Why do the girls -- Stanley and Roy -- have men's names?
I wish I knew... I suppose it's a quirk explained in the novel, but not in the film.
They should have explained it - or change the two women's names - because it's gratuitously distracting. (Not TERRIBLY distracting, but still...:))
I believe a naming convention of the south during that time - I don't know if it still is or not - was to name female children the first name of their father, and to name male children the last name of their mother. I'm going to name my first kid Ralph.
shareJeez it definitely still is not, if it ever was. I've never met a single Southern female with a male name, and i grew up in the South and was born in 1955.
It was common in the South before WW2 and going way back before the
Civil War to have nicknames, boys and girls, it didn't matter. Gen.
Robert E Lee was called Bobby Lee on both sides of the Civil War.
Gen. John Bell Hood was called Sam. It was that way with girls as
they got male names. The old gal that wrote "In this Our Life"
grew-up in Richmond, Virginia.
"Many troubled things have been in my life, a few actually happened."
---Mark Twain
Well, that's funny, because now that you mention it, my Southern grandmother, who was born circa 1900, was named Lily Pearl (because when her father first saw her after delivery, he said she looked like lilies and pearls). Yeeks! My grandmother, being somewhat of a tomboy (even though she was a professional singer and had an exquisite voice), always hated her name. Her surname, however, was James -- and so thankfully, she acquired the nickname "Jimmy" very very early on, and was virtually never called anything else.
Funny.
I guess this also explains the proliferation of "Billy Jo" and "Bobby Jo" and such for old-time small-town Southern girls.
My mother's middle name was Albert after my grandfather. She was born in Georgia in 1943.
shareI bet that was their nicknames. Like we see sams who are really Samantha, Alex, Alexandra. People name girls male names like Daryl and Morgan and Michael now. So why not then?
shareI just finished reading the novel, and it provides no explanation. In fact, the Timberlakes have a third child who was omitted from the film, a married son named Andrew. It would have been really amusing if Glasgow had given the son an ambiguous name such as "Carroll" or "Evelyn".
"Stone-cold sober I find myself absolutely fascinating!"---Katharine Hepburn
Hi Harold, thanks for the feedback about the book. It's a Southern tradition -- see above.
. . . . . . . .
Here's how Patrick Dennis described the "Southern Tradition" in AUNTIE MAME:
"The relatives kept coming. They all had two first names and some of them even had two last names. There were about six men named Moultrie, four named Calhoun, eight called Randolph, and almost everybody had a Lee tucked somewhere into his or her name. To make things even more confusing, almost half the women had men's names. There were ladies called Sarah John, Liza William, Susie Carter, Lizzie Beaufort - pronounced Byew-fert - Mary Arnold, Annie Bryan, Lois Dwight."
The last-named was almost certainly a nod to Lois Dwight Cole, the famous Macmillan editor who nurtured Margaret Mitchell's GONE WITH THE WIND.
"Stone-cold sober I find myself absolutely fascinating!"---Katharine Hepburn
LOL thanks for that quote.
Here's another oddity: There are two cities called "Beaufort" in the Carolinas. The one in North Carolina is pronounced "Boh-fert"; the one in South Carolina is pronounced "Byew-fert."
. . . . . . . .
In Atlanta you'll find two pronunciations of H-o-u-s-t-o-n:
There's "Hyewston" as in "Whitney Houston" and "Houston, Texas", but it's also pronounced "Howston" as in "Howston Street" - "I stopped off at Whitney Houston's new place on Houston Street" would be "I stopped off at Whitney Hyewston's new place on Howston Street." You're likely to get a blank look if you say "Hyewston Street".
And let's not even get into John H-u-s-t-o-n, okay?
"Stone-cold sober I find myself absolutely fascinating!"---Katharine Hepburn
Interesting. And as I'm sure you know if you've been to Manhattan, Houston Street is pronounced "Howston" there, too -- and Houston Street is the basis of the portmanteau word "SoHo" = SOuth of HOuston.
Just like Tribeca = TRIangle BElow CAnal Street.
. . . . . . . .
Although I appreciate you quoting Patrick Dennis, author of two of my favorite books, He was hardly an expert in Southern Culture. I'm pretty sure this is not a southern tradition. Besides, those are all middle names.
sharePLEASE STOP SAYING ITS A SOUTHERN TRADITION!
My family is about as Southern (from South Carolina and Georgia) as you can get and it has never been a tradition that my grandparents or great-grandparents know of. Southern women (if they're real Southerners, not transplants) normally have ultra-feminine names. A lot of times, you're called by your first and middle names as in my immediate (thru 1st cousins) family, I have three Vicki's (all spelled differently) so if you simply called Vicki at a family gathering or reunion, you'd get three voices responding "yes, ma'am or yes, sir?"
My bet is this family is a transplant, especially considering NONE of them have any resemblance of a drawl as others do. They could possibly be in Maryland as they keep referring to Baltimore and if you lived down on the Virginia border back then, a hour to 2 hour drive was a long ways. My great-grandmother also believes they're a transplant and she was born before WW2 and says with the lack of an accent, they're from the South.
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"A transplanted Rebel" Vicki
I am still puzzled by that as well. I've never seen any other movie where the women were named manly names. And one of the quotes above, says women might of had a masculine middle name but their first names were still feminine. I agree that I thought Roy was taken from Fitzroy and maybe could've even been a nickname for something, but Stanley? That is just dreadful!
"Are you going to your grave with unlived lives in your veins?" ~ The Good Girl
All families of that time period did not follow the tradition, obviously. In This Our Life was written by a Virginian.
.
I think it's probably a Northerner's notion that it is a southern tradition. I've never heard of it. I've lived in South Carolina for almost 45 years, and my Dad's family were lifelong southerners from North Carolina and Kentucky and his ancestors before that. This would also certainly account for the amusing if misguided Auntie Mame quote from the Chicago born and bred Patrick Dennis.
shareI assumed that Roy's name was taken from her mother's maiden name - FitzRoy.
shareAnd Roy means king in French, Fitzroy meaning son/daughter of the king in England. Queen Victoria's uncle King William IV gave the surname Fitzwilliam to his large brood of illegitiment sons and daughters. Personally I'd have named Roy Regina (pronounced REE-GEENA), which means queen; there are too many girls with masculine names these days that just aren't attractive, like Stanley's.
shareInteresting. and might I add that in Britain(and all former British territories) Houston is pronounced HOO-ston.
shareMy beautiful blonde friend in college had the name D. Victoria Cowan. When I had gained her confidence, she admitted me that the D. stood for Douglas!?!?
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There is a new trend here in the South to name girls with the surnames of ancestors. I can recall young women and girls among family and friends named Chandler, Kennedy, Taylor, Kelsey, Lindsay, Finley, etc. Revival of the old custom, I guess. I like it.
shareYes, those are fine names but STANLEY and ROY?...the names are incredibly distracting in this movie, especially since they are mentioned every other minute or so throughout. Hollywood movies often change names from novels and in this case they should have!
shareAlways reminds me of the two male leads in 'Champion'...........Midge and Connie
Short Cut, Draw Blood
President Obama's mother's name was Stanley.
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