Tag Archives: names

Going Out the Road

Nationality: American
Age: 15
Occupation: Student
Residence: Salt Lake City, UT
Performance Date: April 22, 2020
Primary Language: English
  • Context: The informant (A) is a 19 year old college student who lives at the Jersey Shore in South New Jersey in the summer. He explains to me the colloquial term used in his town when a person is driving from the island on which they live to stores inland. The conversation came up during a family discussion whether or not everyone in the town of Sea Isle City, NJ knows the term “out the road” means going inland or if it is specific to the informant’s family (this was never resolved). 
  • Text:

A: “Out the road is when you’re down at the shore in New Jersey… which is the southern part of Jersey in between Atlantic City and Wildwood.

And… uh… when you’re going out the road you drive inland and south towards where the shopping centers are in middle New Jersey… uh… and there’s a TJMaxx and there’s a couple other stores…

And you go out the road when you uh… when you want things… anyway that’s what out the road is.”

  • Analysis: “Out the road” is a term used to describe going from the islands to the inlands because you physically must go out the road. There is only one road leading in and out of the island in New Jersey where the informant spends his summers, so it makes sense that there is a term for this action. It creates a group of those who know the local terms and those who do not. It also creates a group of inlanders and islanders and the two are physically separated by a road as well as a specific term/speech.

La-a (pronounced “Ladasha”)

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA; Montclair, NJ
Performance Date: 4/29/15
Primary Language: English

The informant told me about this joke when I asked him about some good jokes he had heard.

Informant: “So this is a joke I’ve heard from many people, some of them have claimed it to be true. The joke goes: ‘I heard about this person named Ladasha, and her name is spelled La-a. So it’s “Laa”, but it’s pronounced Ladasha. And I’ve heard this as a joke from some people. But one person who told me, actually insisted that they knew someone who knew Ladasha. Which is obviously not true.”

Collector: “Why is this a joke, what’s the funny part about it?”

Informant: “Oh, its just typography”

Collector: “When did you hear this first?”

Informant: “High school I believe, a couple years ago. I would hear about it every couple months or so. It was a thing people knew about.”

Collector: “Why do you think specifically the name Ladasha?”

Informant: “Because its funny and it sounds like a real name”

Collector: “It sounds like an African American name. Is there any reason why that is?”

Informant: “Some of those names I’ve seen do have vanity punctuation”

Collector: “So do you think this is poking fun at that?”

Informant: “Probably. I think there’s a Tiana in my high school (T’ana) so it’d be like, ‘T’ana’ so that was a vanity punctuation”

Collector: “So Ladasha could be a real name”

Informant: “Yes. But more likely I think is that someone named their baby that after they heard the joke”

This joke, in my opinion, is likely to indeed be poking fun at some African American names with unconventional punctuation, or as my informant called it, “vanity punctuation.”

Yiddish Names

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 57
Occupation: Singer-songwriter
Residence: Lafayette, CA
Performance Date: April 26, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Yiddish

*Note: The informant, Laura, is my mother. She’s a Jewish woman who identifies with Yiddish aspects of Jewish culture.

 

INFORMANT: “A lot of the jokes were based on misunderstandings of Yiddish words, because there was a lot of that. There were a lot of things like… my great uncles were three brothers, and in Russia they were Levenbuch, and when they came through Elllis Island, they each went through separately, and the people at Ellis Island just wrote down what they thought they heard them saying, and so when they started their life in America, one was Levenbook, one was Levenbrook, and one was Levenburg. So there was a lot of that, but the story that they like to tell was about a nervous Jewish guy coming through Ellis Island, and he was so flustered when he got there that they asked him his name and he said in Yiddish: “Jin fergessen,” which means “I forget,” and they wrote down “Shane Ferguson.” Which couldn’t be any less of a Jewish name if you tried. There was a lot of that, making fun of the language, because Yiddish is not a written-down language, it’s a spoken language, so pretty much everything we did in terms of calling things … speaking in Yiddish, calling things Yiddish names and the Yiddish jokes were all based on this language that developed over time that wasn’t really a written language but it was more like a cultural language. so it’s very rich in, you know, this is the cultural part of Judaism that we’re imbued with.”

