Is there a Tom, Dick, or Harry in the house? if the house is a spaceship or an arcology?

[mrissa]

Elsewhere--under friendslock, so I can't link it--I have been talking to some people about names. And it got me thinking:

If I was writing a story set in 2040, and the story was about a brother named John and a sister named Mary, I would make some very specific assumptions. I would be looking for cues that either the story was set in a neo-traditionalist society of some sort--or at least one that flirted aesthetically with neo-traditionalism--or else that John and Mary were immigrants from an immigrant group that had not come to English-speaking countries much before. (I have to confess that I would also be more attuned to clues that the author was born before about 1965 and was not very good at spotting social change.)

But why is that? So John and Mary are not a particularly common name pair for siblings born in 2009, or in 1979, which is more relevant to stories set in 2009. So what? If the story is set in 1940, John and Mary are totally normal names for an English-speaking sibling pair. 1840, same deal. 1740, same deal. 1640, same deal. 1540, same deal....

So why is my gut so sure that the recent pattern is more relevant than the longer-term one? And is this just me? What, if anything, would you assume about a 2040 or 2140 story featuring Mary and her brother John?

Comments

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I'd look at other data before assuming much of anything. These have been such common names for so many years, that there could be all sorts of reasons for them turning up again. And if one of them is used, the other one being used for a sibling doesn't really tell us much more.

The recent pattern might persist -- or the pendulum might swing back just as extremely ... several times.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think that a pair of sibling names like that does give you more data than if they were unrelated people or even cousins. markgritter and his siblings are Mark, Daniel, Sarah, and Matthew. This tells you something about their parents that would be different if they were Justin, Jordan, Jennifer, and Jeremy, or if they were Richard, Edward, Margaret, and Geoffrey, or if they were Ezekiel, Nahum, Jaelle, and Ezra. (It does help that there are four of them. But it also helps that they're siblings.)

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

That they're very likely Christian, or at least from a Christian culture.

[numinicious.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

[ellarien]

It would probably strike me as old-fashioned, now that you mention it, possibly evoking some kind of deliberately backward-looking society; John might wear a trilby and sports jacket, Mary a twinset and pearls and a perm. Even in my childhood Mary wasn't common as a girl's name, though I think John was still in use; my class had a lot of Pauls and Davids and Andrews.

[blythe025.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't think much about Mary of John being used. It would depend upon the context of the story, I suppose. First part that jumps to my mind is that the society, or the group of society that these two belong to, was a society that tried to hold on to the traditions of a past that they romantically percieve as better. Or at least that's the story that's coming to my mind right now.

[rosefox]

If I was writing a story set in 2040

This post made much more sense once I realized you were talking about reading rather than writing!

I would assume that the primary language spoken by their parents was English (or else it would be Jean and Marie, Maria and Juan, etc.). I would assume that the family had at least some Christian ancestors, even if they're not currently observant. I would look for cues that it was a parody or homage of an older story style. I would expect it to be a conscious auctorial choice that deliberately evokes an earlier era.

Incidentally, I do know a woman named Mary who married a man named John Smith. People often thought they were using fake names, because really, how many people checking into a hotel as "John and Mary Smith" are being honest? So I would expect there to be some stories like that too, reactions from the people around them.

[nipernaadi.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

As over here people who DO NOT speak such a posh language (not to mention such a bread ticket) as English are more likely to attempt to give their children such foreign names as John or Jane ... or insist on giving foreign glitter to normal name Mari(the word means "berry" in Estonian)by using the foreign letter "y" in end of it!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I said to timprov, "I should change that to 'reading' before I go to bed, since that's really what I mean," and then I didn't.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

My mother is named Mary, and my father is named John, so it doesn't seem the slightest bit odd to me. (And if either of them had any religious beliefs, they neglected to mention them to me; same for grandparents.)

