Naming is the first attempt by man at communication. This means that names have been around since the beginning of, well everything. Here is a riddle about it: “What do you have that is yours, but everyone else uses it way more than you do and ever will?” The answer, of course, is your name. It is believed that the earliest history of names had to do with occupations, landmarks, and deities. Names were one of the earliest and most common forms of identification. It was like a unique id in a database, the only issue being that eventually, keeping records of people by name became a problem because names began to overlap.
When it comes to first names, they change every day. This is because about approximately three hundred and sixty-one thousand babies are born every day in the United States and about seven thousand four hundred people also die in the United States every day.
The same cannot be said about the last names. When looking at last names we take into consideration the last names of people born in the early nineteenth century to date, since no one born in the eighteenth century is still alive.
And it is not just the statistics of people born in the United States that has to be taken into consideration since there has been a very high flux of immigrants over the years. With all this in mind, the most commonly used Last name in the United States is Smith. About 2.5 million Americans bear the surname Smith and 11 million bear the first name Michael. One would expect that since women outnumber men in the USA according to the U.S. Census Bureau, one hundred and sixty-one million to one hundred and fifty-six million, the most common first name should be female.
This is not the case because parents usually pay more attention to naming their female kids. Girls bear more unique names than guys. And the most common name is not Michael Smith either, it is James Smith. Smith is the most common last name in the United States followed by Johnson with about a five hundred thousand difference. Then there are Williams and Brown. Garcia has also recently joined the top ten last names in the United States.
Native Americans originally had no surname and used only their first names. When last names were introduced, the Native Americans also had to adopt foreign last names. Today the most popular Native American surname is also Smith.
Although surnames were introduced in England as early as 1066, it was not common in the United States until the seventies when the bureaucracies mandated it. The rising population and information management systems made is necessary to have a last name. That was when people started adopting last names based on occupation, their nicknames, location, and clan. It was much later that people started passing down the last names.
Some people even took their father’s name. I.e. a son with a father called John had a surname Johnson which is John’s son, a blacksmith took a surname Smith and a cook adopted the surname Cook amongst other things.
The earliest people to settle in the USA apart from the native Indians that were born there were Europeans, people from Scotland and the Irish. This explains the high level of Irish, Scottish and English names in the United States today.
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The seventeenth century saw a lot of action. It experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly from the civil war, the invention of the steam engine, a significant improvement in surgery practices, and a new outlook on human anatomy. It also gave birth to better technology like guns that were easier to shoot, and an improved entertainment industry.
There was also a rise in the use of particular names in the century as well. Some of these names are:
Thomas: The name Thomas is Aramaic for the word twin. It is also known from the bible as the name of one of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ who refused to believe Jesus has risen until he witnessed it. He became popularly known as doubting Thomas. The name also became symbolic from the 12th-century martyr Thomas á Beckett and many people started adopting the name.
Williams: The name Williams is from the German language from the word Wil, meaning the protector or the faithful defender. This name was first borne by knights, and very prominent in England around the early 17th century and eventually made its way around all of Europe. People bearing Williams were expected to be loyal, strong and dependable.
Robert: This is another name that had its peak in the 17th century and has its origin in the old German tongue meaning bright fame. It is from it that names like Roberson and Robertson were born. The 17th had game-changer Roberts like the Jesuit Robert Parsons, chemist Robert Boyle, and Robert Hooke, the scientist superstar.
Blaise: the name Blaise is of both Latin and French origin. It is coined from the word Blaze which means fire. There was also a Saint Blaise who was believed to possess healing power. People started bearing his name because of the Civil War that happened in the 17th century as many required healing. The 17th Century also gave birth to the mathematician and the inventor of the calculator called Blaise Pascal. Most of the modern technology today is based on some of his methods and theories.
Charles: Charles means freedom or free man. The name was first borne by the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, which means Charles the Great. The name was very prominent in the 17th century with the reign of King Charles I and Charles II and is also considered royalty.
Amanda: this name is from old Latin language meaning Worthy of loved or lovable. Most of the 17th-century poets and play writers wrote poems and plays with characters, Amanda. This made the name Amanda very famous and many parents started giving it to their girl babies.
Hannah: the name Hannah or Anna is of Hebrew origin meaning he has favored me or I am his favorite. There is a whole Bible story attributed to the name Hannah, the lady Hannah in the Bible could not bear a child and asked God for a child. Her request was granted. This name was very popular in the 17th century and still is today.
Jacqueline: The word Jacqueline is from both French and Hebrew language. most people consider Jacqueline a female version of the name Jacob, meaning he supplements. It was used in Britain and became a favorite in the late 17th century.
Myra: this was first introduced in the early 17th century and became popular throughout the century. Later versions of this name became Myrah, Mirah, Mira or Mariah. It is of Greek original and a female version of the name Myron.
Jane: Jane is from the Hebrew language as well, meaning God is gracious. It was first introduced by the unwilling queen Jane Grey in the 16th century. This made the eventually become a big favorite among the ladies in the 17th century. The name Jane, however, was not borne by royalty in the 17th century. Most people that favored the name were the commoners. Maybe it was the pull of the Queen Jane story that gave the common girls hope.
Aemelia: Aemelia was a favored lady’s name since the 17th century up to date. Although over the years it has evolved into other versions like Emma, Emmeline, Milly, Emmy, Emma, Amy, Amelia, Ameliya, Amelita, Ameline, Amelina, etc. It is of Latin and Old German origin, and the meaning of Amelia is “rival, eager work”. A blend of two medieval names: the Latin Emilia and the Latin German Amalia, meaning “work”.
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Over the years, some names like Rockefeller have commanded a particular power and respect. And although most billionaires are identified by their last names, here is a list of first names that have the highest net worth. According to the Wealth-X Billionaire Census 2019, there are 2,604 billionaires in the world.
Jeffery: The name Jeffery has a net value of about 111 billion dollars and it belongs to a man named Jeffery Preston Bezos who is currently the richest in the world. He is from the united states of America and deals in aerospace, internet, entrepreneurship, and investments. One of his famous companies is multinational Amazon. Other people with the first name Jeffery that have gone to make a name for themselves are Jeffery Sachs, Jeffery Abrams, and Jeffery Raikes among others.
