Jill asks for your help in finding this old skool romance:
This is driving me nuts!! I cannot remember the title or characters names,
here is the plot…kind of. A girl maybe 17-18 years old is living in a
brothel( I can’t remember why she there). She is something of a maid.
She’s told that if she doesn’t start “working” like the other girls,
she’s gotta go. An older man comes in looking for a “girl” for his
grandson that is returning from sea (I think), he see’s this maid and picks
her, she thinks she’s going to be a governess for a child, unbeknown to her
that she’s been “bought” for a night.She is taken to a mansion and shown
to “her” room. Sometime in the night the grown grandson shows up, finds a
girl in his room, rapes her and falls asleep. He wakes up the next morning
and realizes she was a virgin. I don’t remember if he keeps her there with
him or she goes back to the brothel, but I do remember her brother at some
point shows up, as it turns out he is old friends with the rapist, raises
hell and the poor girl and asshole marry. I think she becomes pregnant and I
remember Lord Byron had a cameo it this book. I think the guy in this book
is titled , maybe an heir to a duke?Please help!! I read this book 15 years ago and would love to read it again.
I have searched the net and used book stores for 5 years now, with no luck
:(.
I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the cover might possible feature hot pink. Or teal. Or both! Anyone recognize this one?
The worst name I’ve ever heard of to give a child?
There was a couple living in rural North Carolina in the 40s (where my grandparents lived), who called their son after that name they heard on the radio all the time.
They called him “Hitler.”
Hitler baked a mean pound cake.
Could their possibly be two Shitheads out there? Or perhaps allison’s Shithead is especially notorious- there’s a whole chapter in Freakonomics devoted to the economics of baby naming, and Shithead has a starring role.
http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/
Doing a “search inside this book” for “shithead” will let you read the pertinent section.
Brett & Ashleigh sound like great names…for cheerleaders, lol! Seriously though, it’s a challenge to come up with a good period name that hasn’t been used before in other books. Consider the plethora of Nicholases as heroes, for example.
I agree!! I’m glad I can’t help with this one. I lost my taste for these storylines for several reasons. The first, though not the primary reason, was my college roommate’s story about her grandmother’s sister. Way back in the “good” old days she was raped by town asshole, impregnating her. They caught the guy & punished him good by making him marry her. Which then gave him carte blanche to rape her whenever he felt like it. She got no say in the matter what with the bun he forced into her oven needing a father and all. She was supposed to be grateful. She died in childbirth. Yeah, marrying your rapist stories not so entertaining.
On a lighter note, favorite stupid things to name your kid: Nosmoking. Mom was staring at a sign during labor & decided she liked the sound of it. Yes, No Smoking. A stupid name & healthy living choice. The twins Ricky & Rericky cause parents didn’t like the name Pete. And lastly, not unusual names but stupid in another way, my coworker who name her first son Marc Anthony and the second one Anthony Marc after his brother….. and not dead if you’re thinking that’s why.
There is actually a kid somewhere in the US, with the name Adolph Hitler [last name]. His sister is Aryan Nation. There was a to-do about it when a bakery refused to write the kid’s full name on a cake.
And then, of course, there’s Tallulah Does The Hula From Hawaii (her first name), who had to get a court order to make her parents change her name.
*bwahahahahahaha*
I cried laughing when I read this…braaavvvo!
And, as an educator, I concur with the parent’s are sometimes very, very cruel with kid’s names, and on the other hand, love makes you do stupid things, too. Take, for example, my friend, Snow White (her parents’ fault), who married a man named Jim Rice (love’s fault), and so my friends’ name is now Snow White-Rice. Urk.
And of course, if you want to go back to the seventeenth century, there were a whole slew of Puritan “slogan” names given by parents for whom Biblical and virtue names weren’t holy enough, apparently. The best known may have been If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Had’st-Been-Damned Barbon, who, not surprisingly, went by Nicholas. He was also the inventor of fire insurance following the Great Fire of London (and with a name like that you just know he set it.)
Can’t believe I forgot this one!! Girl I went to high school with: Norma Lee Abb. Go ahead fill out that application form in your mind.
Don’t get ME started on names! I’ve heard every pun and quip about my first name Joy that is possible but with a middle name of Constance (ha, ha, you are a constant joy alright!)…well at least it is better than the spelling of my sister’s name which I refuse to discuss. ALL children should have the legal right to change their names when they turn 21.
I have a friend who didn’t want to take her husband’s last name when they married (Putz…I mean, could you blame her) and he wasn’t too fond of it either (especially since his dad lived down to his name by abandoning him and his mother). Instead, when they married they chose a third unrelated last name of an admired figure. Hey they both had name changes, pretty cool, huh.
