There’s something undeniably cool and, well, jazzy, about many of the distinctive names of jazz musicians.  Take the ultimate example, the personification of cool –Miles Davis– who imparted an eternally silky, seductive veneer to his name, as did Quincy Jones.

The inimitable Ella Fitzgerald gave her name a jazzy edge long before Ella was anywhere near the top of the pop lists.  Names like Ray and Roy, Cecil and Percy and Dexter all take on an appealing funkiness and rise to another level when looked at in the context of jazz.

And then there are the great unique specimens—Bix, Django, Eubie, Thelonius—all exceptionally cool baby names–that might appeal to the intrepid jazz aficionado.

The surnames of jazz immortals can be considered as well, just as they have by a few celebs—model Helena Christensen’s Mingus, and Woody Allen’s Bechet, for example.  The middle name of Wynton Marsalis’s son Jasper is Armstrong; Cynthia Nixon’s boy Max has Ellington as a middle.

GIRLS

ABBEY Lincoln

ALBERTA Hunter

ANITA O’Day

BILLIE Holiday

BESSIE Smith

BLOSSOM Dearie

CARMEN McRae

CASSANDRA Wilson

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There’s something undeniably cool and, well, jazzy, about the names of jazz musicians.  Take the ultimate example, the personification of cool –Miles Davis– who imparted a silky, seductive veneer to his name, as Quincy Jones did to his.

The inimitable Ella Fitzgerald gave hers a jazzy edge long before Ella was anywhere near the pop lists.  Names like Ray and Roy, Cecil and Percy and Dexter all take on an appealing funkiness and rise to another level when looked at in the context of jazz.

And then there are the great unique appellations—Bix, Django, Eubie, Mercer—that could appeal to the intrepid jazz aficionado baby namer.

Jazz immortals’ surnames are another possiblity,as chosen by a few celebs—model Helena Christensen called her son Mingus, and Woody Allen used Bechet, the name of one of his musical heroes, Sidney Bechet.

Here, some of the jazziest choices:

GIRLS

• ABBEY Lincoln
• ALBERTA Hunter
• ANITA O’Day
• BESSIE Smith
• BLOSSOM Dearie
• CARMEN McRae
• CASSANDRA Wilson
• CLEA Bradford
• CLEO Laine
• DAKOTA Staton
• DELLA Reese
• DINAH Washington

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Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868 and first observed on May 30 of that year, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.  So this year, instead of looking back again at the names of Civil War generals and such, I thought it could be more enlightening to look instead at well-known people (with interesting names) who were born in 1868—giving us a bird’s-eye view of some aspects of post-Civil War baby naming, both in America and elsewhere.

GIRLS

ALEEN Cust, first British female veternarian

ALIDA B. Jones, early movie actress

ALMA Kruger, Shakespearean actress, later featured in Dr. Kildare movies

DIXIE Selden, American portrait painter

EDITH Holloway, British Woman’s chess champion

ELEANOR Porter, author of Pollyanna

ELLA Gaunt Smith, innovative doll maker, first to market black dolls in the South

EUGENIE Besserer, silent screen actress, played the mother in The Jazz Singer

EVANGELINE Smith, best known astrologer of her day

FLORA Call Disney, mother of Walt

HENRIETTA Swan Leavitt, American astronomer

HOPE Goddard Iselin, first woman to crew in the America’s Cup yacht race

JANE Avril, French can-can dancer made famous by Toulouse-Lautrec

JENNINGS Carmichael, Australian poet

KATTI (born Catherine) Møller, Norwegian feminist, children’s right advocate and pioneer of reproductive rights

LOYOLA O’Connor, early film actress

MARTHA Woolstein, first woman member of the American Pediatric Association

MAUD Humphrey, American commercial artist and mother of Bogey

MAUDE Turner Gordon, American stage and screen actress

PHILIPPA Fawcett, English mathematician

RHETA Childe Dorr, author and social worker

BOYS

ALBERTUS Catlin, naval hero

ALONZO Clark, American politician, governor of Wyoming

AUGUST Horch, founder of Audi

AXEL Hägerström, Swedish philosopher

BAJO Topulli, Albanian freedom fighter

BERNARR Macfadden, early proponent of physical culture and bodybuilding; magazine publisher

BORIS Thomashefsky, one of the biggest stars of the Yiddish theater

CAI Yuanpei, influential Chinese educator

CAMILLO Olivetti, Italian engineer, founder of Olivetti & Co.

