Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

If you look at the frequency charts for given names of female babies, Savannah was 0.01% rarely jumping to as much as 0.03%, but the movie "Savannah, Smile" came out in 1982, with an immediate jump, and then really soared in the 1992s.  With the Girl Scout cookie of that name introduced in 2012, it'll probably be popular for yeas to come.

There's much less variation in guys' names than women's.  In the 1950s, you only needed ten or twenty different bicycle license plates to handle a majority of all boys.  What were the unpopular names?  They often were family names (think Stone Phillips, from the family of Stonewall Jackson), were familiar names from a strong ethhnicity (think Don Novello's "Father Guido Sarducci) or are place names (think Tex or Cincinnati).

I think Uncle Van's mother might have thought the plantations of Savannah, Georgia were romantic.  It would have been easier to ignore the heat and humidity, the dry rot and the mosquitos from Canada, especially in an era without air conditioning.

I read a story in high school of a guy whose family moved a lot, and every baby got named for the place he was born.  He hated his name, and was embarrassed to introduce himself as "Kissimmee".  These days of liberated women, he'd say Kissimmee, and she's likely to say "sure thing" and plant one on his lips.