I worked in a hospital and came across the name Tyranny. I guess it sounds kinda pretty if you don’t know what it means…but that’s why everyone should own a dictionary! I also saw the name Xenophobe. There were others, including some names that involved multiple Qs and Ks. I’m not sure which is worse-a made up name that no one has ever heard of and cannot spell, or a real name with a terrible definition…
I taught for a couple years, too, and had some students with unusual names. Ninjali was my favorite.
I was having drinks with coworkers just last week and we were talking about the question of change/don’t change/hyphenate/combine names with engaged couples. One woman said a friend with the last name Shinen (pronounced like “shining” without the “g”) married a man with the last name Hyman. And hyphenated her name to Shinen-Hyman. SHINING HYMEN.
Talk about giving folks a visual when you introduce yourself.
The problem with hyphenating last names is that is’ really only practical for one generation.
My mother is a assistant teacher at a primary school where one of the boys is called “Slade” and a girl I know is called Tumania, apparently her parents named her after the Swahili word for hope “Tumaini”.
Oh my god. Was he, like 6 1/2 feet tall, wearing brand name clothing and accessories, and ready to kick asses and take names? And maybe missing an H in his name tag? And was he buddies (with homoerotic overtones) with Tyrhanny?
In Alberta (Canada) we actually have laws about what you can name your kids (I found out when my nephew was born). You can’t hyphenate more than 2 names, and you can’t choose a name designed to offend. F’instance, Baby Jesus would not be permitted as a legal name. Nickname, sure. But not legal.
This book wasn’t Johanna Lindsay’s Say You Love Me, was it? Long shot.
LIke Mhalice?or Malhice 🙂 hehe, i soooo needed that laugh right then (sun burn NOT FUN!) but another great one in my school is a girl named Ndia and its pronounced India, as well as Mary-Sue Hennessey. I’m sorry i wouldn’t name any kid Mary-Sue, thats just wrong.
Certainly both France and Germany used to have such laws (I don’t know if they still have), restricting names to Classical, Biblical and historical/ethnic, and thus excluding ordinary common nouns, phrases, and non-existent words. I think there is much to be said for that kind of restriction, when one sees what horrors some American parents apparently inflict on their children. After all, there is nothing to stop anyone being known by a nickname, however ridiculous, but I think that the names that get entered into official records should have some dignity. It is your own choice if you are perfectly happy to be referred to as ‘Fishface’, but one would hope that the name on the birth certificate was ‘Elizabeth’ or ‘Helen’.
I don’t think insane naming has yet proceeded as far in the UK as it has in the US, and I hope it never does. Names matter; they affect the way in which the person is perceived by others—which is why one should never name even a dog or cat something silly, negative or offensive. I am horrified that parents can pick up on the sound of a name like ‘Malice’ or ‘Tyranny’, and inflict that on an innocent child.
Oh yes, a whole generation of children who will come gunning for J.R. Ward.
Oh, and they just keep coming. My mother grew up down the street from the Schitz family.
@ AgTigress: Oh, yes it has, and did. See the book I referenced above.
Many of those are surnames, though, rather than given names. There is a fairly major difference between inheriting the surname ‘Cock’, for instance, and naming a child ‘Cock’ as his first name.
🙂
@AgTigress
Funny story. As a young catering assistant many years ago I printed and posted a sign that very plainly stated “Cox Tasting”
It was a menu tasting for a wedding reception. Brides last name was Cox. Thankfully it snapped for someone that that sign might not be the best way to post the event. It was thankfully changed before the Bride and her family arrived.
Now I don’t feel so bad for the names I would give my kids if I was to ever have any.
See, being born in the 70s I was saddled with Jami because of the fictional character of Jamie on The Bionic Woman. (My brothers’ names are Paul, Todd, and Mark, so mom insisted my first name be 4 letters as well. Thank God she gave me the middle name of JoAnne rather then Alan like all my brothers!) There was always another Jami(e) of some form in my classes – sometimes it was Jaime or Jaemy, anyway it was always said “Jami.”
So I thought when I have kids I’ll give them names no one will have – like Hamlet and MacBeth. In fact, I had fantasies about having little MacBeth become an actor. Imagine how people would freak when they called out his name in the theatre during auditions?
Now of course I’ll probably never have kids. I’m 33, almost 34, and that makes my eggs about 35, raising my chances of having a child who’s mentally disabled and I do not think I could handle raising a special needs child. Plus I have polycystic ovary syndrome which makes having a kid more difficult.
Doesn’t stop me from thinking about names though. Especially since I’ve got patrons at the library who have the last names of Holmes and Cooper. I just can’t help but think their parents should’ve given them the first names of Sherlock and Dale.
