages, vowels are beautiful because they involve no obstruction of the airflow. Stop sounds such as put cut, but those are the ugliest sounds because you have to stop. Those are the ones that you're calling the jabbing sounds. Then there's everything in between, so you get a buzz at least you get a hiss, and then with yeah, whollo. Those might

as well be vowels. So having more vowels now could have something to do with people looking for a certain mallifluous nous in names now why people would have valued it more during the McKinley administration than during the cool edge administer straation. I have no idea. I get the feeling that is random statistical flutter. Mick Warter says that over time, fashions change gradually, and something you once found

repellent you now find irresistible. You know how today, if you have a dinner party every every second time you have Brussels sprouts, probably with bacon or something like that, imagine how unthinkable that was. Say, even as recently as twenty five years ago, you didn't give people you liked brussel sprous, did not russell sprouts or were synonymous with something that was basical torture. Torture, Yeah, I mean little cabbages.

They sucked, and so you wouldn't give them to anybody, And you don't even have to dress them up that much. Now we're used to them. That's partly fashioned. I don't think that the Brussels Sprouts lobby created this. Sometime early in the George W. Bush administration. One recent trend boys names ending in a certain consonant. What is this with all these boys today? Baby boys having an end at the end of their names. So we've got all these

logans Mason's, Ethan's, Jackson's. We subconsciously associate that un with a kind of a gracious masculinity. It's what you want to name your little boy, as opposed to Jack, which is a severe Jack as might be a bully. Yeah, not only old fashioned, but Jack Jack's people up. You know, Ethan has conversations. You imagine Ethan is open to change, like right, right, he reasons right, Ethan reasons as opposed

to Jack, who just sits yeah. But even names that hit that right mix of vowels and and just right, ones that are pined after in song or become famous in the names of movie characters or the actors who played them, well, just like we as a society can birth the name. We can also let it die. But first another in memorium for Sid Stay and Irv sigh, Shelley and Morty. No, they weren't the original waite staff

at the Carnegie Deli. In the late eighteen hundreds, Sydney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon, and Morton were all popular baby boy names with WASP that is, White Anglo Saxon Protestant parents. Then in the late nineteen twenties, many American Jewish parents began choosing these names for their baby boys to help them fit in. But America's wasps apparently felt stung and took flight from

these names. Soon enough, Sydney, Stanley, Irving, Seymour, Sheldon, and Morton were seen as stereotypically Jewish and their assimilation value greatly diminished, as documented by sociologist Stanley Lieberson, American Jews eventually abandoned the names as well. Incidentally, another name in that category was Morris, a sort of cousin to Maurice. But at least Morris was the name of a terrifically drolled tabby who used to sell cat food on TV commercials.

Nine Lives Seafood Pladder anchors away pop culture and big news events can correlate with names surging, even when those events are disasters. After Hurricane Katrina, names that began with the letter K actually jumped by nine according to an analysis by professors at Wharton Business School. The sheer repetition of the name Katrina, it seems, had a subliminal effect

that K sound got stuck in people's heads. But the name Katrina itself, well, Katrina had been a pretty popular name and even broke the top one hundred for a while in the late seventies and eighties. After the storm, though, the name quickly fell out of fashion and in dropped out of the top one thousand entirely. Indeed, history can

be a name killer as well. The name Isis saw a burst of popularity in the early nineteen seventies thanks to a Saturday Morning superhero of the same name and found she was heir to the sacreds of Isis, and so it has since fallen out of favor with the rise of the Islamic State, which I find reassuring. But Bertha toppled from a much greater height in mother's birth to more than five thousand. Bertha's try saying that five

times fast so what happened to Bertha. Well, Bertha was the name of a German heiress to crup a G a German weapons manufacturer, and during World War One the company began making heavy guns. Those guns were dubbed Big Bertha's by the Germans. The Allies then learn to this nickname, that it was being called the big Bertha, and they began using it for all heavy artillery, so it suddenly became synonymous with big heavy, portly. Right, yeah, so next

thing you know Bertha is overweight? Is it's associated with being large. That's linguistic John mcwardour again, But is there also something about just the sound of it birth thought? I mean, is it I'm thinking of girth birth. The error is not pretty because it's not as open as other vowel sounds. Is a little unpleasant, and it begins with a stop consonant. But er I mean it's it's nasty in that way. But then, especially just because it

was associated with something that was portly. I work with a woman who was telling me about a person in her neighborhood that she doesn't like, and she said, ah, I cut her a wide berth, and it's a wide birth right. I never thought about that, And you wonder why that expression catches on. Yeah, boy, I wonder what it would take for Bertha to come back. Hi, Bertha, I don't see it. After World War One, Bertha faded into obscurity and was off the top one thousand list

by the mid nineteen eighties. But a name doesn't have to become synonymous with military weaponry or get added to a terrorist watch list to fade. Sometimes names just wear out. They fall out of the rotation in the same way you'll find a shirt that you really like and it still fits, and it's in your closet and you haven't worn it for five years for no real reason. A name with ugly sounds can last almost a counterintuitively long time.

