President Grover Cleveland

The popularity of first names in the United States changes over time. Some first names become popular suddenly and then disappear from regular use, while other names seem to be popular for many, many years.  (To come and go means to be temporary, not to last long.)

A recent article in the New York Times listed the most popular first names for babies over the past 100 plus years.  It is interesting to see which names have stood the test of time (lasted a long time, have not changed in many years) and which names came and went.  For example, Mildred was a very popular name in the 1920s in the US.  You could find many young girls named Mildred (as well as Evelyn and Virginia).  But now almost no one names their child Mildred.  In fact, if you see the name Mildred, you might laugh a little, since it is such an old-fashioned (old and no longer used) name.  Similarly, Grover was popular in the late 19th century, but not in recent years.  (The picture at right is of President Grover Cleveland, who was president in the late 19th century.)

The article says that names that suddenly or very quickly become popular usually don’t last very long.  For example, in the 1950s, Linda suddenly became very popular, but then dropped in popularity within a few years.  Amy was a popular name for girls in the 1970s (the president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, had a daughter named Amy), but then declined in popularity by the 1990s.  Names that slowly become popular seem to last longer.  During the 1990s and early 2000s, names such as Zachery, Cody, and Adam were popular.

In some countries, it is common for English students to take an “English” name that is easier to spell and pronounce.  This gives students the opportunity to choose their own names, which can be a lot of fun.  Some of the names that are chosen, however, are no longer popular in the US.  I once had a student who called herself Gertrude, which is a name that has not been popular in the US since the 1930s.  The name sounded odd to an American, but of course she probably didn’t realize that is was no longer used very much.

There are some names that don’t change much in popularity.  The number of babies with these names is usually not large, but it is steady (stable, not going up or down in number).  For example, Ellen, Maria, Russell, Paul, Douglas, and Patrick are all names that have been relatively constant (steady) in popularity in the past 100 years in the US.  Daniel has also been popular for many years, especially in the 1990s.

What are the names that are suddenly becoming popular now?  Here is a list:

• Ava (girl)
• Ella (girl)
• Addison (boy or girl?)
• Aiden (boy)
• Jayden or Jaden (boy)
• Caden or Kaden (boy)
• Trinity (girl)

So if you want to adopt an English first name, you might want to avoid Mildred or Grover, and instead use names that are more current.  I suggest either “Jeff” or “Lucy.”

~Jeff

QUESTION:
Ho from Vietnam asked about several expressions related to colors, including “lily-white,” “green,” and “red flag.”

ANSWER:
Lily White:
A lily is a type of flower (see picture). The expression lily-white refers something that is pure, innocent, without fault, or without blame.  We often use this to talk about whether politicians and other people are honest or not.
- “Politicians have problems appearing lily white when they accept money from wealthy, influential people.”
- “Everyone thought that the university president was lily-white until the scandal broke (became known).”

“Lily-white” has a second meaning that relates to race.  It is used to describe something that excludes (does not allow) non-white people.
- “This club has been lily-white for 200 years and they don’t plan to change that even under community pressure.”
- “Few neighborhoods in Los Angeles are still lily-white.”
…

Green:
Being green means being inexperienced, new to doing something or performing a job.
- “The medical student is too green to perform this procedure without help.”
- “The new manager will seem a little green until she learns the job.”

These days, green has a second meaning.  We use green to refer to things that are not harmful to the environment.
- “We’re turning this into a green house by buying energy-efficient appliances (refrigerator, stove, etc.) and planting vegetables instead of grass.
- “By buying hybrid cars (cars that use gasoline and electricity), our company is taking the first step toward going green.”

…

Ho also asked about red flag, which is a warning that danger or a problem is coming.  We talked about it in the “Culture Note” of the Learning Guide for ESL Podcast 476 – Taking Chances in Business.  Please take a look at that.

Thanks, Ho, for the question, and I hope this is helpful.

~ Lucy

I was recently reading a fascinating book called The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton.  The books tries to show that much of our sense of art and artistic judgment is influenced by our genetics – that is, something that we are born with -  and that this instinct has evolved (slowly changed) over many, many years.  I’m not sure if I agree entirely with this argument, but it is an interesting idea.