Williams or Bill: The first name Williams belongs to the second richest man in the world, Williams Henry Gates III, popularly referred to as Bill Gates. He has a net worth of 108.8 billion dollars as of January 2020. He once held the title of the world’s richest man from 1995 to 2017 and was only toppled just a few times until he was finally overthrown by Jeff Bezos in late 2017. He is a software developer and investor who co-founded Microsoft and is best-known as the pioneer of the microcomputers revolution of 1970s and 1980s. There is also Bill Koch is worth 1.8 billion dollars.
Warren: Warren Buffet is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and has a net worth of about 89.4 billion dollars. He was born in the United States and went to the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. He has three kids and is currently married to Astrid. He studied business at the University and went to other finance schools. He is also the richest investor in the world.
Amancio: Amancio Ortega is from Spain and was born in 1936. He founded Inditex fashion and co-founded Zara clothing and accessories with his wife in 1975. He once rose to the richest man in the world in 2015 with a net worth of 80 billion dollars. He currently has a net worth of 68.3 billion dollars. He dropped out of school at 14 and joined his father in A Coruna, where he learned how to make clothes by hand. He donated 300 million euros to fighting cancer across Spain, which was used to purchase machines that were used in combating the illness. He recently just bought Troy Block Complex, one of the places where Amazon first had its headquarters quarters.
Lawrence: This first name belongs to both Larry Ellison and Larry Page. Larry Ellison is the co-founder of the database Oracle corporations. He is from the United States of America and is an executive chairman at oracle and also a board member at Tesla. He has been married four times. He is a net worth of US$69.1 billion as of October 2019. He formed what became the Oracle database in 1977. Some of his competitions are Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server. This name also belongs to Larry Page, co-founder of Google and worth 66.36 billion dollars
Mark: Everyone is familiar with the name Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. He is the founder of Facebook and has over the years acquired other social media platforms like WhatsApp. He has a net worth of 80.7 billion dollars. He is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is married to a Pricilla Chan and has two kids. He went to Harvard University where he launched Facebook in 2004. He has given to many charities over the years and is part of the giving pledge in 2010 when he, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet signed an allegory pledge in which they promised to give at least half of their wealth to charity over time.
Mike: It belongs to a Michael Bloomberg American politician, businessman, and author. He was the mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013. He went to Harvard where he graduated with an MBA and John Hopkins University. He has a net worth of 60.1 billion dollars. He started his own company in 1981 called Bloomberg, a global financial service software system providing financial information widely used in global finance. He was CEO of Bloomberg for 29 years and he is also a member of the Giving Pledge. He gave 3.3 billion dollars to Hopkins University, which landed him a place at the top of Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “Philanthropy 50” list for 2019.
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What comes to naming children, society and civilization as a whole have come a long way.
While some parents take this opportunity to name their babies after their favorite or most meaningful things – like people, family members, food, or movie characters, among other things, some parents take this as a challenge to test their creativity.
Some parents have also been known to go for length rather than substance. There are some pros to having a multisyllabic name. One of the earliest things each or most kids learn is how to spell and say their names. There have been even some believe that kids with multisyllabic names tend to learn words faster.
Below is a list of the most ridiculously long names given to people.
1. The person to longest names is the late Hubert Blaine. He had a total of 27 names with his third name Wolfe¬schlegel¬stein¬hausen¬berger¬dorff has more than 35 characters. He was a German typesetter. According to Wikipedia, his full name was Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfe¬schlegel¬stein¬hausen¬berger¬dorff¬welche¬vor¬altern¬waren¬gewissen¬haft¬schafers-wessen¬schafe¬waren¬wohl¬gepflege¬und¬sorg¬faltig¬keit¬be¬schutzen¬vor¬an¬greifen¬durch¬ihr¬raub¬gierig¬feinde-welche¬vor¬altern¬zwolf¬hundert¬tausend¬jah¬res¬voran¬die¬er¬scheinen¬von¬der¬erste¬erde¬mensch¬der¬raum¬schiff-genacht¬mit¬tung¬stein¬und¬sieben¬iridium¬elek¬trisch¬motors¬ge¬brauch¬licht¬als¬sein¬ur¬sprung¬von¬kraft¬ge¬start-sein¬lange¬fahrt¬hin¬zwischen¬stern¬artig¬raum¬auf¬der¬suchen¬nach¬bar¬schaft¬der¬stern¬welche¬ge¬habt¬be¬wohn¬bar-planeten¬kreise¬drehen¬sich¬und¬wo¬hin¬der¬neue¬rasse¬von¬ver¬stand¬ig¬mensch¬lich¬keit¬konnte¬fort¬pflanzen¬und-sicher¬freuen¬an¬lebens¬lang¬lich¬freude¬und¬ru¬he¬mit¬nicht¬ein¬furcht¬vor¬an¬greifen¬vor¬anderer¬intelligent¬ge-schopfs¬von¬hin¬zwischen¬stern¬art¬ig¬raum. His parents’ name was Elvis Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff
2. Another person to have pushed the limits of names is a woman in Britain who was crazy enough to change her name to Red – Wacky League – Antlez – Broke the Stereo – Neon Tide – Bring Back Honesty – Coalition – Feedback – Hand of Aces – Keep Going Captain – Let’s Pretend – Lost State of Dance – Paper Taxis – Lunar Road – Up! Down! Strange! – All and I – Neon Sheep – Eve Hornby – Faye Bradley – AJ Wilde – Michael Rice – Dion Watts – Matthew Appleyard – John Ashurst – Lauren Swales – Zoe Angus – Jaspreet Singh – Emma Matthews – Nicola Brown – Leanne Pickering – Victoria Davies – Rachel Burnside – Gil Parker – Freya Watson – Alisha Watts – James Pearson – Jacob Sotheran-Darley – Beth Lowery – Jasmine Hewitt – Chloe Gibson – Molly Farquhar – Lewis Murphy – Abbie Coulson – Nick Davies – Harvey Parker – Kyran Williamson – Michael Anderson – Bethany Murray – Sophie Hamilton – Amy Wilkins – Emma Simpson – Liam Wales – Jacob Bartram – Alex Hooks – Rebecca Miller – Caitlin Miller – Sean McCloskey – Dominic Parker – Abbey Sharpe – Elena Larkin – Rebecca Simpson – Nick Dixon – Abbie Farrelly – Liam Grieves – Casey Smith – Liam Downing – Ben Wignall – Elizabeth Hann – Danielle Walker – Lauren Glen – James Johnson – Ben Ervine – Kate Burton – James Hudson – Daniel Mayes – Matthew Kitching – Josh Bennett – Evolution – Dreams according to the Guinness Book of records. Her initial name was Dawn McManus. And contrary to what you might imagine, she did not do it for the attention. She changed her name to honor the benefactors of Red Wine, her children charity.
