Do you know what onomatophobia is?

Onomatophobia means an abnormal dread of certain words or names because of their supposed significance. It is also a kind of the fear of hearing particular names.

The origin of the words onomato (meaning word) and phobia (meaning fear) is Greek. Onomatophobia is considered to be a specific phobia. Onomatophobia is also related to Nomatophobia (fear of names), Logophobia and Verbophobia (which both mean the fear of words). Many specific phobias can be traced back to a specific triggering person, event, usually a traumatic experience at an early age. Treatment includes cognitive and behavioral therapy. These people are taught not to react in a certain way to a particular name.

About Names: Noah enjoys revival thanks to flood of pop culture references

Noah Cyrus (sister of Miley)

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his June 4th column, he looks at the history of the name Noah.

The first Noah (Hebrew “Noach,” “rest, renewal”) is told by God to build an ark to save his family and many animals from a worldwide flood in the Bible’s Book of Genesis. In early England, Noah was pronounced “Noy”; Noyes and Noyce families had ancestors called Noah. Noah was familiar to medieval Christians through church mystery plays. It was rare as a given name, perhaps because Noah is a comic henpecked husband in these plays. Noy was usually a nickname for someone who’d portrayed the character.

Boys began to be regularly named Noah after the Reformation. It was more popular with Puritans in America than England. Britain’s 1851 census found 3,688 Noahs. The 1850 United States census had 11,313, when the two nations had about the same population.

In 1880, when Social Security’s yearly baby name lists started, Noah ranked 130th. Its long decline bottomed out at 698th in 1963. Noah then rose as a “different but not too different” alternative for other Old Testament fashions like Joshua, Nathan, and Aaron. Bob Seger’s 1969 hit song “Noah” helped.

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Noahs in history!

What Happens When A Big Business Tries To Rename A Neighborhood

That happened to some Californians in 2017, when Google Maps changed the moniker of three San Francisco neighborhoods. Given the extensive reach that Google has in the transmission of geographic data, through Google Maps and its geospatial analysis software Google Earth Engine, the name quickly spread and was adopted by other businesses. But residents decried the change.

There are many reasons why someone might want to change their neighborhoods name, but what’s driving current name-changing initiatives carried out by big businesses with little or no personal connection to the places they rename? Raechel A. Portelli, as a geographer at the Michigan State University, discusses three main driving forces.

About Names: Cleveland Evans: Jackson, Sophia were most popular baby names in 2018

Sophia Loren

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his May 21st column, he looks at the United States’ top baby names for 2018.

Know anyone named Jackson or Sophia? Kindergarten teachers do. On May 10, the Social Security Administration released the United States’ top baby names of 2018. On SSA’s lists, Liam and Emma rank first. Emma’s been No. 1 since 2014. Liam became No. 1 in 2017, beating out Noah.

When Sofia and other spellings are added, 21,691 Sophias arrived in 2018. Sophia has been No. 1 since 2011. Last year, 10% more Sophias were born than Olivias, the No. 2 girls’ name. The rest of the girls’ top 10 are Emma, Isabella, Ava, Charlotte, Mia, Amelia, Riley and Evelyn. This is the same top 10 as last year, though Charlotte and Amelia moved up in the ranks.

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about the top US baby names for 2018!

About Names: Winifred, rooted in a resurrection story, has often come back to life

Winifred Atwell, famous boogie woogie and ragtime piano player.

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his May 7th column, he looks at the history of the name Winifred.

Winifred is the English version of Gwenfrewi, a Welsh name combining “gwen” (“white” or “holy”) with “frewi” (“reconciliation” or “peace”). The English form came from confusion with the Old English male name Winfred, from “win” (“friend” or “joy”) and “fred” (“peace”). The original Gwenfrewi lived around 650 in northern Wales. Though she was venerated as a saint by 750, nothing was written about her until around 1130, when Robert, prior of the Benedictine monastery at Shrewsbury, England, began promoting her.

Babies named Winifred began turning up all over England after 1400. Though never very common, Winifred never disappeared. The 1851 British census found 2,272 Winifreds in England and Wales. Winifred wasn’t as popular in America, partly because the Puritans avoided saints’ names. The 1850 United States census found 934 Winifreds. A quarter were born in Ireland — the Irish adopted Winifred as an English equivalent of Irish “Una” when their British rulers banned Gaelic names.