COMFORT A. Adams, important experimental engineer

CONSTANTINE I, King of Greece

CUNO Amiet, Swiss artist, a pioneer of modern art in Switzerland

EDGAR Lee Masters, major American poet, author of Spoon River Anthology

EDMOND Rostand, author of Cyrano de Bergerac

ÉDOUARD Vuillard, major French painter and printmaker

EMANUEL Lasker, world chess champion for 27 years

ÉMILE Bernard, noted French Post-Impressionist painter

FELIX Hoffman, German chemist who invented aspirin—and heroin

GASTON Leroux, author of The Phantom of the Opera

HAMISH MacCunn, Scottish romantic composer

HARDEE Kirkland,silent screen actor and director

HARLEY Payne, pro baseball player who pitched for the Brooklyn Bridegrooms

HARRY Alonzo Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid

HARVEY Firestone, rubber tire baron

KORBINIAN Brodmann, important German neurologist

MAGNUS Hirschfeld, German physician and sex researcher and early gay rights activist

MAXIM (born Aleksei) Gorky, Russian author and a founder of socialist realism; political activist

MILES Poindexter, US Senator from Washington

REN Shields, American musician, co-wrote “In the Good Old Summertime.”

RHODY Hathaway, silent film actor

ROMAINE Fielding, early film actor

ROYAL S. Copeland, US Senator from New York

SCOTT Joplin, the “King of Ragtime”

SEWELL Ford, American novelist ad short story writer

SKYROCKET (born Samuel) Smith, Major League first baseman

SNITZ (!!!) Edwards, silent movie character actor

SOLON Borglum, American sculptor who worked on Mount Rushmore

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To celebrate New Orleans’s triumphant Super Bowl victory, as well as today’s Shrove Tuesday launch of  Mardi Gras, here is the fascinating blog created for us last year by guest blogger Elisabeth Wilborn of ”You Can’t Call It It.”  Elisabeth is a writer, artist, and mother who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

 An inspiration for everything from vampires to voodoo, from zydeco to the Krewe of Zulu, Louisiana has been a colorful melting pot of divergent cultures for centuries.  Cajuns from Canada, Creoles and others of Haitian, African, Italian, Spanish, or Native American descent, all come together to form a mélange of backgrounds, and in point of fact, names.  Most share a history of French language and Catholicism, even if it’s not by blood. While these may not be the choices in use today in the Bayou, they have been culled from historical documents, maps, and folklore from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries.  The majority are either French proper, or my favorite, Frenchified.  Still more trace their roots to Classical Greco-Roman civilization, deep Southern culture, or are somewhere farther afield and include a curious preponderance of the letter Z.

So come on!  Allez-y! Chew on these names (and some maque choux), prepare to bare all for those beads, and laissez les bon temps roulez!

LADIES

Acadia- The word Cajun itself has its origins in Acadian

Adelaide

Alexandrine

Alma

Alzophine

Ambrosine

Ameline, Emeline

Arzilla

Avoyelles- This Cajun Parish might be picked up as a first name, piggybacking on the current Ava and Ellie love

Beatrice

Belle

Berangere

Bernadette- A much beloved Catholic saint, and one of the prettiest songs in the native New Orleans Neville Brothers repertoire

Cezelia

Clotille

Delphine- While Delphine is a lovely and lilting name, Delphine La Laurie was a famous socialite and sadist who tortured her slaves

Dixie- Used to refer to the South at large, this may have originated in New Orleans on the ten dollar bill, upon which a local bank printed “dix”, the French for ten.