3. The Brazilian Empire saw it’s a fair share of emperors, but perhaps the craziest was the last who lived between 1825 to 1891. Although generally referred to as Father Peter II, his full name was Pedro de Alcântara João Carlos Leopoldo Salvador Bibiano Francisco Xavier de Paula Leocádio Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga de Hapsburgo Bragança e Bourbon.
4. Britain has had its fair share of tediously long names. Cutting is Anna Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louise Maud Nora Ophelia Prudence Quince Rebecca Sarah Teresa Ulysis Venus Winifred Xenophon Yetty Zeno Pepper. She was interviewed by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! in 1929.
When it comes to character count, however, they are still names that have exceeded most breaths
5. According to USA Today, we have Janice Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele from Huwai. The name has about 36 characters. She inherited the name from her late Indian husband. Ayebaeki-Ipretemondifere-Aghosikigha according to forbares.com is another long name. It belongs to a Nigerian.
6. When it comes to purely English names with long character count, Papageorgakopoulos makes the cut as well.
7. Although the first record of this name is from a character in the Bible, it has been reclaimed by actor Mahershalalhashbaz Gilmore. Due to difficulty in pronunciation and probably tired of everyone getting his name wrong among other things, he now goes by Mahershala Ali.
8. Pablo Picasso’s full name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de Los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.
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One of the most unique identifiers of humanity since the beginning of time is the name. The first step to defining or figuring out who you are is in your name, which why most parents take such great care in naming their kids. And also why when people want to reinvent themselves, the first thing they do is change their names.
Initially, female names were meant to express grace and elegance, while male names portrayed character and strength. Sexist much? Yes. But as time went on, especially with the birth of twins, there was a blend between what was considered masculine and feminine. People who wanted male children but got female or vice versa started creating a bridge between male and female names and unisex names were born.
With the new millennials and the rise of the concept of gender fluidness, parents are leaning more and more towards unisex names. Below is the list of the most common unisex names today.
1. Charlie: Everyone knows someone called Charlie. From the famous Charlie Otto Puth, the musician, to Charlie Duncan and Charlie Townseed. The name initially belonged to guys with names like Charles, but eventually got a female version Charlotte. It is of German origin and means free man or free woman. More guys bear Charlie than girls, but it is one of the most popular unisex names.
2. Taylor: The two very famous people rocking that name seems to be the pretty and famous singer Taylor Swift, and football player Lawrence Taylor.
The name Taylor is of both French and English origin, and as you may have already suspected, it means traditional tailor or to cut. It was initially used to refer to people whose occupation was cutting and sewing clothes.
3. Quinn: Anyone who watched the famous American series Homeland, fall in love with the character Quinn. It is a unisex name of Irish and Gaelic origin meaning to give counsel or counsel. Although the name was initially Irish, it got rapidly adopted by the Scottish. Even though the name is unisex, it is used for more girls than guys. We have Quinn Cummings.
4. Alex: The earlier versions of this name was Alexander the Great. And he lived true to his name. Alex means the defender or warrior. We also have Alexandria and Alexis. The name is more favored by boys than girls.
5. Angel: This name exists from the concepts of religion and angels and demons. Although it is now English, it was first derived from the Greek word Angelos and Latin Angelis. More guys bear it and there is Angel Michael and Gabriel in the Bible.
6. Kyle: More boys than girls bear the name Kyle. It is of Gaelic origin meaning straight or narrow and refers to a narrow body of water between two landmasses. The famous movie, Kyle XY with a male character Kyle.
7. Avery: This name is of Old English origin, the type of English that was used in Shakespeare or the first Bible. It means the magical creature, elf and it is gotten from French words like Alfred or Aubrey and ranks one hundred and one in the United States of America. It is used for both baby girls and boys.
8. Riley: Riley’s also another name of Old English origin. It means rye clearing and it is given to more girls than guys. Rye is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop, and a forage crop. Rye grain is used for flour, bread, beer, crispbread, some whiskeys, some vodkas, and animal fodder. It can also be eaten whole, either as boiled rye berries or by being rolled, similar to rolled oats. (Wikipedia).
9. Parker: Parker was very popular in the 19th century and was given to more boys than girls and it is of old English origin. This was name was used to refer to people who were park keepers. Bearing one is a famous musician Charlie Parker.
10. Blake: Blake is another old English name which means pale or bleak and this was initially given to babies who were born with pale skin. It is a unisex name It is currently very popular in the United States.
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Choosing a baby name is exciting but brain-wracking at the same time. And sometimes, you just can’t make up your mind! There are too many to choose from and too many possibilities. What if your child grows up and hates you for your choice?
It would be easier if you were simply doing this for yourself, but no worries. With a few tips and tricks, choosing a baby name can definitely get easier.
Cadence, Length, and Spelling
You don’t want your child’s name to be a tongue twister (try Rainier Royce Taylor). Don’t make it too long and complicated either to spare her the hassle when filling out forms, and keep the spelling basic (Annah, with an H, can mean a lifetime making corrections). Still, that’s no excuse for being boring so find a middle ground.
Initials and Nicknames
When thinking of a baby name, consider initials and nicknames. Ryan Allen Tonner sounds nice, but your child won’t be happy with those initials later on. Nicknames are also something to consider. If you name your daughter Analiese, she’ll probably pick up Anna or Lizzy. Just make sure the short form is as safe as the long form.
Combinations
You and your partner can spend so much time ping-ponging different names without ever agreeing on something. But if you each have a name you particularly like, why not combine them? Roseanne, Julianna and Lucyanne are interesting examples of combo names.
Cultural Influences
Another idea you can try is a baby name that reflects your culture. For example, Sofia is common among Hispanic communities, but if you’re Hispanic and your partner is American, you can come up with a hybrid to make the name culturally relevant yet easy to pronounce and remember. For example, rather than just Sofia, you can name your baby Sofiabelle.
Positivity
Who wants a name that carries an air of bad vibes? Ted would be neat unless your surname is Bundy. Not that it means anything, technically speaking, but you don’t want your child to grow up with the trauma of always being associated with a notorious murderer. As much as possible, keep your baby’s name in the positive or at least neutral.