It's easy to not see names dropping into disfavor; you still see the examples you've always seen, and it's very easy to not notice that new ones aren't appearing. Lots of people my age wouldn't notice a thing about such a story.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't think John and Mary lived in a traditional society, or that their parents had been particularly old-fashioned. I'd think their parents spoke English, or had been recent immigrants to an English-speaking community. (Possibly, Jean and Marie had immigrated as adolescents and wanted to assimilate.) They might or might not be Christian, but I'd be surprised if they were attached to a religion other than Christianity. Unless they had converted as adults, of course.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

I would assume that they (or more to the point, their parents) were from an English-speaking country (because otherwise they might be Juan/Jean/Jan and Marie/Maria/Masha). Either England, North America specifically. (though John could be from Scotland, but then he might be equally likely to be Ian). For that matter, if they were from North America, I would assume that they were from/living in a region/culture where people don't go in much for frills or putting on airs with fancy names. Small towns. Midwest, maybe. The Maritimes. Or perhaps areas that settled by Puritans, once upon a time. Not necessarily the South, though it's certainly possible.

I would very likely assume that they (their parents, anyway) were Christian, and of a religious tradition that honored tradition and simplicity. Given lack of other information, could be quite religious.

If they are not religious, I might assume that they/their parents/their society was very conformist. Or even a simplistic society, a la the world of Dick and Jane of the Scott Foresman readers...

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Either that or that there was some Dark Secret that they were specifically trying to hide. So they would try to be as conformist and plain as possible in name and deed so nobody would look twice...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Midwestern small towns just now are filled with girls named Britney and Nevaeh and Maddyson, not Mary.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I would assume the writer was trying to telegraph "These are meant to be Generic Every(wo)man Characters."

But that's just me.

[nipernaadi.livejournal.com]

I would find it tricky to make assumptions on two names alone.

Even if the additional data I would need for assumption could as well be meta-data. If the book is written in English and by a native English speaker, I would assmume different things than, if for example, the book was written in Russian by a native Komi language speaker.

[sgac.livejournal.com]

So why is my gut so sure that the recent pattern is more relevant than the longer-term one?

Your gut may have the right idea. There are reasons why traditional naming patterns changed in the twentieth century -- it didn't just happen. Higher rates of literacy expose parents to a wider choice of names. The film industry was a platform that hugely popularised certain names. A lower rate of baptism meant clergy were less involved in the choice of names, and a lesser degree of respect for authorities meant parents were less likely to accept interference from clergy. Society in general became less traditional.

These are changes that aren't going to be easily undone, and even if they are, there's no reason to expect John and Mary will automatically regain their position.

Oh, and if you go back before 1540 John and Mary are no longer so dominant.

[clarentine]

Society in general became less traditional.

This was what I was thinking. People name their kids as they do for a reason. Until recent generations, those reasons tended to be cultural, nationalistic or ethnic, as those were the elements of culture that mattered the most. Nowadays, however, the dominant culture seems to have shifted away from focus on nation or ethnic group--hard, to the extent that it's perceived better the more unique you are. Thus, the strange, nontraditional spellings of names.

I think I certainly would assume parental conservatism, or a harkening back to conservative culture, from John and Mary of 2040. At least until I had other information to tilt that assumption one way or the other.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I would think much of it. In my own experience, I don't see John going anywhere, and women's names have a way of cycling from frumpy to hip and back over the decades in those social settings where names do cycle--and in social settings where they don't, Mary isn't that remarkable. I will admit that I am less sensitive to nuances as a reader, and also that I have a lot of unscientific data about name distribution from my public library days.

[themagdalen.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they are extraterrestrial aliens with a poorly researched cover story (based on beamed-out television from the 1950s).

[carbonel]

They come from France.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I think I've been slipping between thinking of these names as real data points about a real society -- and as choices by an author.

In 2040, 30 years from now, there will be plenty of real Johns and Marys in the real English-speaking world. Right now, in fiction and among some demographics in real life, there's a pattern of rejecting such names. So for a story written now to be read now, following the current pattern (ie rejection) is probably right. For the writer to violate the pattern by using John and Mary would signal something unusual going on in the story, such as an extremely traditional family or Everyman symbolism etc etc.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ahh. Yes, I think that's a relevant point: we can't count on communicating with the world of 2040 with a story, and we can communicate with the world of 2009 for sure.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Babies will still be named after grandparents, so aside from assuming that they came from an English-speaking family of Christian heritage....

