Surrender "Dorothy"

Seems to me that no one ever likes their hair, what there is of it.   Compliment a woman's long flowing curls, and she will likely say, "I worked for hours to straighten it!"  And then a woman with straight hair will tell you they rolled it and curled it and wadded it up in italics for hours, only to have it go straight again.

Most men, as long as their bangs don't block their view of whatever screen they're looking at, do not care.

But how about their names?  Do people like their first names? Well, the high school class of 2032, 18 years from today, will have a lot of boys named Noah ( a whole flood of 'em!), Liam, Jacob, Mason, William, Ethan, Michael, Alexander, Jayden and Daniel. Noah just bumped Michael out of the top spot for the first time since 1960.

Over in the girls' locker room, they'll be answering to Sophia, Emma, Olivia, Isabella, Ava, Mia, Emily, Abigail, Madison and Elizabeth.  Sofia with an 'F' is # 13 and moving up fast, especially among viewers of Modern Family.

Now, a hundred years ago in 1914, the top boy names were names by which every person my age knows a dozen of each, at least: John, William, James, Robert, Joseph, George, Charles, Edward, Frank, and Walter.  For girls in the nineteen-teens, you had Mary, Helen, Dorothy, Margaret, Ruth, Anna, Mildred, Elizabeth, Frances and Marie.  All lovely names, worn by some mighty wonderful people.  #100 that year for boys was Irving, and you don't meet too many of them anymore, but Sophie was #100 for girls then and it's still around in various iterations.

Tito Puente

What names made the biggest jumps in popularity, you're asking me?  Well, say hi to Jayceon (#262).  That's the birth name of the rapper known as The Game, and he has a reality show on VH-1, so his name is out there and being given to lots of little Jayceons.  For girls, it's Daleyza (#585), the name of the young daughter of Larry Hernandez, a Mexican-American singer with a show called "Larrymania."

Tito Tito

All I know is, I wished my folks had named me either Leon or Tito. How cool would that be, to call somewhere and go, "This is Tito.  I'm on the way over.  Have everything ready."

And you know, they would!

Toriano "Tito" Jackson

John Patsy "Tito" Francona