Opinions
If you’re thinking of something as common as Jessica or Peter, go listen to your inner voice. But if you’re treading on dangerous waters like Cinnamon or Affinity or Gambit, at least talk to the people closest to you and ask them what they think. Sometimes, you need others to point out a fatal flaw – and hope it won’t have to be your child.
Inspiration
Look everywhere around you. There’s always an inspiration to discover. Love music? Name your baby after your favorite songwriter. Crazy about Martha’s Pasta down the street? Martha’s a beautiful name and it can even start some kind of family ritual when you go there to eat with your daughter.
Personality
Logically speaking, it’s best to choose a name for your baby before delivery. Having to process documents retroactively can indeed be so much trouble. But one disadvantage is the possibility of the chosen name not matching your kid’s personality. It would be ridiculous to hold off naming until your child starts to show some personality, so what do you do? Just go with your best instincts. You will usually be right. If not, just invent a nickname that more perfectly reflects who she is as a person.
Why You Should Take Baby Naming Seriously
At the end of the day, you’ll want to choose a baby name while putting yourself in their shoes. You don’t want them to feel embarrassed about their name or have a hard time getting others to pronounce it. If you think you’d be happy to have the name you’re currently thinking, then perhaps you’re on the right track. If not, then go back to the drawing board and start anew.
Needless to say, our names are very important to us. It tells the world who we are and the things we could become. Hence, as parents, be sure to spend time naming your children carefully, considering how your choices will affect them not only as kids but especially as fully functioning adults in society.
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The main instrument to identify a person is their name. In many cultures, given name and surname are the fundamental ingredients that made up a person’s name. While given names and surnames may have different connotations and significance depending on the locations and culture, there are certain aspects that will always differentiate between the two wherever you go. Given name, a.k.a first name may be any name that is given by the parents. On the other hand, surname, a.k.a family name, is a name shared with other family members, including some relatives.
Dictionary.com defines given name as, “the name given to one, as distinguished from an inherited family name.” Conversely, the site characterizes surname as, “the name that a person has in common with other family members, as distinguished from a given name.”
For example, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright are two blood siblings that invented the first-ever airplane. Both of them have the same surname, which is Wright. Whereas their given name—Orville and Wilbur—are undoubtedly different.
Origin
Surname
Today’s surnames mostly come from fathers’ surnames that are passed on to their son/daughter. While the father’s wife, or the child’s mother, usually has a different surname, she can choose to drop her original surname—often described as “maiden name”—and change it to her husband’s surname or family name.
The surnames themselves, however, are originally derived from countless roots, including but not limited to:
Occupation
Physical appearance
Social class
Local environment, and
Baptismal names
For instance, you may have known people—or maybe yourself—that have Piper, Player, Baker, Turner, or Brewer as their surname. Those surnames are references to the occupations of their ancestors. Other surnames like King, Knight, and Bowman refers to their social class or the military rank.
Hill, Wood, Maple, and Borough are surnames that feature the landscape the originator lived in. Whereas names like Robertson (son of Robert) or Carlsdotter (daughter of Carl) often called baptismal names. The term came from when a father combines his own given names with a suffix like –son or –daughter as a surname to his child at the church.
In the west, surnames didn’t exist until the Middle Age—can be earlier or later in other parts of the world—as people could still identify one another using only their given names. Eventually, as the population grew larger and the communities of people became more interconnected, the need for a more practical way to differentiate people according to their names was becoming more apparent. Thus, the concept of surname or family name was born.
While children usually inherit the surname of the father in the past, nowadays, the practice of the mother’s surname inheritance is also growing, following the women’s emancipation movement. These cases can be found with the “double surname” tradition. For example, an English football player, Trent Alexander-Arnold, has the surnames of both his father (Arnold) and his mother (Alexander) joined. This tradition is more prevalent in Spain-speaking countries.
Given name
In contrast with surname, given name doesn’t have a strict rule so parents can name their child literally however they want. In many cases though, Christian families often use the Bible as the main source for given names. Names like David, Michael, Noah, and Gabriel indicate entities that appear in the Holy Book. In addition, Mohamed, Zain, and Hassan are names that have a connection to Islam.
There are also other ways people can name their children. Some parents decide to name their child after famous public figures. In another case, while most people traditionally name their child, some parents may go with originality and choose or invent an extraordinary name for their child.
Christian name, middle name, and more
There are quite a handful of other terms regarding names that might confuse people. One such term is “Christian name” which is technically the first name or given name. Christian name, however, is a more specific term that refers to the first name given at the baptism ceremony. “Forename” is also another approach of saying the given name.
The middle name, on the other hand, is its own phrase pointing to a portion of one’s personal name. In some cultures, usually placed between the given name and surname, the middle name may be given to a person regardless of whether it’s necessary to further distinguish them from the others.
Summary
Surnames didn’t appear until the Middle Age. The origin of surnames come from one’s ancestor’s either occupation, local environment, or many other sources. Contrarily, a Given name already exists way earlier in the past and is chosen by the parents.
In many countries, people’s name consist of surnames and given names, and both may serve as a person’s primary identifier.
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We as humans want to be that person that’s different but in a unique way. We want a name that sticks out and is more special than the other individual in the room. Back in the days, it was increasingly famous to pick a typical name, fortunately, millennial parents are defying that norm and thinking of progressively one of a kind names. Regardless of whether you name your baby boy after a celebrity, or take a typical name and make it your own, there is no rule set in stone with regards to naming a kid.
However, everyone wants to give their children that unique name that makes them stand out among their peers. Millenials want to abstain from naming their child the most common/uber-trendy name every other person is going to give their little one.
Picking a name for your child is a genuine strive. Names will, in general, in and out of fashion, yet there’s no precise science to clarify why certain names develop in notoriety at a given time. This requires careful research, you don’t want to end up naming your child after a criminal or after a washed-up celebrity.
Perhaps, learning some extra information about the name will be of great help to your research. If you are keen on learning 2020s most famous baby boy’s names and it’s meaning, then you don’t need to look any further!
Reese: The name Reese is of Welsh origin. You might be thinking “I know a girl named Reese”. Yes, Reese is a unisex name but it’s set to break into the boys’ top 100. Reese means Fiery, Ardent. Reese is known to be fit, funny, kind and super caring.
Tate: It is of Norse origin and it means Cheerful. You can always expect a cheery mood from Tate and a beautiful smile to melt your heart. Tate is known to have amazing eyes, and hair, he is very funny and brightens up your day.
