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Darwin in American Life
The resident troll routinely
accuses the Weblog crew of being a bunch of hicks from Kalamazoo,
but Kalamazoo is a cosmopolitan paradise compared to the Lake
Wobegonian farm town (only one step above 9-man football) where I
presently reside.
As it happens, the most excitable
boy this town has produced in recent memory had the given name of
"Darwin", and I recently ran into another old guy from around here
with that same name -- a farmer. And quite by chance, one of my
cousins (who was visiting from an equally small town in a
neighboring state) mentioned a distant relative of ours (another
farmer) who also was named "Darwin". (Both these towns are very
churchy).
I know the mother of one of the
local Darwins, but I can't ask her how he got the name because she's
a devout church lady and a friend of my mom's -- and beyond that,
her son's pranks, though admired for miles around, are an
embarassment to her.
However, I was at least able to
find
the statistics on the use of this name.
If I'm reading this graph correctly, between 1910 and 1960 "Darwin"
ranked between about #380 and about #500 among male given names. In
1970 the name plummeted to about #800, and then even lower, before
recovering recently. For the year 2003 the name ranked #800; for
males of all ages, in the 2000 census the name ranked #583.
I'm pretty sure that the given
name "Darwin" was rare before Charles Darwin became prominent, so
the name can be taken as a marker for free-thinking. Furthermore,
since "Darwin" seems like a country-ish sort of name, it might even
be a marker of hillbilly freethinking.
This is a bit anecdotal at the
moment, but three anecdotes makes a trend. Further research might be
necessary, but it won't be by me -- I'm an anecdotalist by trade.
Based on what I've been told about my father's childhood (born 1914)
I think that my guess is accurate. The fundamentalist domination of
the countryside might be worse now than it was 90 years ago.
http://www.adamkotsko.com/weblog/2005/11/darwin-in-american-life.html
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I am emersonj at gmail dot com.
Original materials copyright John J
Emerson
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