This whole name thing came to mind a couple of months ago, when a white woman, Amy Cooper, falsely accused Christian Cooper, a birdwatcher who happened to be Black, of threatening her in New York’s Central Park. These kids didn’t need nicknames – their names were memorable because they were unique. In my cohort, we had a Julian, a Cassandra, and a Casmira. Growing up, mine was “Doc.” Indeed, Ipswich had no end of folks with colorful nicknames: “Brick,” “Yogi,” “Bucket,” “Donkey,” “Yucca,” “Babe,” “Farf,” “Hooksie,” and so on.Īnd, to be fair, there were a few kids whose parents thought outside the “Tom, Dick, and Harry” box. Perhaps because of that, many in town ended up with nicknames. There were also a lot of girls named Cathy, Debbie, Mary, and Jane. The year I was born, Robert happened to be the most popular boy’s name nationally, and there were a lot of fellow Roberts in Ipswich. It seems they managed to have ten children, leading local wags to declare that “he was Abel – and she was Thankful.” History is silent as to whether or not Thankful was truly thankful raising 10 kids, or, like the old lady in the shoe, she found there were so many she didn’t know what to do. Over in Essex, in that town’s Old Graveyard on Main Street, there is a happier story involving Abel and Thankful Story. Sadly, you also saw that many of the interred didn’t get to have names – the gravestones were inscribed “Baby” or “Infant,” sometimes right next to a mother’s marker bearing the same date, mute testimony to the rigors of 17 th and 18 th century childbirth. Growing up as I did next to the Old South Cemetery, you soon discovered that there were once lots of people named Enoch, Jeremiah, Elsie, and Ephraim. Thanks to Charles Dickens, it didn’t get passed down. Hence the comment regarding the legendary founder’s first name.
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