Elijah: For the Christian parents looking for a strong baby boy name, Elijah is one of the best. It is a Hebrew name gotten from the Prophet Elijah, a miracle worker and a devoted worshipper of God. It means Yahweh is God. Elijah is known to be one of the most humble people in the whole world, he is one funny &humorous guy.
Asher: Asher was the eighth son of Jacob in the bible and he was promised a life of blessings and abundance. Asher means Happy, Fortunate, Blessed. It still stands outside the top 1,000. Asher is known to be sweet and extremely kind no matter what he goes through.
Theodore: Theodore is one to have many beautiful nicknames. Ted, Teddy, Theo. The name is gotten from the Greek words theos, meaning “God,” and dōron, meaning “gift,” giving Theodore the meaning “God-given” or “gift of God.” Theodore is known to be a nice, sweet, sexy, very odd type of person, that everyone can get along with.
Luca: Luca is originally gotten from the name Lucas which is Latin and means Light. Luca is known to be the sweetest guy you will ever meet. He will always be there for you even if he’s at the darkest moment, he will simply put on a smile and support you.
Ares: The name Ares was gotten from the god of war, one of the Twelve Olympian gods and the son of Zeus. Ares is known to be excellent at analyzing and learning. They tend to be philosophers and scholars. They are usually quiet and introverted. Ares is known to be is tall and handsome.
Kieran: The name is of Irish Origin meaning Dark one, probably due to the dark hair colour they’re known for. Kieran is known to be strong and attractive, with a love for fashion.
Miles: The name Miles is of Greek origin. It means Soldier. Miles is known to always fight for what’s right. He has a real sense of humour.
Easton: The name Easton is of English Origin meaning east-facing place. Easton is known for great personality, and a great friend. He is confident and someone you can approach for advice.
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Out of all the stories, history, and legends surrounding them, one thing is certain of the Irish people. They are one of the oldest and most well-spread nationalities in the world. Due to the famine, war, and poverty that struck Ireland from 1845 to 1852, most of the Irish people emigrated to faraway lands. Today, there are plenty of people who are of Irish descent in Canada, Australia, the United States, and Great Britain. There are also fewer among Mexico, New Zealand, Argentina, and Brazil. It is recorded that more than a million Irish people lost their lives between this period.
So if one wants to trace back really old Irish names, then one would have to go back as early as the Gaelic people names who were believed to be the earliest settlers in Ireland. Historically, however, the oldest Irish names will be traced back to the names of the Irish people that first migrated to the United States and other nations.
According to the Irish Times, one of the oldest recorded Irish family names is Ó Cléirigh. This went with others like O’Neil (there is a whole legend about him and the Queen of England ), O’Brien, O’Sullivan, and O’Connor.
Names with Mac or Mc are still some of the earliest recorded surnames in Ireland. This was when the concepts of surnames were invented and people had to bear two names. So MacTyre meant son of wolf. Or more properly, the son of a man called wolf. Below are some of the oldest recorded Irish names. We have names of Gaelic, Norman, Welsh and Campbro Normal origin. These are just the popular out of the earliest Irish names.
Tobin: This name first originated from Tipperary, Kilkenny, and later in French-Norman, de St. Aubyn.
Tyrrell is of Gaelic origin from Westmeath.
Archbold: The name originated from Anglo-Norman and means brave of heart.
Archer: Archer was very popular during the medieval war times in Dublin, Kilkenny.
Ayl(e)ward is from Waterford, and of Anglo-Norman origin.
Baldwin is also from Waterford – German-Flemish, Baldwyn.
Barron: is from Waterford and Cambro-Norman origin and is derived from Fitzgerald. Today there is the English Barron.
Bermingham: was first from the county of Galway, and there were variations like Norman, de Bermingham.
Blake: We all know Ed Sheeran’s song Galway Girl. The name Blake originated from Galway and is of Welsh origin. Now it is unisex, and we have names like Blake Shelton.
Darcy is of Anglo-Norman origin.
Deane is still very popular today and was too in Dublin in the prehistoric Irish.
Fitzgerald: is of Cambro-Norman origin, and originated from Windsor.
Fleming is another very old Irish surname.
Griffin is of both Gaelic and Welsh origin.
MacAuley or MacAwley originated in both Co Fermanagh branch of MaGuire and Mac Amhlaoibh.
MacBrennan it means son of Brennan same for MacCasey and
Mac Fhlannchaidh.
Cosgrave people from Co Wicklow started naming their kids Cosgrave and later Wexford.
Ó Colghain started from Co Derry and Co Donegal.
Dubhchonna also progressed over time as Doheny or Downey and is of early Gaelic origin.
Ó Dochartaigh, Doherty, or Dougherty, was first adopted by the lords of Inishowen. It is also the name of the famous and movie star and legend, Marilyn Monroe.
Ó Domhnallain or later Donlan is from Galway.
MacDonagh – Co Cork – lords of Duhallow and Corran had its early roots in, branch of McDermott and MacCarthy.
MacDonnchadha – MacDonnell as you might have rightfully guessed this name is from the Clan of MacDonald.
Ó Fionn the anglicized version is (O) Finn and it had its roots in Co Sligo, Co Galway, and chiefs of Calry.
Ó Fionnagáin is now popularly known as Finnegan and has its roots in Galway as well.
Mac Conghamhma is now anglicized ad Gaffney or Caulfield and originated from both Galway and Fiachrach Aidhne.
Ó Gallchobhair is now (O) Gallagher and has its roots in Co Donegal and Cenel, Conaill.
Mac Giolla Riabhaigh is now Gallery (not your phone gallery), MacAreavy of Gray
The name we know as Gavin was originally Ó Gealbháin from Co Clare.
Ó Mainnín: now anglicized as Mannion or Manning is from Galway county and of Pictish origin.
Mac Maghnais or now MacManus is from Maghnais, son of Turlough O’Connor.
Most of the so-called English surnames in the united states today were of Irish origin, but now have eventually come to be regarded as English names. Unfortunately, most of the original spellings and pronunciation have been lost over time.
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This is a collection of information gathered about Yoko Ono. We hope that you enjoy this content, and if you’re looking for additional resources, we suggest Yoko’s own website (as the official resource), the wikipedia page (for the most up-to-date information), and the collection of Yoko Ono media at amazon for related discography and merchandise. We’ve also compiled some fun facts and stats from the U.S. Census Bureau about the name Yoko Ono. Have fun, and enjoy!
