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Read other letters about this article
...as in Cotton Mather, one of the WASP-iest antecedents in American genealogy. I suppose the modern-day version would be Nylon.
I'm kind of disturbed by all the letters chortling about the ignorance of black parents who burden their children with such hideous names. At least the names are evocative. Lower-middle-class white people give their children similarly awful, but dull, stodgy names apparently lifted from soap operas.
Or, in the case of girls, the names are excessively feminine creations and often misspelled, and I wince when I hear of a Jayleena or a KayCee (intercaps intentional). And who can ever forget JonBenet? What the hell kind of name was that?
Incidentally, speaking of Samantha, another such made-up name whose origins appear respectably shrouded in the mists of time is Vanessa. As in Vanessa Redgrave, or Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's half-sister). It was Jonathan Swift's nickname for his young mistress, Esther Vanhomrigh, whom he immortalized in the narrative poem "Cadenus and Vanessa."