...Personally, I'm expecting a great wave of Edwards and Bellas. :-(

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Bella is one of those names like Shirley, I think, where people are going to assume it's because of Twilight but actually Twilight will have gotten in on an already-rising crest of Bellas. Before Twilight, I knew people who were considering or using Isabella for baby girl names.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Did you see what I did with this in the one about the ham (http://literary.erictmarin.com/archives/Issue%2021/tradition.htm)? Because I particularly had fun with this exact thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yes. I had a milder version myself in "Things We Sell to Tourists"--not Great-Grandma Britney but Granny Jen. Not as far in the future by a longshot.

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

If the rest of the names in the story (secondary characters) weren't totally different from their names... then I'd assume very basic things... English-speaking, Christian linage.

It doesn't seem odd to me that parents would pick "Mary" to go with "John", or vice versa. Parents that tend for traditional names tend for them, ones that don't, don't*. It would be jarring/commentworthy to have Sarah, John, Mary, James, and Sunshine. Likewise, it'd be odd to have Sunshine, Marquis, Ebony, and Mary.

(And for some odd reason it'd be more jarring if the "odd" one were in the middle of the line of children instead of at the beginning or end. I'm guessing a beginning one being different would indicate early parenthood to me, and the last one being different would indicate a last "hurrah" as it were.)

Also, as others have pointed out... names swing in and out of favor, from "new" to traditional... and so do naming traditions--names based on ancestory vs. "making it up".

It would also depend on their races, honestly. I'd likely think different things about a black sibling set than a white.

Long spans between children and/or seperate marriages change this pattern. For instance... I am Sage Autumn, but my sisters--of a different father and starting 11 years later--are Betty Jane, Katherine Grace, and Eva Kay. My parents were hippies. Then later they weren't. (He didn't have children he was involved in naming.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I would find Betty Jane to be a far more startling name for someone under the age of 60 or so than Sage Autumn.

I would agree with you more on the traditional names going together if the siblings were Mary and Anne than if they were Mary and John, because while there's been a shift, male names still skew way more traditional than female names. So if you have a girl named Mary, it's a lot easier to predict that her brother will be John than the other way around--a boy named John could just as easily have a sister called Shannon or Tiffany or Alyssa. (All of which are traditional somewhere, but none of which carry quite the same extremely traditional feel as John-and-Mary.) My dad's sibling group is Ruth, Daniel, Peter, and Mary. I think it's a lot easier to predict Daniel and Peter from Ruth and Mary than the other way around. I don't think anybody would think there was anything jarring about a sibling group that was Linda, Daniel, Peter, and Tricia, but--oh, wow, there's the cultural shift right there: I'm having trouble coming up with male names from that generation to fill in with Ruth and Mary to create the contrast. Because male naming has been so very very much more traditional.

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

Males... Carol/Mariam/Lesley, Ernest, Clarence, Herbert, Albert, Buford.

Betty was named, of course, for our grandmother. And because it is startling, if you have a Sage Autumn aged 11 and and an infant named Betty Jane... ...it's really easy to guess there was a skew in lifestyle between those things.

Let's see... sibling wise... on one side it's James, Janice, John, Jeanine, and Joseph... on the other it's Deborah, Donald, Dana and David. Out of all those, I think of Donald as easily the name with the oldest "feel"... but he's a 4th, so that explains that.

And male names are much much more traditional. I think there's a lot of easily pointed out societial reasons for that, then I have a few theories of my own. (One of which is that women tend to be catty and have longer memories and take more imput from friends... ..."You can't name her Helen! Helen Soandso is a ______.")

But then I'm Southern, and it baffles me that people have names that just "sound good" or that their parents "just liked". I'm always like... but what were you named FOR/AFTER/something!?! (Even I was named after something. It was a stupid something, but it was something*.) And... again, being from the South... even a Mary/John combo doesn't seem so strange. I know several Marys my own age.

*a racehorse named Sagebrush Molly who ran in the Fall meet

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My father was born in the mid-50s, way north of the Mason-Dixon Line. So all of the names you've chosen as unusual male names that would be odd to see with Mary and Ruth sound like people at least ten years older than him to me, often more like a full generation older or more, and some of them just completely impossible. Buford, for example: men from our part of Minnesota are simply not called Buford, not for any year. It sounds as unlikely to me as Mohammed. More so: we have a neighbor called Mohammed, from a more recent immigrant group, whereas I have never met a transplant to Minnesota who was called Buford.