Yoko Ono Biography
by Shahbeila Bateman Artistically misunderstood, derisively known as the most famous widow in the world and vilified as the catalyst for the breakup of the most famous music group of all time, Yoko Ono in actuality is an uncompromising artistic visionary who was already an avant-garde superstar before she met John Lennon. Today, Yoko is finally recognized as an influential artist who pushes the boundaries of the art, film, music and theatre media. The present time marks a renewed resurgence of interest and celebration of her work. She has recently received high media profile due to the simultaneous reissue of her music catalog (including a boxed set) on the Rykodisc specialty label as well as for the premiere of her off-Broadway theatre piece Hiroshima. However, these achievements obscure her body of 16 films made between 1964 and 1972, some in a collaborative effort with her late husband.
Yoko Ono (whose first name translates to “ocean child”) was born on February 18, 1933, in Tokyo, the eldest of three children born to Eisuke and Isoko, a wealthy aristocratic family. Her father was a frustrated pianist who held degrees from Tokyo universities in mathematics and economics. In 1935 he became head of a Japanese bank in San Francisco, and as a result, he did not meet Yoko until she was two years old, since she stayed behind in Tokyo with her mother.
When Yoko was 18, her father was appointed the president of a bank in New York as the family settled in the affluent suburb of Scarsdale, N.Y. Attending the prestigious Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Yoko dropped out to elope with her first husband, Toshi Ichiyanagi. It was while living in New York’s artsy Greenwich Village that Yoko discovered the world of avant-garde artists. Once absorbed in the scene, she began her lifelong association with art starting with informal events then segueing into poetry while developing her fascination for conceptual pieces. Alienated as an “artistic radical” for years her work was ridiculed or ignored. That began to change once she started her working relationship with American jazz musician/film producer Anthony Cox, the man who would eventually become her second husband.
Cox financed and helped coordinate her “interactive conceptual events” in the early 60’s. According to the artist these events; “Demanded a response and some input from the observer rather than answering all the questions.” Her most famous piece was the “cut piece” staged in 1964, where the audience was invited to cut off pieces of her clothing until she was naked, an abstract commentary on discarding materialism (i.e., disguises) for the natural (i.e., the real)underneath. Yoko’s work often demands the viewers’ participation and forces them to get involved. A famous example is from her “This Is Not Here” exhibit from the early 70’s. One section of the exhibit included a living room completely painted white with the objects; armchair, grandfather clock, desk, television set, even an apple, cut completely in half. The viewer must “complete” the scenario with a reference memory of the “whole” object. In other words, art is a two-part process–what is presented by the artist and how it is interpreted by its audience.
The marriage between Ono and Cox was a tempestuous liaison that produced one child–a daughter named Kyoko who was born on August 8, 1963. By this time, Yoko was heavily influenced by the extended and repeated image work of Andy Warhol, Dali inspired surrealism and Dadaesque absurdity. The latter is evident in events such as having her audience pay a shilling to hammer a nail in a board–a satirical jab at consumerism.
The notoriety of Yoko’s events, as well as her involvement with the radical 60’s avant-garde art collective Fluxus, created an interest in her works in the United Kingdom. This interest precipitated her visit to England in 1967.
Yoko’s life forever changed when she met Beatle John Lennon at an exhibit of her work at the Indica gallery in London. Lennon, in addition to being a pop culture icon, was also one of the most brilliant creative minds of all time, with an art school background. The mental stimulation between the two developed into a strong friendship which eventually blossomed into romance as well as a creative marriage.
By 1968, their affair was public as both of their marriages disintegrated. A bad side effect of Yoko’s collapse of her marriage to Cox was that he “kidnapped” their daughter during a weekend custody visit. For almost 30 years, Yoko did not see her long-lost daughter Kyoko, but they were eventually reunited.
Since John’s death, Yoko has remained active, releasing three music albums, engaging in two concert tours(one which featured her and John’s only son Sean leading the backup band)and composing two off-Broadway musicals–the most recent being Hiroshima.
It was during the mid-sixties that Yoko began to explore motion picture as another extension of her art. Her first film, 1964’s Film No. 1 a.k.a. A Walk To Taj Mahal breaks down the barrier between camera and audience as the camera takes on the viewers point of view walking through a snowstorm.
Subsequent films can be subdivided by themes. The first of which can be grouped together by her fascination with the aspect and form of the (usually nude) human body. She almost seems to enjoy demystifying the sexual aura by featuring repetitive shots of isolated body parts. This is best exemplified by the minimalistic approach of her film Bottoms which consists of a series of frames made up of nothing but hundreds of naked backsides. This theme continues in 1968’s Up Your Legs Forever, which follows camera movement across the form of one aspect of a woman’s body, as well as in her 1970 collaboration with Lennon entitled Fly. The latter depicts the movement of a fly along the landscape of a nude female body, augmented on the soundtrack by a voice piece by Ono that is used as the “voice” of the fly which correlates with the movement of the insect. The most infamous of the nude pieces is Smile –a 1969 collaboration with Lennon that consists of slow-motion photography of a close-up of Lennon’s penis achieving an erection, complete with a soundtrack of industrial and mechanical noises. 1968’s Freedom can also be included in the body series and is also the first to incorporate a blatant feminist theme which she would expand on the following year with Rape. Freedom focuses on a woman pulling on the clasp of her bra, with the film ending just before it’s removed. According to the essay “Yoko Ono: Objects; Films”: “Ono plays with our sense of anticipation by constructing a metaphor for the liberation of the female body and self.”
The next subcategory of Ono films are conceptual. Erection and Apothesis both share themes of movement and change. Erection is a pixilated film using stop-motion photography at different speeds to document the construction and erection of a building at the same angle to present–in the words of the “…Objects; Films” essay: “…An almost organic form growing before our eyes”. Apothesis follows the Lennon’s ascending to the sky in a hot air balloon through cloud banks to symbolize a transcendental journey.
The last subcategory of Ono films can be described as documentaries. Bed -In documents the Lennons honeymoon peace event in an Amsterdam hotel. While Two Virgins and 1971’s Imagine gives outsiders a view of the relationship and their recording process respectively. Sisters O Sisters is a straightforward concert film of Yoko (backed up by John and The Plastic Ono Band) performing at a benefit concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan for jailed political activist John Sinclair.
When once asked what kind of artist she was, Yoko answered, “I deal with music of the mind.” Her imaginative concepts presented in her films may not be hummable in everyone’s hit parade. However the thoughtfulness in examining new ways to explore issues strike a unique and resonant chord in the minds of many.