In one section of the book, Dutton talks about research done by another writer, Christopher Booker, on the kinds of plots (story structures) that are found in the spoken and written stories of almost every language around the world.  Booker identifies seven “basic plots” that every story uses in one way or another.  Again, I’m not sure if this is true, but you may be interested in them.  Many stories may combine different kinds of plots as well:

• Overcoming the Monster – To overcome means to defeat, to win over.  A monster is a bad creature (person or animal).  This is a story about defeating an evil person or thing.
• Rags to Riches – Rags are dirty pieces of clothing; riches refers to lots of money.  This is a common expression in English, to go from “rags to riches,” especially to describe someone who works hard and becomes successful after being poor.  This is a story about someone going from being very poor to being very rich.
• Quest – A quest is when you search for something for a long time, usually something very important or very valuable.  Typically a quest story has a hero with others that help him in his search, and he must overcome some danger or evil in order to get his prize.  The hero gets the prize and a beautiful woman, and they often become King and Queen.
• Voyage and Return – A voyage is a long trip. In this kind of story, the protagonist (main character) leaves “normal experience” and goes into an alien or strange world, then returns after escaping some danger in the new world.  (The famous English children’s story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is an example of this.)
• Comedy – A rather broad (large) category, this kind of story often has some confusion until the end of the story, when the hero and his lover are united.
• Tragedy – A tragedy is a very sad event or situation.  Tragic stories are usually about how someone overreaches (tries to do too much or more than he or she should) and this leads to terrible consequences (results).
• Rebirth – A rebirth is when someone is reborn – born again.  This kind of story has the protagonist going through some dramatic change during the story, so that by the end of it he or she is essentially a new character.

Booker later added two more plot types:

• Rebellion – A rebellion is when people try to overthrow (defeat, bring down) their government.  George Orwell’s 1984 would be an example of this kind of story.
• Mystery – A mystery involves some crime or unusual event that the protagonist tries to figure out or solve.  The protagonist is usually called a detective, and may be a police officer (but not always).

So there you have all the possible plots in the world – at least, according to Mr. Booker!

~Jeff

I’m not sure these are, in fact, the best one-liners (short jokes or funny/clever remarks), but I thought these were pretty good when I saw them recently in a magazine.

~ Lucy

…..

“If you can’t say something good about someone, come, sit right here by me.”
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
(She was the oldest child of President Theodore Roosevelt.  This is a takeoff (different version) of the popular saying, “If you can’t say something good about someone, don’t say anything at all.”)

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
(She is a historian at Harvard University.)

“The reward for conformity (doing what is expected of us socially) is that everyone likes you except yourself.”
Rita Mae Brown
(She is an American novelist.)

“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”
- Dolly Parton on her signature (unique; distinctive) look
(She is a very well known country singer, most popular in the 1970s and 1980s.)

And, finally:

“A facility (ability to do something easily and well) for quotation covers the absence (being without) of original thought.
Lord Peter Wimsey
(He is a character in Dorothy Sayers’ classic mystery novels from 1930s and 1940s.)

When someone says to a child, “Eat up!” they mean “Hurry up and eat!”  This may happen if the child is taking a long time to eat or is playing instead of eating the way he or she should.  I heard my own parents say this to me many times when I was a child, and it is quite common in most American families to say this, especially if the family is getting ready to leave and a child is still eating.

ESL Podcast #477 is about making a gourmet or high-quality meal, usually for a formal occasion.  Certainly if you are enjoying good food, you don’t want to “hurry up.”  But the truth is that Americans seem to eat more rapidly than people in most other countries.  A recent article in the New York Times provided the average amount of time people spend eating each day (all meals combined) for several different countries, and the results are very interesting: Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans spend the least amount of time eating among the countries surveyed – less than 75 minutes on average each day.  The French, Japanese, Italians, and Spanish spend the most time eating.  Here are some of the countries, from most time spent eating to least time spent (times are approximate):

• France -  135 minutes
• Japan – 118 minutes
• Italy – 115 minutes
• Spain – 103 minutes
• Germany – 101 minutes
• Great Britain – 82 minutes
• Norway – 80 minutes
• United States – 75 minutes
• Canada – 70 minutes
• Mexico – 65 minutes

Why are there such differences?  No doubt there are cultural explanations for why Americans eat so quickly.  I suppose the “slow eating” countries would say that they have better food, which may be true.  I know whenever I cook a meal, I eat it as quickly as possible, because it always tastes terrible!

~Jeff

QUESTION:
Benjamin in France wants to know what the rules are for capitalizing words in titles.

ANSWER:
This is not an easy question to answer because the major style guides (written rules for using a language) disagree.