I'm wondering whether this means names around my dad's age were more conservative than the generation before his. My great-uncle was called Rudolph, and he named his sons Joe and Dave (Joseph and David really). Another great-uncle was called Dudley, and his sons are Rick, Rob, and Dave; another was Ardean, and his sons are John and Paul. (Also Joe, but I'm not sure how old Joe was when they adopted him, so they may well not have been responsible for his name.) It doesn't sound unreasonable to me to have great-uncles named Joseph or David or Paul, but a plain uncle named Donald would be more weird. I can't tell whether that's a social trend or a familial blip.

[sageautumn.livejournal.com]

Hm. Well. I was raised by my grandparents, and as such... their friends fill the slot in my head for "friends/peers of my parents. This could easily explain the generation gap there--I just didn't skip forward to the people who fill the hazy area between my friends and my "parents" friends. (which is where _your_ parents/parents friends would probably be)

I will say... Buford is very uncommon here also, but I've known two that I can recall. One was much older (he'd be probably 80 now, if he's still around) and the other was a peer of my uncle--so would be about 45. The younger one was named for his grandfather (not the same older man), and I believe he named his poor kid after him.

That same uncle had another friend named Clifford, who named _his_ poor kid after him too.

I have a plain uncle named Donald, a grandfather named Donald, a great-grandfather named Donald, etc... and a cousin named Donald. I think the generational thing goes out the window when it's passed down like that. (I kinda assume sooner or later there'll be a younger one come along, too.)

My grandmother is a Joan, which is pronounced Joann. For some reason (and although we've looked into it a little, noone can fathom why) there are a decent number of women around her age that have this trait--"jo-ann" being spelled J-o-a-n. She'll ask women she meets named Joann how they spell it, and if they're within about five years of her, there's a 50-50 shot of it being this odd thing. She was born in 1932. Her mother was Maggie-Mae... Margaret Mary, though we weren't/she wasn't Catholic at ALL. Names are all weird.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

I'd assume until proven otherwise that they, or at least their parents, are Christians & are preserving biblical names. That's the first conservative force/movement I'd jump to for a rationalle.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure you can draw much of a conclusion here. You are talking about past patterns, but only one future data point. So maybe there's something significant, maybe it's a statistical blip.

Are there lots of Johns and Marys in 2040?

I think there would be more to be assumed about John and Mary's family than about 2040 in general. Christian or descended from a recently Christian family, most likely. Anglophone. More might be able to be gleaned within the context of the story. If other character names tend to be made up or have their spelling altered, then J&M's family might be traditionalists or members of some sort of cultural throwback group.

For the more general question: I suspect you see the more recent pattern as more relevant because the pace of change in general in our society has been accelerating during this century, pretty much across the board. I know *I* do. Exposure to other cultures and synthesis of new ones is easier than ever due to ease of travel and communication.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

I, like Swan Tower, would likely assume that the characters were intended to be generic everyman/everywoman characters.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

John has been one of the 20 most popular names for boys for 50+ years through 2008 (I didn't go back further than 1958, but certainly its popularity goes back much further), though it has been slipping in rank all along. But I wouldn't find it odd that it is still reasonably popular 31 years from now. Mary, on the other hand, which was #1 in 1958, was gone from the top 20 by 1978, and has not reappeared.

Actually, that makes me think that's it's just about time for a resurgence in baby Marys. Emma was #1 in 2008, and that was my grandmother's name--born in 1897.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Actually, it does seem to be about a 4-generation thing - just long enough for the last cohort where it was popular to pass out of living memory. So Mary is due back in about 2060.

-Nameseeker

[zunger.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd assume much of anything at all, not even a religious affiliation or a linguistic heritage; both of those names have become common enough that parents are likely to give them (depending on naming fashions...) fairly freely, and they're common Anglicizations of various foreign names. (My own, for instance)

The only times names tend to really grab me when reading a book is if they're either very unusual or very period-/place-specific, and these names really aren't.

[hbevert.livejournal.com]

I'd assume that the names were given by parents trying to make a connection to traditions of the past.

Name toy

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

This is fun and may be relevant to your interests:

http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=MAR&ms=false&sw=f&exact=false