When his granddaughter was named, my uncle asked his daughter if there was a Saint Madison. Which there is not. But there is a Saint Kevin who lived in the 7th century. But he wasn't canonized until the 20th century, so it's really a new name and the Germans are right to be offended.
In the mid-90s, my niece had a German bf named Kevin, who'd been born in the early 80s.
I have very snobbish thoughts about the names now being given by white families in rural areas to their male children. But mostly I only see this through Facebook.
Little genius and my favorite British soccer player Kevin Keegan twice won the Balon d'Or (best European football player) playing for Hamburg in 1978 and 1979. Got to have been at least a few German kids named for him.
My family emigrated from Poland in the 60s, and somehow none of the extended family still there told me that Home Alone has become a veritable Polish Christmas tradition. Then again, we never put a carp in the bathtub or hay under the tablecloth, though we did all the other stuff.
We now have only a walk-in shower, so our carp is very bereft.
Growing up, I was led to believe it was a Brooklyn Jewish thing.
There's a great/trashy kdrama about a woman who has an affair with an evil Korean-American athlete, who (SPOILER!!) later ends up dead. Anyway, the guy's name is Kevin Lee. He has a Korean name too, but whenever they refer to him, which is constantly, they call him by his full American name, all run together and with equal emphasis on each syllable: KEVINLY. I think the name is mostly intended to signal his Americanness, and when they say his name (which, again, they do constantly), it's supposed to sound sinister, but how sinister can it really sound to my American ears? His name is Kevinly!
Sounds like a horror to us.
Merry Christmas, reprobates.
Carp in the tub at home is emphatically not just a US Jewish tradition. It's been a traditional Christmas main dish in CZ since maybe the 1600s, and was part of the holiday for centuries before, sold live in barrels in cities and kept in a tub or cooking pot at home before the meal since before indoor plumbing. The rural ponds that were stocked with carp started being built in the 1300s there, combination food source, flood control (still effective, certainly longer lasting than levees built in the sixties), and a source of fertilizer. Carp were a source of relatively cheap protein for a mostly peasant population that usually couldn't afford meat. Medieval christmas meals there probably emphasized numerous courses, many courses being a menu metonym for wealth in the coming year, plus if a family could manage a lucky number, so much the better.
I started to respond to the OP by finding profiles of kids named Jordynn or Rambo, but they just seem like regular people whose parents gave them impulsive names.
I had thought that the fish in the tub thing was a thing done by Polish Jews.
You want stupid Christmas? I give you Christmas Adam: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/22/us/christmas-adam-dec-23.html
At an Uzbek restaurant* for Christmas Eve, as one does.
Just opened in my daughter's town.
15: Wow. Although at first I thought it was going to be some Men's Rights thing, so I was actually pleasantly surprised.
That reminds me, a shockingly high percentage of people think men have fewer ribs than women.
Women sometimes order half a rack though. Men always a full.
On average, men's bodies contain fewer ribs.
15: Best part is guy trolling the Times by claiming he eats a McRib on December 23 every year. That's not how McRibs work
Where did the houseboat thread end up? It just occurred to me that I never got my answers.
God, condensed milk is so delicious. I could just eat this whole can.
1: I feel like the only correct response to your uncle was, "Bro, she's only X days old. Sainthood takes time."
Heh. He probably would have loved that.
huh! Pokey just came out to me. But I can't tell Jammies because he said he wanted to have that conversation with dad himself? And so I'm bursting and processing and have nowhere to park it. Ace has a very LGBTQ=rainbow sense of personal style, and somehow it hadn't crossed my mind about Pokey.
Why does it feel like good news? It should be neutral news. Maybe I'm just happy to have a good relationship with him where he felt comfy telling me? Maybe I just want to be smug about my progressive street cred.*
*kidding, that was my grandmother who desperately wanted the liberal street cred of having a gay grandson and would complain mightily that my cousin hadn't had a proper coming out conversation with her where she could bestow her beneficence upon him and tell all her friends.
Heebie, your children have made excellent choice of parents.
22: The houseboat thread fell off the page or maybe floated off the edge of the world. Pretty much the same result.
27: Aw, that's sweet! I hope he's able to talk to Jammies soon, it's hard to sit solo with such things. Elke, now 13, just confided in us about the girl at school that a) she has a crush on; b) is obviously flirting with her; except c) she has no idea if the girl is just toying with her or what, and while no one including the girl in question is likely to have a definitive answer on that one, it did also make me feel happy that she wanted to share.
Just before the houseboat thread floated away my advice was to read Offshore and I'll give it one more time. It's much shorter than House of Leaves.