In a curious bit of journalism, Newsweek reports that there is a growing trend for American parents to name their offspring after car brands.
It’s all very fascinating, but isn’t this a prime example of wishful thinking? There’s a big dollop of horse-and-cart vagueness here. Which came first, the name or the car?
Austin, improbably, leads the pack of favourite car names, followed by Cooper, Devin, Hudson, Lincoln, Bentley, Holden, Colt, Morgan and Prince. Parents of young ladies apparently favour Morgan because it sits right at the top of the female league.
Mercedes (originally named after a girl in a twist to the story) comes a good second, followed by Devin, Lexus, Bentley, Austin, Cooper, Tesla, Lincoln and Hudson. Tesla is forever exclusively a girl’s name, although there could be an opening for Teslo in the future.
Apart from the fact that several of these marques are obscure, the logic in ascribing their popularity to car brands is tenuous at least. For instance, the overwhelming predominance of young male Austins is ascribed to the “popularity of the British Austin”. Who’d have thought it? I am surprised the writer even remembered Austin had been a brand. And I would be even more surprised if American naming decisions were based on Sir Herbert Austin’s cars.
Isn’t it more likely that Austin is a medieval contraction of Augustine, or Augustus, meaning “great” or “magnificent”? It is, of course, and has nothing to do with old Herbert. But I suppose, in its way, the Austin Mini was pretty great in car terms.
And Morgan. Are all those little two-legged Morgans, both male and female, really inspired by a specialist manufacturer of three-wheel cars (now having progressed to four wheels, though) based in Malvern, Worcestershire? I think not.
Morgan has always been a popular Welsh-origin name going right back to the Arthurian Morgan le Fey and before. There’s more than a bit of Morgan the Fairy to the Newsweek story when you dig deeper.
Even Edward Morgan Forster, who was born in 1879, couldn’t have predicted the Moggie, despite his room having such a good view of the future.
And while we are discussing Austins and Morgans, where are all the young Lamborghinis, Maseratis and Ferraris? Any one of those would beat Austin as a prestige forename.
Still and all, I do appreciate a bit of whimsey like this. It broad smile on my face as I explored all the unlikely possibilities. Yet if parents wish to call their sons Bentley, Lincoln or Prince it’s no business of mine.
But I do have to ask why the list is so restricted. If car marques are genuinely the inspiration for first names, why is the list so short. Young Fords, Ladas, Trabants. Minis and SangYongs should be startomg school soon.
Personally, I think Porsche and Jaguar would look good on any birth certificate. Porsche Boxster Evans: Now that has a certain je ne sais quoi, don’t you think? And Mini Shingleton down in New South Wales would gain some mileage from a rebranding.
I’m rather grateful my parents hit on a timeless and utterly untrendy name such as Michael1. Who knows, I could have been a rather dated Armstrong-Siddeley Evans by now.
Come to think of it, on the other hand, I might have been a lot more successful with a moniker like that. Have you ever noticed how many notable or notorious figures in history had unusual names? And it will happen in the future. De Dion-Bouton Smith could be the next Elon Musk…
Turning to our special interest, I’ve never heard of anyone being called after a camera. Leica Bloggs would definitely have to be a girl, of course, although Canon Johnson sounds pretty masculine. Elmar is a given and is a suitable case for a buy. Summilux Evans sounds fetching, though.
Whenever I encounter a person with a very unusual name, I’m torn between hoping they’ll make a success because of it and a feeling that the parents should have been shot for coming up with such an outlandish and probably very dated handle. I am still waiting to meet Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Smith, by the way.
Tesla, stop wasting time on that 15in iPad and come and recharge your batteries before bedtime!
Read about the 1973 Brooklands reunion and the last of the Bentley Boys
- I’ll let you into a secret. I was going to be Paul Evans but my grandparents opened the paper on the day after my birth to see that Prince Michael of Kent had arrived at the same time. So Michael I became. I can be thankful that my grandfather, a keen cyclist, didn’t insist on Raleigh Evans. ↩
A cup of coffee works wonders in supporting Macfilos
Did you know that Macfilos is run by a dedicated team of volunteers? We rely on donations to help pay our running costs. And even the cost of a cup of coffee will do wonders for our energy levels.
