Round up of links about Names and Naming.

We've been talking in class about various issues related to Names and Naming.

I've already emailed you this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B33IjST9023ddmJWWnczZlFqNm8/view?usp=sharing which goes to a transcript of a Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt Freakanomics podcast about the possible effects of one's name on one's life. (If you want to listen to the podcast you can find it here: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-much-does-your-name-matter-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/)

Here is a link to the Social Security Administrations Baby Name Datebase. You can see that you can run searches by year/decade/state and several other options: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/

In our discussions about trends in invented names or "creative" new spellings of traditional names, we've also (at least in one 101 section) touched on urban legends about bizarre names, urban legends that are rooted in racist humor. This article from the hoax and urban legend debunking website, Snopes.com, offers an interesting look at the history and background of alleged "humorous" naming practices among African Americans: http://www.snopes.com/racial/language/names.asp

One student asked about the veracity of the last name "Null" in an article I described about how this name makes using some online services impossible because of the coding of databases. The techy website Boing Boing gave a round up of this in "Names that break databases": http://boingboing.net/2016/03/26/names-that-break-databases.html. The story of Jennifer Null was originally featured by the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160325-the-names-that-break-computer-systems. The high tech journalist Christopher Null had previously written on his last name problems for Wired Magazine: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/null/.

For further discussion about names and naming, here are links to two essays which reflect on naming practices.

Manuel Munoz's "Leave Your Name at the Border," is a personal reflection on assimilating immigrant naming practices: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/opinion/01iht-edmunoz.1.6936607.html?_r=0. Please print out and read.

Here is longer personal essay on the writers own name, "The Jody Grind: the secret history of my name." I'm giving you a link to the place it first appeared, the website Slate, because the online version has lots of interesting links to baby name websites, baby name news stories and baby name controversies. It also has embedded videos of some of the things the writers describes (a commercial for a child's doll, the venerable Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue," as well as the military "jody cadences" the author discovers, etc.): http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2016/03/the_secret_history_of_the_name_jody.html

However, it might be good to also have a plain transcript of the essay to look at offline. Also, the Slate site and the sites linked in the article have ads which can made viewing and navagating the essay difficult on phones and tablets. So here's a link to a plain transcript in my Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B33IjST9023dMkxjZ3hhaTFWeDg/view?usp=sharing
(it also preserves some links)