Not Only Gertrude, but Mabel, Too

You’ll recall our conversation with Lana in Evansville, Indiana, who said that the women in her family all call each other Gert or Gertie affectionately. And then she found out that one of her friends does the same thing. Everybody in their family calls the women Gertie or Gert. And we were all speculating as to why.

And we did hear from Annabelle Nielsen in Melbourne, Australia, who said that on her mother’s side of the family, they do the same thing. They use Gertie as kind of a generic name or term of endearment. And she wonders if it came from the name of Gertrude Lawrence, who was a famous English actress and performer in the early 20th century. She won a Tony in 1952 opposite Yul Brynner in The King and I.

But we also, Grant, can’t rule out the Jack Benny radio show. Oh, yeah, but, you know, I’ve been a fan of the Jack Benny radio show for a long time. But there are these two operators, telephone operators with thick accents, who do these great routines where they mock Jack Benny when he’s waiting for them to connect a call. And they’re Mabel and Gertrude.

Gertrude. Gertrude. Mabel, what is it, Gertrude? Guess who’s on the line again. Oh, is it Mr. Who thinks he’s wonderful? You know, I can’t even do the voices, but we’ll post a link to them. But these two characters went on for decades on radio and television. And the Jack Benny show was top rated for a very long time in this country. Its influence can’t be understated.

So I just wonder if there’s not something. However, they never called her Gert or Gertie as far as I know. It was always Gertrude. But yeah, they did have that relationship. It was always the two of them, right? Yeah, two of them kind of like just talking smack about Jack when he was just waiting impatiently for them to connect his call.

Yeah, so I can see female members of a family using Gert or Gertie or Gertrude. Let us know what you think. 877-929-9673 or send your thoughts about any aspect of language to words@waywordradio.org.