First, it may be helpful to distinguish between capitalizing words and putting words in caps.  To capitalize a word is to make the first letter of a word a capital letter, for example:  “Los Angeles,” “Kathy Griffin,” and “Alice’s Restaurant.”  To put a word in caps is for all letters of the word to be written in capital letters, for example:  “LOS ANGELES.”

You may have noticed, as Benjamin has, that titles in English don’t always capitalize every word.  Titles of anything–books, films, songs, plays, television shows, and many other things–always capitalize the first word.  After that, the rules get more murky (unclear) and it’s the little words that style guides disagree on.

According to one popular style manual, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, this is the rule:
“Capitalize the first and last words of the title and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions (if, because, as, that, etc.).”
=> This would mean capitalizing most of the words.

According to another popular style manual, The Chicago Manual of Style:
“…articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length, are lowercased (not capitalized) unless they are the first or last word of the title.”
=> This would mean that many of the little, less important words would not be capitalized.

A third source, The Associated Press Stylebook, has these rules:

• Capitalize the principal (most important) words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters.
• Capitalize an article–the, a, an–or words of fewer than four letters if it is the first or last word in a title.

=> This would mean that the length of the word determines whether little words are capitalized or not.

Do you have a headache?  I do, too.  The general advice is to pick one set of rules–one style manual–and stick with (follow) it. I know that this isn’t a very satisfying and definitive (authoritative; certain) answer, but if it makes you feel any better, this is a question that many native speakers struggle with, too.

~ Lucy

To doodle is to draw shapes and lines on a piece of paper for no particular purpose.  Students in class will often doodle on their notebooks and papers while the teacher is talking, perhaps because they are bored or uninterested.   I didn’t often doodle in school, but I have been doodling while talking to someone on the phone for many, many years.

Interestingly, my doodles are almost always exactly the same.  I draw a house, then the ground beneath the house, then a sidewalk leading up to the house.  Sometimes I’ll also draw a tree next to the house.  These images – house, tree, sidewalk – are actually very common drawings that children make, which is probably when I first started doing them.  (It could also be possible that I have the mind of a child, which many have told me!)

I doodle two other things when talking on the phone or listening to a voice mail message.  First, I always add a radio antenna on top of the house.  This is probably because, since the age of 11, I have been an amateur radio operator.  (Amateur radio – sometimes called ham radio – is a service that allows you to talk to other people in different states and countries by using radio waves.)  The second thing I doodle (sometimes even without the house) is a series of triangles that form a small box or rectangle.  I have no idea why I do that.

Are these doodles a distraction – that is, do they make you listen less carefully?  It appears that they don’t.  In fact, doodling appears to help you remember things while you doodle!  A study in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology found that people who were asked to doodle while listening to a voicemail message remembered more of the message than those who did not doodle.  One theory is that doodling provides just enough stimulation (activity that produces a response) to prevent people from being too distracted.

Some people even claim that their doodles help them remember things that happened many months or even years ago.  This would not work for me, however, since I am not very creative and all my doodles are the same.

-Jeff

For several years now, there have been many reports that the music industry is losing money because people aren’t buying CDs anymore.  Instead, people are downloading music, and many do it through file-sharing (moving files from computer to computer through the Internet), so that the music companies and the artists (singers, musicians) don’t get paid.

One way that the music industry is trying to make up for (compensate for; correct; fix) this lost income is by repackaging people’s favorite artists, putting together songs and adding material in a new way.   They are counting on diehard fans (people who love something very, very much) to want everything, or at least something special, that is released for their favorite artist.  Many of these new packages are “anniversary editions,” perhaps 10, 25, or 50 years after the album/CD was first released or since the birth or death of an artist.  What do these reissues (re-releases) include?

Some very old recordings that came out in vinyl (flat, round disks played on a record player) are remastered, using today’s technology to improve the audio (sound) quality.  Other reissues have “extras,” such as never-before-heard versions of songs, commentary (spoken comments) by the artist or people involved in making the music, and remixes, which are new versions of songs created technically, often by changing the tempo (speed) or by putting them in a different order or adding parts to the songs.  Now some reissues include DVDs of live (in front of an audience) performances or interviews. These reissues and repackaged music can sell for between $100 and $200.  For diehard fans, this may be a small price to pay.

Do you have a favorite musical artist that would tempt you (make you want very much) to buy reissued or repackaged music?

~ Lucy