Author: Roger Price & Leonard Stern
Date: 1960, reprinted 1973
Publisher: Price Stern Corporation
ISBN: 0-8431-0047-8
Length: 118 pages of text and cartoons
Illustrations: cartoons by Peter Marks
Quote: “This book will, if you approach it with an open mind, a pure heart and a dry martini, enable you to understand the hitherto mysterious and connotative effects of Names and to start your child off in any direction you choose merely by naming it correctly. Fair enough?"
Fair enough...except that the authors weren’t making a serious study of the psychosocial effects names have on people; they were, after all, the inventors of Mad Libs, and their goal was to pair names that were popular at the time with snarky descriptions of personality types. A reasonably relaxed person shouldn’t need a martini to get a lot of chuckles out of this book.
They play fair. The names “Roger” and “Leonard” get their share of sarcasm. “In the 1920s the name ‘Roger’ was identified almost exclusively with stuffy little boys in comic strips and Our Gang comedies who wore thick eyeglasses...at the age of nine I was wearing eyeglasses...if I had been named Nick, I’m sure my eyes would have been as sharp as an eagle’s.” “Leonard and Leon are good card players. They’re both successful, Leonard because he is smart.” You’re not supposed to be convinced. You’re supposed to be amused. Most of the descriptions aren’t too flattering...Leonard is smart enough to be a good card player, not a good writer, business executive, lawyer, banker, or politician.
Part of the entertainment value this book has, fifty years after it was written, is of course working out which influences on pop culture changed the images different names have had. Price and Stern obviously associated the name “Albert” with Einstein; people my age associated it with “Fat Albert.” Price and Stern also associated “Cathy” with the sickly heroines of Wuthering Heights rather than the “Chatty Cathy” toys, and associated “Veronica” with characters played by Veronica Lake more than with the rich brat in the Archie comic books...and so on. A large portion of the names Price and Stern associated with active adults are, not surprisingly, so far out of fashion that present-time readers may not be able to think of any real-world users of the names except “Someone’s Grandpa or Grandma.” Tracing the historical influences on this book could be a pleasant way to pass the time with your grandparents.
It won’t be as obvious as you might think. I’m still trying to figure out where, in 1960, they dug up two images to go with the name “Roy”...and neither one was “Trigger’s Human.” And then, “Lucille usually looks like she’s smelling something...Lucy still wears a page-boy hairdo. She is willowy.” Wouldn’t you have thought that, in 1960, either Lucille or Lucy would have sounded like the name of a curvaceous comedian with red-blonde hair? Did the Lucy we all loved ever wear a page-boy hairdo? And then, in 1960, did there seem to be any evidence that pop culture’s best-known Art (Linkletter) was “secretly a beatnik”? Did I just come along a few years too late? Would any older readers like to share the stories I obviously missed?
On the other hand, Grandma Bonnie Peters' husband would have agreed, while living, that Price and Stern were right about “Bonnie.”
Anyone could write his or her own version of What Not to Name the Baby. Substitute names currently in use for names that no longer suggest anything to you. My entry for the name “Roger” might be something like, “People who named their sons Roger were probably impressed by World War II hero Rodger Young. A man who is named Roger was probably born in the 1940s and might have grown up to be the sort of geezer who sees one of your friends’ dark complexion and immediately launches into a 20-minute reminiscence about every African-American he’s ever known, without even giving your friend a chance to explain that s/he happens to be Indian.” Your entry for “Roger” might be completely different, but, because of the historical trends, the majority of people’s entry for “Roger” would yield a sort of consensus that most men named Roger are now senior citizens...and that’s about as much truth as this sort of book ever contains.
But it's funny--in the sort of wholesome-as-you-want-it-to-be way Price & Stern's "Mad Libs" and "Droodles" were funny--and it's becoming a collector's item. A local reader bought the copy I had, after I posted an earlier version of this review, for just $1 in real life. On Amazon this web site can currently find more copies for less than $25 (the person who posted a nice clear picture of the cover wants top dollar for that copy), but cannot guarantee how long we'll be able to sell this book for $10, plus $5 per package for shipping and $1 per online payment. At least seven more books as skinny as this one will ship in a $5 package.
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