At least it's not Hurricane Humberto Humberto.
BTW: The Wikipedia entry for Lolita includes the following statement by Nabokov: "I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more." Nor, to my knowledge, are hurricanes named Lolita, although who wouldn't rather have their home wrecked by Hurricane Lolita rather than Hurricane Humberto? Anyway, if Nabakov's statement is true, I'm trying to think if there are other candidates for novels that killed off a first name?
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But there are still many Doloreses, demonstrating that no one actually knows her real name.
The trend usually runs the other way, to be sure. (Think of all the 4- or 5-year-old Britneys out there. Or the Hermiones who will be class of 2019-2025.)
Nabokov, in his next novel, Pale Fire, created a Hurricane Lolita:
"It was a year of tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine."
And actress Lolita Davidovich was born three years after the novel Lolita was published in the US>
The baby-name voyager suggests Nabokov is at least half right, but also that JK Rowling has had no effect on baby-naming trends as of yet. Not even the pedestrian Harry has made a comeback, let alone Hermione.
It's not just novels. You don't meet many men named Adolf any more.
On the other hand, Joseph is still pretty common. Can't recall meeting anyone called Pol, though.
No, no Pols, but the winner of "Britain's Got Talent" was a guy named "Paul Potts", which seems a bit unfortunate to me.
I wonder about the name Zelda. It was hot in the 20s, but declined steadily after that. It was all the way out of the top 1000 girl names by the 70s before the videogame (1986). I would have guessed it would have made a resurgence, but it doesn't look like it has so far...
Jay: I didn't know that about Pale Fire. Fabulous!
Groucho Marx's real name was Adolph, so both his real and stage names seem no extinct. Now I'm in a reverie wondering whether history would be different had Hitler's first name been Groucho.
Albert Brooks' real name is Albert Einstein.
Also, I had a great uncle Sylvester that changed his name to "Tom." I'm pretty sure that was before Rocky came out, though. JJ
Uh, dude?
Groucho was "Julius Henry Marx."
As for novels making names scarce, you just don't see many Ebenezers anymore, do you?
Or did you ever?
Shit, I forgot to mention that it was Harpo who was originally named Adolph. He changed his name sometime during the Great War (the first one, anyway) to Arthur.
Yeah, I know a lot of shit about the Marx Brothers. Sue me.
Yes, Groucho was actually "Julius" while Harpo was "Adolph," and Harpo later changed his real name to Arthur. So in fact your observation is even better. Heil Harpo.
I once recommended Pale Fire to an undergraduate reading group (at Princeton) and they were so fastidious that they read the whole thing straight through without looking at the Cliffs notes or even reading the introduction to the book, and so the novel's structure revealed itself to them as intended, and they were somewhat weirded out.
I don't know about novels killing off names, but I know that there is no record of anyone named "Wendy" before Peter Pan was published.
Same with "Pamela" and, well, Pamela.
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