TIL Thread: Today I learned...

[Octavia]

Today I learned 7 kids were named Rarity in 2013.

Wow there are some incredibly bad names on that list. Pistol, Ransom, Psalms, Power, and Subaru.

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

Subaru is an actual name.

[Dong Strongly]

Random is actually a real name too, like the founder of Oldsmobile was named Ransom Olds. Just hasn't been popular in like 60 years

[Pocket]

It's also the name of the guy from C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.

TIL part of Japan runs on 50Hz AC power like Europe instead of 60Hz like North America. Which is crazy and left me wondering how they managed to standardize their television broadcasts, let alone video game consoles. The answer, it turns out, is that it's not hard to build TVs that can run at 30 fps off 50Hz power; it's just that nobody else did because they didn't have to. Japan didn't get TV until 1953, when the kinks had been ironed out.

Funny that this never came up on Techmoan. He imports AV equipment from the US or Japan quite a lot and has sometimes had to resort to elaborate measures to get it working on UK power.

[Smoke]

Today I learned 7 kids were named Rarity in 2013.

That's probably still a lot less than the amount of Sephiroths running around.

[Pocket]

Also I said this waaaaay back in the early days here, but of all the pony names, Rarity doesn't sound at all out of place as a person's name. It sounds like the kind of name a parent might dial back to after being informed that "Jewel" is too out-there. I'm sure there were girls named Rarity before My Little Pony was even a thing. The association would be more embarrassing than the name itself.

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

Rarity is alright

[Octavia]

I bet all the people who named their kids Daenerys before Game of Thrones was done airing are kicking themselves.

[Orange Fluffy Sheep]

I bet all the people who named their kids Daenerys before Game of Thrones was done airing are kicking themselves.

bad writing owned my child

[Mr. Big]

TIL that the word "meme" was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 for his book "The Selfish Gene."

[SlateSlabrock]

20 Weirdest Baby Names 2019

Luna, Lion, Peridot, Fawn, Tanith, Asherah, Osiris, Bodhi, Manu, Garian, Aya, Alouette, Piran, Saskia, Aurora, Zephyrine, Hyacinth, Soraya, Omari, Whistler

[Gloomy Rube]

Speaking of Aurora, she hasn't posted in years

[Gloomy Rube]

also in what dimension is "Aya" a weird name, or Alouette for that matter. Or Luna??

[Gloomy Rube]

Like did the article writer not know that Alouette is even in a common children's song or something

[SlateSlabrock]

meanwhile, another article says people named their kid Noctis

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

calling your kid osiris is a power move

[Fizzbuzz]

In that vein, I wonder how many kids got named Isis on any given year and how quickly that dropped off.

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

am i wrong in thinking some of these "weirdest baby names" lists are vaguely racist?

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

like, several of these names are perfectly ordinary names but because they're not john or annie, they're "weird"

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

like Soraya is a name i've heard of before and looking it up it's common

[Octavia]

20 Weirdest Baby Names 2019

Luna, Lion, Peridot, Fawn, Tanith, Asherah, Osiris, Bodhi, Manu, Garian, Aya, Alouette, Piran, Saskia, Aurora, Zephyrine, Hyacinth, Soraya, Omari, Whistler

Aside from Osiris and Whistler, none of those are particularly weird

In that vein, I wonder how many kids got named Isis on any given year and how quickly that dropped off.

There used to be a website where you'd type in any name and it would tell you its popularity by decade going back to 1900. The name Adolf was really popular until the 1940s.

[Mr. Big]

There used to be a website where you'd type in any name and it would tell you its popularity by decade going back to 1900. The name Adolf was really popular until the 1940s.

I remember seeing the name Adolph Zukor in those black and white "Popeye" cartoons (Zukor was the head of Paramount Pictures at the time).

Of course, Zukor was born in 1873...

[Bigdog]

also in what dimension is "Aya" a weird name, or Alouette for that matter. Or Luna??

Like did the article writer not know that Alouette is even in a common children's song or something

I assume that 'weird' is being used specifically in the context of being a name, which it definitely would be, at least in my experience. It doesn't have to be a tonguetwister, or be generated by a cat walking on a keyboard, or be a video game/fantasy series character.

am i wrong in thinking some of these "weirdest baby names" lists are vaguely racist?