 

—

Yiddish is an interesting case of folklore because it’s a language that’s almost completely carried by oral tradition – Yiddish is not a written language like Hebrew, and it’s hard to peg down agreed-upon spellings for many Yiddish words. Yet, Yiddish is carried on by the Jewish people and even by non-Jews, because several Yiddish words have been adopted into the general English vocabulary. People use words like “shmutz,” “shmuck,” and “nosh” on a regular basis, without really even realizing they’re using Yiddish words!

These stories are also significant to folklore because they exemplify the hilarity resulting from cultural differences. Americans at Ellis Island couldn’t quite grasp the Jewish last names of the incoming immigrants, so Jewish people often lost their names to more Americanized surnames like “Ferguson” in the case of the Shane Ferguson joke. It’s a moment of cultural mixing.

A Lineage of Names

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Ohio
Performance Date: 4.19.2014
Primary Language: English

Item:

“Yep I like it. I get asked to repeat it all the time though like when I order stuff like coffee.”

A friend’s family has maintained a naming lineage for several generations. They possess in the family a large scroll with a family tree dating back to the 1500s. It began with Thor the first, who’s grandson was given the name Thor the second. Flash forward to now, where the informant’s father is Thor the 4th. His father named his children after other Norse gods, and the first of them to have a male child will be expected to name it Thor the 5th. His father maintained the naming because he wanted to stay true to his Scandinavian roots and not betray a long established tradition. The informant doesn’t mind, and says he too would feel an obligation to continue it if he is the first to have a son.

 

Context:

My good friend, the informant, loves the tradition. He and his brothers all have pretty awesome sounding names that are unique. He says it makes him feel like he’s a part of something larger, but also feel unique since he doesn’t meet people who share the same story. He hinted at wanting the Thor naming right, but didn’t seem eager to rush into having children just for that purpose.

 

Analysis:

It’s certainly a unique naming scheme to come across, at least in America – I can’t speak for other regions. The dedication to cultural roots is admirable and impressive when it lasts for several generations. The informant and his father don’t have much with regards to information about the original Thor in the lineage, since the informant’s grandfather passed away very early in his son’s life. In any case, whether or not the original Thor had intention to create a pattern or that was the standard at the time isn’t known by the informant.

Ethiopian naming customs

Nationality: Ethiopian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 28, 2013
Primary Language: English

My informant is from Washington, D.C. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia. This her explanation of the customs surrounding the naming of newborn children in Ethiopian families:

“A lot of times, it’s a sign of respect—not necessarily for your first child, but for your second child—you will like, allow your parents to name them. But actually naming someone after someone else in your family is definitely a Westernized thing, at least in comparison to Ethiopian culture. Um… but there’s not really any repetition of names in Ethiopian families. So your dad’s… either your dad’s first name is your last name, or that’s your middle name and your paternal grandfather’s name is your last name. Um, the way my parents did it was that my dad’s name is my last name. I don’t have a middle name, um because it was like, easier, and the insurance companies wouldn’t let them do otherwise. So, yeah. And women don’t take their husband’s last name. So it’s like really hard to trace your family lineage.”

Although my informant says that Ethiopian families do not usually name their children after family members and that there is not any repetition of names within families, they do pass on the father or paternal grandfather’s name, so in a sense, those names are repeated. The tradition of keeping the father’s name in the family by using it as the child’s last name is indicative that Ethiopia is a patriarchal society: the father’s name is given to the next generation, whereas the mother’s name is not. However, Ethiopian women do keep their own last names when they marry, so in that sense, they have a certain independence from their husbands that Western women typically do not.