Dolucila

Elva

Ernestine

Eugenie- Napoleon’s first love

Eula, Eulalie

Evangeline- An epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recalling the 1755 deportation of Acadian Canadians to the newly Spanish Louisiana

Ezora

Geraldine

Gertrude

Ghislaine

Heloise

Ida

Josephine- Napoleon’s (second) love

Leonie

Lougenia

Magnolia- The state flower of Louisiana

Mahalia- Mahalia Jackson is a gospel and blues singer from the area, with a name worth borrowing

Marie- Marie Laveau was a reknowned Voodoo Queen who was visited by slaves and owners alike

Maude

Maxzille

Melba

Mellette

Minerva, Minnie

Oatha

Odilia

Ola, Olla Mae, Olima

Onezie, Onezime

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As Black History Month segues into  Women’s History Month this weekend, we thought we’d take a look at the names of some African-American heroines.

Actually, compiling this list was not as easy as you might think (or as it should be).  Google and book searches tended to turn up only the usual suspects.  And then, late as usual, I bought my 2009 calendar from the bargain bin: A Journey Into 365 Days of Black History — Notable Women.

An array of admirable women are listed there, all of whom would provide wonderful role models (and lovely names) for any child.  The best:

ALICE Dunbar-Nelson — Journalist, poet, author.

BARBARA Jordan — Texas Congresswoman who won fame during Nixon impeachment hearings.

BESSIE Coleman — In 1922, became the world’s only licensed black pilot.  She staged flying exhibitions to fund a school to train black aviationists.

CHARLOTTE Ray — In 1872, became the first black female lawyer.

CLARA Stanton Jones — The American Library Association’s first African-American president.

CLEMENTINE Hunter — African-American painter, born in 1887.

CONSTANCE Baker Motley — First black female federal judge.

CORETTA Scott King — Widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

DOROTHY West — Harlem Renaissance author.

ELLA Fitzgerald — Jazz singer.

FAYE Wattleton — Women’s rights activist.

GWENDOLYN Brooks — Poet and first African-American to win the Pulitzer.

HALLIE Quinn Brown — 19th century women’s rights activist.

HARRIET Tubman (born ARAMINTA Ross) — Escaped slave who became an abolitionist and Union spy; most famous for her work with the Underground Railroad.

IDA B. Wells-Barnett — Journalist and founding member of the NAACP.

JANE Bolin — Judge and community activist; first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School.

JOSEPHINE Baker — Politically-minded entertainer who was the Angelina Jolie of her day.

JUANITA Hall — First black actress to win a Tony Award.

KARA Walker — Artist best known for her silhouettes.

LENA Horne — Actress, singer, and civil rights activist.

LORRAINE Hansberry — Author of play “A Raisin in the Sun”

MABEL Mercer — English singer.

MAHALIA Jackson — Gospel singer.

MARIAN Anderson — First black singer to perform with the Metropolitan Opera.

MARIAN Wright Edelman — Children’s Defense Fund founder.

NATALIE Hinderas — Composer and classical musician.

OCTAVIA Victoria Rogers Albert — Author and teacher.

PEARL Bailey — Actress and singer.

PHILLIS Wheatley — First published African-American female poet.  The name Phillis or Phyllis, the Roman goddess of spring, was typical of the classical names given to early African-Americans.

PRUDENCE Crandall — White woman arrested for teaching black girls at her school in 1833.

ROSA Parks — Heroine of the famous bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement.

ROSETTA Tharpe — Jazz and blues singer and songwriter.

RUBY Dee — Actress.

SADIE Tanner Mossell Alexander — The first African-American Ph.D. in economics.

SARAH Vaughan — Jazz musician.

SHIRLEY Chisholm — First black woman elected to Congress.

SOJOURNER Truth — Abolitionist and women’s rights activist.

SUSIE King Taylor — Ex-slave who became Civil War nurse.

TONI Morrison — Novelist who won the Nobel Prize in literature.

VIOLETTE Neatley Anderson — In the 1920s, became the first black female attorney to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

WILMA Rudolph — Olympic runner.

ZENSI MIRIAM Makeba — African singer.

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