Sources: Fawcett, Anthony. (1981) John Lennon: One Day At A Time. New York: Penguin Yoko Ono: Objects, Films. (1988) catalogue to Yoko Ono’s show at the Whitney, New York, N.Y.
Another Yoko Ono Biography
by Ted Pirro Yoko Ono is one of the most famous widows in the world. Her name is synonymous with the Beatles and John Lennon.
She began making films in the 1960’s and made substantial contributions to the avant-garde genre of film. When Yoko Ono began this part of her life, she was already an established artist playing an active role in the world of music, most well known by her “primal scream” or high pitched wails.
In the early 1960’s, Ono became part of a group known as Fluxus, whose artists were “dedicated to challenging conventional definitions in the fine arts, and conventional relationships between artwork and viewer.”
The artwork that Yoko made in the early 1960’s required the viewer to complete the process. “Painting to See a Room Through,” made in 1961, was a canvas with an almost invisible hole through which the viewer could see the room. “Painting to Hammer a Nail In,” also made in 1961, was a white wood panel that the audience hammered a nail into with an attached hammer.
In the mid-1960’s Yoko began to write mini film scripts. She contributed three films to the Fluxfilm Program in 1966. Two of these films, Eyeblink and Match, are one shot films shot at 2000 frames per second. She also included No. 4, or Bottoms, in her contribution.
Yoko continued to make films through the early 1970’s, many of which she collaborated with her husband, John Lennon. Her films can be divided into themes. The first of which, like bottoms, consists of a close examination of the naked human body. The second category are theoretical films. They have a theme of movement and change. The last category is documentaries. Bed-In made in 1969, is the filming of the peace event Ono and Lennon staged on their honeymoon.
Yoko Ono can be viewed as a radical artist, someone who requires an open mind in order to have her work appreciated. She stretches the limits of what society views as acceptable and never ceases to create an opportunity for the viewer to step back and reflect.
Just Imagine
In the 60s, Yoko Ono married John Lennon and campaigned for peace in Vietnam. More than 30 years on, she’s still irrevocably linked to her dead husband and America is once again at war. Here, she talks to Andrew Smith about marriage, art and inner peace.
Sunday November 4, 2001 The Observer
How does it feel to have the whole context of your life and work changed in an instant? And then frozen in another? Yoko Ono was a star of the New York avant-garde art scene when Lennon walked into her show at the Indica Gallery in London in 1966, grabbed one of the exhibits, a green apple on a glass plinth, cutely labelled ‘Apple’, and took a bite out of it. She was cross. ‘Oh, I was terribly cross,’ she says. ‘He’d been showing his sophisticated artist side, and then he suddenly did that and I thought, oh dear…’
Reminded that the value of the exhibit probably increased a thousandfold, she laughs. Her voice surprises in its sing-song pleasantness. She has turned 68, but could pass for 20 years younger. Ono will not be what I expected in any sense, and the answers to those opening questions will be even less straightforward.
‘It was funny. I didn’t know what to make of my feelings for him. He was very sexy. In that first meeting, he showed a sense of humour and very complex sides of his personality. But for me, he was also… I think that in the crowd I was in, in the avant-garde, there were a lot of guys who were extremely interesting as composers, but I didn’t feel anything coming from them. No kind of guy thing. He had a charge, a force. And I felt that.’
She’s sitting at the mosaic dining table in the kitchen of the rambling top-floor apartment she shared with Lennon in the Dakota building, the gothic apartment block where Polanski filmed Rosemary’s Baby and outside which the former Beatle was shot by Mark Chapman as he stepped through the entrance arch on 8 December 1980. There are Magrittes and Warhols on the walls and, down the hall in the ‘white room’, the piano on which ‘Imagine’ was written. Like so many before, I will stand in front of it resisting an urge to play something, while not being quite sure where either impulse (to play, not to play) is coming from. Today would have been his 61st birthday and is also that of his son, Sean, who will be a sullen presence in the background of this first meeting. I wonder if he’s angry with his mum for working today.
Lennon’s birthday aside, it’s a strange time to be visiting. I’ve seen the remains of the World Trade Center and realised with horror that the lonely, cathedral-shaped spear of steel frame that defied the destruction will be the first iconic image of the 21st century. Ambling through Central Park towards the Dakota on this cold, clear morning, I came across several dozen people singing a shrill chorus of ‘Give Peace a Chance’.
And I wondered, what’s changed? Where is John and Yoko’s Nutopia? According to the newscasters, the last time such a concentration of American bombers had been assembled was in March 1945, when Tokyo was razed to the ground and 83,000 people were killed.
Strangely, she was there.
Lennon had been born into a chaotic working-class family, but Ono (born 18 February 1933) was an heir to privilege. Her father was an aspiring concert pianist turned banker, while her mother came from the wealthy Yasuda banking clan, and she was schooled at the Japanese equivalent of Eton. Nevertheless, during the war, they struggled as everyone else. She remembers being woken at night and hustled into a bomb shelter, where the group would listen to the series of regular thuds coming closer, then fading like the steps of a retreating giant into the distance. At one point, the children were evacuated to the country, where the city kids were despised by the farmers they were billeted with.
‘It was very frightening,’ she replies, when asked if the experience marked her permanently. Kids must have had to learn to rely on themselves and contain their feelings. ‘Oh of course, I have that side, too. Even now, I’m always thankful that we have something to eat and a roof over our heads. Because there was a time when we were starving. I also tend to keep paper bags and boxes and things, I can’t throw them away. My daughter thinks it’s funny.’
She has said that she was ‘always afraid’ as a child and always felt herself to be an outsider – which is odd, because, as we shall see, she grew into a remarkably fearless adult.
Moving to the US with her family after the war, Ono went to art college.
Her father was passionate about Western classical music and had made sure she was schooled in it, while her mother taught her Japanese idioms – making her at the time one of very few people in the West with an intimate understanding of both. In her early twenties, she hit Manhattan and married the Japanese piano prodigy, Ichiyanagi Toshi, subsequently falling in with the clique of avant-garde composers gathered around the likes of John Cage, David Tudor and La Monte Young (whose first collection of musicians went on to become the Velvet Underground). Ultimately, this movement would be known as Fluxus, and Ono, as a pioneer of ‘performance art’, would be a dynamic force within it.