For example, Richard, what an ugly name that is? And think about how much uglier the nickname is, and how there were, until about ten minutes ago, normal male people running around in Anglophone America named Dick and nobody battered to nine. It wasn't only Dick sartin Dick York. I knew a Dick back in the eighties has anything to do with the wet That's right. It's Dick Lincoln and he was taken seriously as an executive. Only with the past generation or two has that stopped. And not only

is dick ridiculous? And dick was used to mean what it meant long before it went out, But dick is an ugly word by these standards. Composer Cole Porter would beg to Differry Todd. One of the other names I've been pondering is Todd. Todd showed up in the thirties and just grew and grew. We hit Peeke Todd in X four. More than fifteen thousand were born that year. I used to know tons of Todd's, but now I haven't met a baby Todd in decades. What do you

think the appeal was in the first place. I think it's partly because ah is the most basic sound and humanity. It's the first sound that babies make. And then with Todd, what you have is a kind of a nice assonance, as it were, because too and du are the same sound but different. DU is too with a little bit of belly in it, so you don't have to make a change. There was something pleasant about Todd. Todd was like a little white potato. That's one of those little

balls and it's boiled just right. That's Todd like a tater todd Um. Yes, I guess it would have to be deepride as well as Todd and a lovely woman named Millie with a hairnet giving it to you personally. I like Todd, and I brought in one of my favorite Todds to defend his name, Todd Bridges. Todd Bridges was born in Nive, just one year after Peque Todd, and when he was a teenager, he got a starring role in the hit TV show Different Strokes as Willis Jackson,

opposite Gary Coleman as Arnold. Yeah, Phyllis isn't bad. Why don't you ask about Arnold? Are you chiding starter? She doesn't even know me. My mom said that she dreamed my name because there's not very many black Todds. I don't know if you know that or not, but there isn't. I think I know Todd Gurley, the football player, and that's about it. I don't think I know anybody else named Todd. That's right. Even though Todd was near its peak when Bridges was born, it was indeed as white

as those potatoes. And I'll tell you what what what happened, which is really funny. One time I got to check somewhere that I was living at and it said Todd Bridgies and I'm looking, I don't know of his company, and it's for a couple of thousand nolls. I'm like, I don't know. Let's say this is not me. So what happened was the postman thought it was me and it was an address down the street. And I went down the street and bringing the bell and I go, hey, man,

is there a Todd Bridges. He goes, yeah, it's me, and he goes, oh, hey Todd. I go, hey Todd, and I gave him it was his This there's another Todd Bridge right down the street. It was right down the street when I used to live in Yeah, another guy was a white guy. That's kind of crazy. People get their names made fun of for all sorts of reasons. Is there anything you can do with Todd? Will you ever teased? Well? A lot of people thought that Todd was short for Theodore, but I'm like, no, that's Ted.

That's shut for Theodore. Todd is just Todd. Then in the nineteen seventies, Todd fell off the baby naming Cliff Oh man Todd fell off the map. Dang. In two thousand fifteen, there were only two hundred and twelve baby boys named Todd. And did you ever consider naming any of your children Todd? No? No, I named my son Spencer, but I spell it differently. Okay, we I mean we spell his sp n C I R. Now why did

you do that? We just thought it making this original because Spencer is out there and it's you know, sp and c R, and we just wanted to make it original. And it's original Spencer, It totally is. George Carlin had a whole bit a routine in two thousand one where he actually made fun of the name Todd. He made fun of a number of I didn't see that. What he what do he say? And I'm getting really sick of guy's name Todd. You know, yeah, it's just a

goofy it's a goofy fucking name. Okay, Hi, what's your name? Todd? Is he still around? That? He is not still around? But great, stand he is lucky because I have to go choke him out mess with my name. It's not a goofy name. It's a cool name. It's Todd. We end this episode with a nod to Western civilization's earliest baby naming book, the Bible. From Adam and Eve to Ahab and Jezebel, there are well over a thousand different names mentioned between the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament.

People have been blessing and sometimes saddling their kids with the names of patriarchs and prophets, matriarchs and magi for over a thousand years. The most recently popular baby names in the US have included Jonah, Elijah, Naomi, and Noah. I was surprised to see that even the name Lazarus has risen from the dead. Of course, not every biblical name is heaven sent. Judas. If we ignore your history for a second, you're not terrible, your spelling makes sense,

and you have no off putting hard consonants. Then again, your behavior towards Jesus was more than off putting. Your name has been permanently shunned. Earlier biblical outcasts haven't fared much better. Sure, there were three hundred Canes born in but nearly times as many ables were born that year. It doesn't pay to kill your brother. Jesus, of course, is a popular name, especially as Jesus, but Judas. I don't see you ever cracking the top one thousand. Come here,

little Judas. Yeah, they're more than time for friendless, dateless little boy. Esther and Ruth your solid names, if not always easy to say. Hey, Esther, meet me at Ruth's Chris Steak House. You're the only two women with books of the Bible named after you. But after the nineteen thirties, your name's made a quick exodus. Yet history shows us that most names are cyclical. What's old, sometimes very old

is new again. Indeed, Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, has seen a surge in popularity as a first name since the nineteen nineties. P s. If you ever see me out on the street, feel free to call me Maurice. I kind of miss it. I certainly hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask you to please rate and review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Here all new episodes of Mobituaries

every Wednesday. Wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries. Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling book now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Jake Harper and Aaron Shrank. Our team of producers also includes Wilcome Martinez Cacceto and me Morocca. It was edited by Moral Walls and engineered by Sam Bear, with fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is

Neon Hum Media. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Pang, Reggie Basil and everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Megan Marcus, Alberto Robina and the staff of wood Acres Elementary the inimitable. Aaron Shrink is our senior producer. Executive producers for Mobituaries

include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is created by Yours Truly and as always undying gratitude to Rand Morrison and John Carp for helping breathe life into Mobituaries. One