Ford Prefect
(HHGG)
((Douglas Adams))
There was a race horse owner in Australia who had Leica in the name of all his horses
At a Melbourne cup race some surgeons managed to have a conference to coincide with the race
Naturally one of the Leica nags was running so we suggested a wager for the surgeons
It came third but I don’t think anyone put money on it
Cheers
Philip
Check out the American Krit car from around WWI and its radiator emblem. When I was young in the 1950s our laundry was delivered here in Dublin in red vans (electric if I remember correctly) with a white roundel containing the same emblem. It did not alarm people in Dublin, but I doubt if it would have gone down well in Manchester or, even, Wigan. To save people the time searching for the emblem, I can reveal that it was a swastika.
As for naming after the car a Mr and Mrs Carson might name their son Krit Carson. I have photos of the car and its emblem taken at a Dublin car show some years ago. It was from 1913-15, long before Mr You Know Who became You Know What. The Swastika Laundry also dated from around the same time, but is no longer in business today.
William
And we should not forget Austin Powers!
That’s a lovely photograph of the Bentley boys.
This made me smile, thanks for an amusing start to my weekend.
Of course we already have a few sporting types named for cars: Austin Healey (England rugby player), and Jensen Button (Formula 1 World Champion).
Ah yes, I’d forgotten them. Jenson button especially. And Austin Healey is surely too much of a coincidence.
My two school friends were Morris Major and Morris Minor.
And the spy, Morris Traveller
A real photofreak would call his son Elmar and his daughter Distagonia!
The German TV channel ZDF’s US reporter is Elmar Thevessen ..or, in German spelling, Elmar Theveßen. (Perhaps it’d’ve been more appropriate for American TV’s reporter in Wetzlar to be Elmar Fudd.)
Remember Morgan is a popular horse breed in the United States and that name predates the car by decades. Given little girls’ love of horses, the connection should be obvious.
..and who was that dreadful person in some American soap opera?.. ah, yes: played by Morgan Fairchild (born Patsy Ann McClenny, according to Wikipedia), and there’s always Morgan Freeman (of ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, etc) ..not to mention Morgan Stanley, he of the banking business, named after a small sports car and a steam driven motor car (..or perhaps an Accrington football club).
Ah the Stanley steamer. I can remember seeing Foden steam lorries plying the roads if Wigan…
Mercedes of course did it the other way round, and named the cars after the daughter of the owner.
Indeed. I think I mentioned this in the caption to the modern Mercedes. It’s interesting the way it took over the brand, almost like LeiCa taking over from Leitz.
Just as well I did not name my son Mini as he surely would have struggled to have found a girlfriend yet alone a wife.
John
..yet John Wayne’s original name was Marion Morrison!
Quite a transformation…
Did he transform into a misogynous, racist, fascist or do you think he was born that way?
I drive an Audi and so, given that the company arose out of various German manufacturers before finding its VW home, I have looked up a little book that I have here about the history of the make. In 1928 Audi was taken over by the gloriously named Zschopauer Motorenwerke J.S. Rasmussen Gg. The first model they produced under the new owner was the ‘Zwickau’ which does not exactly trip off the tongue as a name for a child. Before that, another constituent make of Audi was Wanderer, whose first model was the ‘Puppchen’. I have often heard Irish parents roar ‘ya little pup’ at a less than perfectly behaved child, so that one might get in for me. You could also call an Irish kid Audi as that might make him Audi Murphy. Look up your Hollywood film books to find Audie Murphy who starred in many films from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Those Leitz codes consisting of apparently random series of letters are dangerous territory. The one that many with a wicked sense of humour might home in on is the Leitz NOOKY, which is a pre-war close focus device for the Leitz Elmar. NOOKY Murphy might be a great draw when he gets old enough to go to dances and night clubs.
That’s enough of that.
William
Who knows, the bicycling grandfather might have turned you into a Hercules? Probably preferable to being a hyphenated Sturmey-Archer …
Ah Sturmey-Archer. I’ve got all the gear.
And Linda Evans from tv and movies is your (hot) sister. She got all the looks in the family!
B-but don’t you remember, in ‘A Fish Called Wanda’, Archie Leach the barrister (..the original name of Cary Grant..) has a daughter called Portia, and Kevin Kline’s character asks “why would he name his daughter after a car?”..?