And then one day my coworker did a library card for a 95 year old man names James Bond….
That’s a great story! It is very easy to miss double entrendres of that kind when one is focused on the primary meaning, especially if one is person like me, who does not hear words when reading, but goes straight from visual diagram to meaning. This is why I seldom notice puns.
I notice surnames like ‘Glasscock’, because I immediately see a penis-shaped glass object, but not a name like ‘Cox’, because that is simply not the same, to me, as ‘Cocks’. Just because it sounds the same does not impinge on my picture-to-meaning mental processing.
[I think that the book lizw65 referred to also has a lot of examples of unfortunate juxtapositions of forename and surname. But she has read it and I have not!]
🙂
A friend of mine had an elderly neighbour in the 1950s whose name was Donald Duck. He was older than the Disney version, of course.
Naming children with the mother’s maiden name as the first or middle name was common in many parts of the southeast in places where you are asked who your mother’s people were (I am not kidding). My father’s middle name is his mother’s maiden name. I think that is how alot of girls ended up being called Ashley or similar. I’m hoping that is the origin of the name Ainslie, because, ew.
I do want to know what the name of that HABO book is, so I will never ever read it by accident.
I have to admit I think that would be hillarious.
Back when I was a library aide, I was withdrawing some books to be sent to the booksale and ran across a guide to birds by an author named James Bond. I thought that was pretty funny- and then later discovered that Ian Flemming had taken the name from that book.
As for myself, I just find it annoying that I have one of the two most common spellings of my name and people keep misspelling it with more exotic variations.
I just can’t stop myself. Had a patient named Ken Doll.
When I was working in Admissions at my university, I came across a grad school applicant named John Wang. I’ve always thought he should have skipped grad school and made cowboy kung fu movies instead.
I had a student in Baltimore named Je T’aime. On a parenting board I frequent, someone wanted to name her kid Talon, poor thing. Kree8tyv namers get on my nerves.
AgTigress – or anyone else who might venture a guess – I have a question about naming a Regency heroine.
I want her name to be Catherine and her brother calls her Cat. And I can’t decide if that’s historically plausible or not.
My name is Dusk… I do not see how you could mess that one up until last year when my 7th grade LA teacher spelled my name Duske the whole year even after i’d told her i didn’t have an E at the end (who has an E at the end of Dusk anyways??) >.
<
And my Friend Sarah has had her named mispelled to the point of screaming. Fav is the same teacher who misspelled my name she always spelled it Searah>
.
<... what is with this chick and E's??
Spamword; Cold75.. no clue for hte cold but i told her at LEAST 75 times it Dusk >
.<
ok sorry about that last post it didn’t do the face right… weird…
LOL@ the Shithead and the Asshole.
That is too funny. I will admit that it was in the inner-city school district in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and it was a black girl. So, who knows if it is the same little girl. This was about 15 years ago so that poor thing is now grown and with children of her own, probably. Hopefully, she didn’t name her children anything of the sort.
Worst spelling of my own name is “Elyschounne”. How you get Allison out of that, I’ve no clue.
In Africa I worked with a family who named their first two children Perfect and John of the Cross (which sounds much better in French – Jean de la Croix). They were both boys. Talk about pressure from an early age…
It’s probably been done, but now I really want to read a book about a mild mannered bird watcher who’s name is used by a spy thriller writer – and people keep thinking he’s this exciting sex bomb spy.
I would suggest having him team up with a guy named John Wang but Jackie Chan already did that bit.
@Kinsey Holley
Copies of The Spectator and Essays by Addison and Steele are available online at http://www.gutenberg.org I kn.ow they predate your period, but if the name is used that way in their papers, then it would be period for you. You can search within the contents after a free download. Bit of boring work, but that’s what we get for writing historical fiction.
complete65: Yes, there *are* 65 complete volumes but we love research, right?
That’s a wonderful idea! And no, actually, it’s not that boring….many years ago, when I was an English major, and later a library grad student at the same university, I used to procrastinate in the stacks by reading The Spectator and Addison and Steele and other period journals.
I don’t think about Gutenberg often enough. Thanks Kilian.
I’m a cataloger now. Obviously, my boredom threshold is way high.
@JamiSings
OK – it’s not James Bond, but there are elements in the hilarious novel “Rare Birds” by Edward Riche. Obviously much better in print than the movie…
@Kinsey
I agree, otherwise why in the world would I be plowing through that gripping treatise “Lobster Fisheries of Maine: 1840-1900” and actually enjoying it. I’ve picked up two plot points already, and that makes it worth the time invested in an otherwise snooze-worthy book.
call59 – I’d have to call at least 59 people in Maine to learn what I learned from one little out of print, outdated book.