I mean, I'm sure that some stereotypically non-white names can make it onto a list due to the prejudices/ignorance of whoever's writing the list. If one could show that a given name-- Le'Veon, say-- had already become quite well established in the American black community by the time it was put on one of the lists, then that would be pretty good evidence that it was the author's ignorance at work. At the same time, though, someone had to be the first one to say 'Man, I'm gonna go out and off the wall with my kid's name' and call them Le'Veon. If you had managed to get the scoop and put Le'Veon in your shitty clickbait article soon enough after that happened, it wouldn't have been incorrect to call it weird, meaning unusual, any more than it is for Rarity, say. Of course, even then, an unconsciously or consciously racist person could focus on trawling for 'black-sounding' names while ignoring all the shit suburban moms are doing, in which case we'd be right back to being racist.

(I have no idea about the actual relative incidence of the name Le'Veon, by the way.)

Anyway, all this comes down to the point that perceived weirdness is extremely relative. 'Daenerys' is not something that made me stop in my tracks when I read ASoIaF, because I knew it was a fantasy novel and GRRM was pulling a lot of the names out of his ass, not just that one. Even Actual Human Names like, I don't know, Zdzisław or Quang Dũng will not cause any fluffle if I encounter them in their expected ethnic context, but if they suddenly took off among middle-class Anglo-Saxon whites, it would be a bit noteworthy and you would expect there to be a story there.

[Gloomy Rube]

I assume that 'weird' is being used specifically in the context of being a name, which it definitely would be, at least in my experience.

What? Alouette is literally a common french name.

Aya's a pretty normal japanese name, and Luna's been a name for more than a century too.

[Gloomy Rube]

It is extremely not a weird thing to name a child wowee

[Bigdog]

What? Alouette is literally a common french name.

Aya's a pretty normal japanese name, and Luna's been a name for more than a century too.

I did not know that and will edit accordingly. But my point remains. Is the article talking about French names? Or is it an article in English, for English speakers, about names in the English speaking world?

Learning that Alouette is already a common French name just moves it over into the same category as the Polish and Vietnamese examples I cited.

[Bigdog]

also you confused me by appearing to imply that Alouette was only a non-weird name because it is the title of a song wherein children sing to a bird. the relevant fact that it was also an established name in a foreign language was nowhere to be seen

[W.T. Fits]

Today I learned that Stan Lee wrote the lyrics to the opening theme to the 1985 "Defenders of the Earth" animated series.

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

Today i learned about Rotor Ships

[Octavia]

Today i learned about Rotor Ships

Here's a small-scale video on how they work

[Pocket]

I wonder if they also reduce noise pollution underwater, which apparently is a huge problem.

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

probably, they're basically advanced sails, so the propellor would see little use

[Octavia]

TIL that if you wash your hands regularly and aren't terrified of the coronavirus scare, you can book a direct, round-trip flight from Chicago to San Diego for $113.

[Mr. Big]

TIL about a comic strip called Miss Caroline. It's one of those "kids say the darndest things" comic strip that was common at the time, like Dennis the Menace and the ilk, but with the twist that Caroline referred to Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter.

The strip is also infamous with comic strip fans for its VERY unfortunate timing. It began on November 4, 1963

The final strip ran on November 22, the day JFK was assassinated; the syndicate and the newspapers pulled the rest of the strips off the circulation immediately following the event. At less than 3 weeks, Miss Caroline probably holds the record for the shortest-run syndicated newspaper strip.

[Gloomy Rube]

From a time magazine in july that year:

"A new comic being offered to U.S. dailies may not be enjoyed very much by the adult occupants at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. But Miss Caroline—the story in single cartoon panels of a little girl who lives in a big white house—has already been sold to 13 dailies,* and will doubtless pick up more before its scheduled debut in comic pages in November."

[Gloomy Rube]

It's a case of unfortunate timing, but it's also a case where the comic's content was rather...



maybe not a big loss in the world of newspaper comics

[Gloomy Rube]

those dolls are super cute though

[Mr. Big]

TIL that Jerry Springer was a mayor of Cincinnati before becoming a talkshow host.

He was embroiled in a scandal where they uncovered he solicited a prostitute because they found a check he wrote. Jerry's excuse was that he didn't have cash with him.

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

those dolls are super cute though

[Mr. Big]

TIL that Jerry Springer was a mayor of Cincinnati before becoming a talkshow host.

He was embroiled in a scandal where they uncovered he solicited a prostitute because they found a check he wrote. Jerry's excuse was that he didn't have cash with him.

I should amend to this: he got elected mayor AFTER the prostitution scandal happened.

And he tried to pay with a city government check.

Springer never really covered it up during his campaign and was rather open about it. They elected him anyway.