Since 2011, avant-garde parents looking for retro names have rediscovered Winifred. There were 21 Winifreds born in 2010 — 168 arrived in 2017. If it keeps increasing at that rate, Winifred will be back in the top thousand names in 2021.

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Winifreds in history!

About Names: Shirley’s star has fallen since Temple’s heyday

Shirley Temple wearing the Kennedy Center Honors, 1998

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his April 23rd column, he looks at the history of the name Shirley.

Shirley, Old English for “bright woodland clearing,” is the name of several English villages. As a surname, it shows that one’s ancestor lived in one of them. Several aristocratic English families are called Shirley. In 1403, Sir Hugh Shirley was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury, one of four knights deliberately dressed as King Henry IV to confuse the enemy.

When the custom of turning surnames into given names developed around 1700, boys named Shirley appeared in both Britain and America. Then in 1849, Charlotte Brontë published “Shirley,” her most famous novel after “Jane Eyre.” When wealthy heiress Shirley Keeldar first appears, it’s explained that “her parents, who had wished to have a son, finding that … Providence had granted them only a daughter, bestowed on her the same masculine family cognomen they would have bestowed on a boy.”

Shirley had a bit more staying power than many celebrity-inspired names, not leaving the top thousand until 2009. Two Shirleys named after Shirley Temple in 1934 — MacLaine and Jones — had huge film careers themselves.

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Shirleys in history!

Here’s the Meaning Behind the Royal Baby’s Surprisingly Popular Name Archie Harrison

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, have shared the news that they named their new royal baby Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, hours after introducing him to the public earlier in the day. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s choice in name marks a step away from royal tradition and symbolizes an effort by the royal family to become modern, says Cleveland Evans, a former president of the American Name Society and psychology professor at Bellevue University.

In 2017, Archie was no. 18 on the top 100 boys’ names in England and Wales, he says. Similar sounding names like Alfie, Charlie, Freddie and Teddy have also ranked in the top name choices on the list. “The choice definitely shows their personality, but also to a certain extent, the changes in the royal family as a whole, where things have become — especially since Princess Diana’s death — more open,” Evans says, referring to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. “They probably want to modernize it and want the royal family to be seen as regular people, which is why they’d choose a name like Archie, which at the moment is a regular, everyday British boy’s name.”

Want to know more? Click through to read the rest of the article at Time, including more information from the ANS’ own Cleve Evans!

Los Angeles has renamed a street after former President Obama

The City of Los Angeles has renamed a nearly 4-mile stretch of road from “Rodeo Road” to “Obama Boulevard,” in honor of the country’s first African-American president.

The location is significant, the city said, because Obama held his first campaign rally in Los Angeles on February 20, 2007, at Rancho Cienega Park. The park sits on Rodeo Road, right across from W. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Rodeo Road, which runs through a historic black neighborhood, is not the first strip to be named in honor of former presidents. The district where the road sits is also home to Washington Boulevard, Adams Boulevard and Jefferson Boulevard.

Royal baby Name of the 7th in line to the British throne revealed

The waiting game is over. Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have named their first child, a son born on the 6th May 2019, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. The royal couple made the announcement today via their official Instagram account, ending several days of feverish speculation about the baby’s name.

Archie became the 7th in line to the British throne the instant he was born, but he won’t be called “his royal highness,” as the rules around the granting of royal titles were tightened up about 100 years ago. Britain’s booming betting business had shown before Wednesday’s announcement that a lot of punters expected the new baby to be named Alexander, Arthur, Philip or a handful of other go-to historical British royal names.

Washington State’s bummer place names

Many of our towns and geographical features have names to match. Some of these names, although blunt, really tell their own story: Mount Terror, for example, or Foulweather Bluff.

A lot of those origins seem weather-related. In one case, an explorer couldn’t find something because of the fog. In a few cases, an expedition – or a group of cattlemen – got stuck somewhere kind of miserable and inconvenient during a harsh winter. Others are almost a personal vendetta towards the places themselves: Deception Pass, Mount Horrible, Useless Bay.

It’s notable that most of these places had perfectly serviceable names before white explorers came along and gave their own bummer spin while drawing their maps. Find the map and all names here.