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HelpRe: Flapper Era FN + LN
in reply to a message by Howie
Hazel is THE flapper name. Much more flapperish than Kitty. Hazel Fitzgerald, Hazel Gallagher, Hazel Mulligan, those are flappers. Kitty Fitzgerald, Kitty Gallagher, Kitty Mulligan, those are domestic servants.
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Due to the lack of vocal tone in writing, I'm going to preface this by saying that I really am genuinely curious. Is your comment based on verifiable fact (statistics on names held by certain members of society, for example), anecdotal evidence, or opinion based on how the name vibes to you personally? I don't know nearly as much about the era as I should for someone who likes it. :\
I revisited the SSA site and realized Kitty wasn't in the top 500 given names for 1901. I had originally been thinking Catherine nn Kitty. I had looked up something like "popular nicknames 1920's," and I found a random name site/blog thing that had a list of names that suited a flapper. Kitty was on there. I don't even know where this person got their names from, which doesn't mean Kitty wasn't used as a nickname often (Catherine was fairly popular), but now, I'm thinking I need to do more research. I think I had somehow gotten Kitty stuck in my head when I was coming up with ideas pre-research and was, on some level, just searching for any validation of the idea. In other words, Face, meet Palm.
Basically, Hazel doesn't vibe right to me, even if it is a great flapper name, so I don't want to use it. On the other hand, Kitty does vibe right, but if it isn't authentic, I don't want to use it. It may be back to the drawing board for me.
Oh, gosh. I wrote a novel of a reply, didn't I? Sorry!
I revisited the SSA site and realized Kitty wasn't in the top 500 given names for 1901. I had originally been thinking Catherine nn Kitty. I had looked up something like "popular nicknames 1920's," and I found a random name site/blog thing that had a list of names that suited a flapper. Kitty was on there. I don't even know where this person got their names from, which doesn't mean Kitty wasn't used as a nickname often (Catherine was fairly popular), but now, I'm thinking I need to do more research. I think I had somehow gotten Kitty stuck in my head when I was coming up with ideas pre-research and was, on some level, just searching for any validation of the idea. In other words, Face, meet Palm.
Basically, Hazel doesn't vibe right to me, even if it is a great flapper name, so I don't want to use it. On the other hand, Kitty does vibe right, but if it isn't authentic, I don't want to use it. It may be back to the drawing board for me.
Oh, gosh. I wrote a novel of a reply, didn't I? Sorry!
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My belief that Hazel is a flapper name is basically based upon popularity statistics. Let's assume that the majority of young women who could be designated as flappers in the 1920s were born between 1900 and 1910, a safe assumption. Hazel, was, in fact, a popular name between 1900 and 1910, ranging from number 29 through number 24 during those years.
My maternal grandmother's name was Hazel and she was born in 1906. So she was in her teens and early twenties in the 1920s. Now whether she engaged in flapperish behavior when young, such as drinking bootleg liquor from a flask she kept in her stocking and dancing the Charleston, I don't know. I kind of doubt it, given that she seems to have been a fairly conventional young woman. She was a schoolteacher before she married, married at the age of 20, and had her first child at age 22. But I remember from old photographs that she looked like a flapper, dressed in the style of the 1920s, and had "bobbed" hair, which was a hallmark of young women who, in the 1920s, wanted to break free from the fashion restrictions which had been placed on their mothers and grandmothers, restrictions which had included corsets, legs always being covered, and hair always being long and having to be pinned up and elaborately dressed. I remember a conversation that my sister and I had once about how Grammy looked like a flapper in the pictures and my sister saying that she also had a typical 1920s flapper name---Hazel.
But the reason that it was a "typical 1920s flapper name" is that it was popular at the time that flappers were born. Yes, it vibes "flapper" to me, but that's because of the simple fact that a greater number of young women in the 1920s bore the name Hazel than in times before or since, and that's based upon the popularity statistics.
Kitty is not a flapper name. If Hazel isn't grabbing you, then what you should do is pull up the popularity statistics on girls names from 1900-1910, eliminate classics such as Mary (which was of course still number 1), Margaret, and Elizabeth, because they won't be as tied to the era, and pick the most popular one that appeals to you.
My maternal grandmother's name was Hazel and she was born in 1906. So she was in her teens and early twenties in the 1920s. Now whether she engaged in flapperish behavior when young, such as drinking bootleg liquor from a flask she kept in her stocking and dancing the Charleston, I don't know. I kind of doubt it, given that she seems to have been a fairly conventional young woman. She was a schoolteacher before she married, married at the age of 20, and had her first child at age 22. But I remember from old photographs that she looked like a flapper, dressed in the style of the 1920s, and had "bobbed" hair, which was a hallmark of young women who, in the 1920s, wanted to break free from the fashion restrictions which had been placed on their mothers and grandmothers, restrictions which had included corsets, legs always being covered, and hair always being long and having to be pinned up and elaborately dressed. I remember a conversation that my sister and I had once about how Grammy looked like a flapper in the pictures and my sister saying that she also had a typical 1920s flapper name---Hazel.
But the reason that it was a "typical 1920s flapper name" is that it was popular at the time that flappers were born. Yes, it vibes "flapper" to me, but that's because of the simple fact that a greater number of young women in the 1920s bore the name Hazel than in times before or since, and that's based upon the popularity statistics.
Kitty is not a flapper name. If Hazel isn't grabbing you, then what you should do is pull up the popularity statistics on girls names from 1900-1910, eliminate classics such as Mary (which was of course still number 1), Margaret, and Elizabeth, because they won't be as tied to the era, and pick the most popular one that appeals to you.
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