Les habiles tyrans ne sont jamais punis

Back to the Derwent River! But this is from yesterday, no work today as it was eight week vaccination time and I wouldn't miss it for quids. Of course, my role mainly involved chasing Henry around for two hours as he weaved through throngs of kids named Braydon, Jayden, Rayden, Kayden and even one called River looking for unearned jelly beans. Gold was struck as Ezra was terribly good, and Henry happily snared his reward. After the trip out, I did ponder to myself, "whatever happened to 'Steve' (or 'Mark', 'Dave' or 'Colin')?

Comments

Debbie Courson Smith said…

Mark, Dave, Steve, John will return. That's the great thing about those names, they always come back in style at some point - while the artsy-spelled names fade away.

18 September 2008 at 23:17

smudgeon said…

There are only so many different ways to spell "Madison" before the fun wears off...hopefully.

19 September 2008 at 07:56

USelaine said…

I love names and their meanings/origins. I have about a dozen books of and about them, but now you have only to search the web to find charts of name frequency through the years. Which brings us to the point that all these names originally meant something, in some language, as nouns or adjectives. But if you call someone Joy or Stone today, you are branded a hippie, are you not? Right. Well, then. In my view, River is good. Made up "sounds" like Rayden, not so much.

19 September 2008 at 16:08

Anonymous said…

I can thoroughly recommend Russell Ash "Potty, Fartwell and Knob: Extraordinary but True Names of British People" which I have just finished, and which proves that daft names were never just the preserve of the last 10 years, even though it feels like it from here.

When I was a health visitor in London, I remember visiting a mum with a new baby, doing all the checks and paperwork etc, and then going back to the office (this would have been about 3 1/2 years ago). The following is the true conversation that followed between me and my assistant:

Me: You'll never guess in a million years what they've called their baby.
Assistant: What?
Me: David.
Assistant: *falls off chair in shock*

19 September 2008 at 17:32

Kris McCracken said…

Boise Diva, there was a kiddie in the local paper today with an even worse name: Ze-Jai (think “CJ”). Anglo-Australian kiddie, moronic parents.

Me, good old “Maddysinn” is my favourite. Not a patch on the “Jaxxyn” from a couple of years back though...

USelaine, I am a bit of a keen on names and their history too. “Ezra” has proven an interesting talking point with many people though, I honestly thought that it wasn’t that obscure.

Jackie, I have heard of the book, and will have to check it out. Do you have a favourite name from your time as a health visitor?

22 September 2008 at 15:32

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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