Names for the Toes

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, Grant. This is Andy from Independence, Missouri.

Hi, Andy. How you doing?

Hello.

I’m doing well. Hey, Martha.

What’s up?

My grandpa died several years ago, but we recently passed what would have been his 105th birthday.

Oh, wow.

And as we passed that date, I happily recalled some of the things that I remembered the most about him.

One of the things that I remembered was that he taught all of his kids, and they taught all of their kids, the names of their toes.

Those names are Tom Pumpkin, Long Larkin, Betty Pringle, Johnny Jingle, and Little Dick.

Now we asked him late in his life where those names had come from, but he couldn’t remember.

It has, however, become quite tradition within our extended family.

I’ve passed this down to my kids, but it seems to lack some of the staying power that it had with my generation.

It seems like such a wonderful thing to pass down and to keep as something to connect our extended family.

And I’m hoping that some backstory might give it a little more bite.

Hopefully that’s where you guys come in.

That’s a really good question.

So say the names of the toes again, from largest to smallest, they are?

Tom Pumpkin, Long Larkin, Betty Pringle, Johnny Jingle, and Little Dick.

Oh, yeah, but there are lots of different little names like that.

There’s a whole collection online, Little P, Penny Rue, Judy Whistle, Mary Tossie, and Big Tom Bumble.

I guess maybe that’s going in the other direction.

There’s a website called mamalisa.com.

Yeah, that’s what I’m looking at.

If you Google the origins of Scandinavian toe naming rhymes or some variation, you’re going to come up with this because it’s a very common page with tons of comments from people relating the names for the toes that they use.

And most of them are Scandinavian, but some of them are English.

Yeah.

But also, what I want to refer you to is Mother Goose’s nursery rhymes from 1919.

Yeah, this will give you a little back story.

There are a couple different rhymes in there.

We all know the really common Mother Goose rhymes.

There are all these rarer ones that, as people have adapted that book or republished it, tend to get left out.

And there’s one about Little Betty Pringle, which is one of the toe names that you named.

And there’s one about Johnny Pringle, which is not quite the name that you gave, which was Johnny Jingle, but it’s close.

Little Betty Pringle, she had a pig.

It was not very little and not very big.

When he was alive, he lived in clover, but now he’s dead, and that’s all over.

That’s so sad.

Johnny Pringle he sat down and cried.

Betty Pringle she laid down and died.

So there was an end of one, two, and three.

Johnny Pringle he, Betty Pringle she, and Piggy Wiggy.

And this is a rhyme about the toes.

We all know about toes being called piggies, right?

Sure.

So a few of the names are in common.

One of the names is exactly the same.

One is similar and the others are different.

But still, we can get a sense here that perhaps your grandfather got a couple of his names through some oral tradition that was connected to the Mother Goose rhymes.

That’s what I’m thinking, yeah.

Well, that’s fantastic.

So it’s not necessarily specifically from one place, but picked up pieces and bits here and there.

No, we’ll link to this mamalisa.com page.

It’s really fantastic.

All of these people have chimed in with a certain amount of, I think there’s glee in their voices.

They’re enthusiastic about sharing this particular thing that most of them remember from their own childhoods.

And so there’s fondness involved with that and memories of closeness to family and that sort of thing.

Yeah, like I said, that’s just something that kind of connects us all and hoping to keep it alive.

And Andy, did you say that you were having a hard time passing this along to the next generation?

Yeah, they just don’t seem to be quite as interested in it.

But I’m hoping that maybe, you know, when it comes time and they have kids that they’ll remember it.

Then they will.

Then they’re going to understand a lot, right?

Yep.

Well, good for you for passing it on.

Well, thank you very much.

Thanks for calling, Andy.

We really appreciate it.

All right.

Bye-bye.

If you have names or rhymes for your toes, give us a call.

Let us know.

877-929-9673 or explain it in email to words@waywordradio.org.