As the 60s began, she reluctantly moved back to Japan with her husband, but, unable to work properly, she was miserable and is said to have attempted suicide in 1962, at the age of 29. Eventually, she met the American Tony Cox, who had admired her paintings, and returned to New York, where he became her promoter. Friends had expressed doubts about his advisability as a partner, and this – in keeping with the pattern of her life -proved to be a volatile, if professionally successful partnership. They had a daughter, Kyoko, whom Cox would finally wrest custody of by citing Ono and Lennon’s dissolute, drug-sodden lifestyle, and later disappear with. Yoko wouldn’t see Kyoko again for 25 years, and if you look at news footage from the time, was clearly seen to be heartbroken, but before then her career had taken off. Which is how she came to be invited to swinging London in 1966 (‘It was, like, bang! – I couldn’t believe what was going on there’) and to have her own fateful exhibition at the Indica gallery in November 1966.
The tales of her camping out in front of Lennon’s house until he let her in are not true, she says. ‘I didn’t even know where he lived. That’s not my way of doing things. And also, I wasn’t that intent on connecting with him. The point is that now people read those stories and think it’s beautiful. Women send me letters saying, “Oh, it’s so beautiful to know that you were so forceful and thank you for doing that for John”, and stuff like that. But I went to Paris after we met and said that I wouldn’t go back to London. I didn’t want a relationship at the time, because I wanted freedom for my work. And I don’t like the idea that I’m creating a situation where women think that they have to stalk a man to get them. It’s really serious! No, don’t stalk them!’
She dissolves into laughter again. From everything I’ve read and heard, he seemed the more besotted at that point. ‘Well, I thought that and I thought that I didn’t want to get too involved in it. It seemed like the wrong situation at the wrong time. I was already aware that there was an entourage looking at me like, “What are you trying to do?” and I thought, I’m not trying to do anything, leave me out of this. It’s like, something told me this is bad news – and it was!’
People have asked what John Lennon saw in her. One of the things, certainly, was her art. There is a growing body of critical opinion which holds that meeting Lennon was the worst thing that could have happened to Yoko Ono as an artist in her own right. Her poetry’s never been up to much, but her broad musical sensibility and feral singing voice were intriguing enough for the titanic jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman to invite her to join him for a performance at the Royal Albert Hall in 1966 (‘Only if we do my compositions, I told him’) and some of her Zen-touched visual work has been inspired.
A pioneer of conceptual art as now practised by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos et al, she was about tickling the imagination. A chess set, in brass, with all the pieces enamelled white, is entitled Play It By Trust ; a glass case containing four glass keys becomes Glass Keys to Open the Sky . Blood oozes from under the lid of a brass box labelled Family Album (this one post-John). A grey line on canvas is accompanied by the handwritten suggestion that ‘This line is part of a very large circle’. At the time of that first London show, she had just been on the evening news while making her Bottoms film, which depicted 365 perambulating bums, accompanied by the subjects’ commentary on the experience. The sense of play and mischief is what got lost in the mainstream shift that followed Ono’s liaison with Lennon, while the avant-garde shunned her for ‘selling out’.
Ono appears taken aback when I ask why she always wears shades (today’s are tinted blue), sputtering, ‘I don’t know. I did that even when John and I were together… probably.’ Actually, I don’t think she did. She’s a fascinating woman, but a difficult interviewee. She smiles and laughs, but turns hostile in a beat, often in anticipation of a question you’d never even considered asking, and is fiendishly hard to engage with. On occasion, I suspect her of using the subject of John, which is safe because everything’s been said, as a shield to protect herself from scrutiny. Perhaps this is what it’s like being frozen in time by a man with a gun: only much later am I able to recognise the contradiction between the openness and generosity of her political ideas and her anger with ‘the world’ she once accused of killing her husband. I’d imagined this to have been uttered out of immediate hurt, but when I ask if she still believes it and whether she excuses herself (and the other ‘poets’, perhaps?) from being part of ‘the world’, things will take a bewildering turn. Ono may well be as tough to do business with as McCartney, the other Beatles and her stepson Julian complain that she is.
The most interesting stuff comes up where I least expect it, around a retrospective exhibition, Yes Yoko Ono, and a new album, Blueprint for a Sunrise , which was made with her son Sean’s deft band, IMA. She was going to call the record Sondown , she says, because she liked the play on words, but was pulled up short. ‘I thought, I don’t want to write a song called “Sondown”. I thought, my God this is terrible. I always think in terms of multiple meanings. I don’t want to lay that on my future, or my son. So I thought, no, I have to write something about “Sonrise”.’She laughs. ‘Then I thought, but there’s no son rise here – I mean, yes, Sean is doing OK, but the point is in the society.’
You think that you can bring things into being with your songs, I ask? She mentions ‘Walking on Thin Ice’, the tune which she and Lennon had been working on and was in his cassette machine when he was shot in the archway of the Dakota.
‘Afterwards, I was always thinking, why did I write that? Because you know they’re playing it all over the world, and I was actually walking on thin ice after John’s passing. I thought, did I set this up?’
A belief in that kind of power must be frightening for an artist. ‘It’s scary, but you know in hindsight, a lot of things did happen that I was not aware of at the time.’
Are there other instances where you think your work changed the future? ‘Well, I think ‘Imagine’ was prophetic, in a very positive way. I think it’s all right that it’s not fashionable or faddish and might seem simple.’
Only afterwards does it dawn on me quite how wildly untrue this statement is, even if the song did piss off the Nixon administration and seem challenging for a while at the time. I enquire after two of the most striking tunes on Sunrise – ‘I Want You to Remember Me’ and ‘Rising II’, both of which are funky little dramas centred around a woman being attacked by men. She seems to have heard me suggest that the stories being told are about her in a literal sense, where they actually sound more generalised to me.
‘I object to that. If a woman writes about a domestic situation, everyone automatically assumes that it’s about her. I’m speaking for victims. In ‘Rising’, I was thinking about a little girl, an abused little child – which was probably me. I mean, that’s not what happened to me, though.’
She draws a clever parallel between people and the environment, the world generally. ‘It’s the same sort of logic in a way. We tend to misuse an object that is passive.’
We fall to talking about the sleeve, which has her dressed as the ‘Dragon Lady’ of Chinese legend. It’s what the British press used to call her, referring to the last empress of China, who history paints as a tyrant, but was actually a fierce defender of her people against the colonising British, according to Ono.
‘We learnt about her in school in Japan and she was always quoted as an example of how cruel women can be when they get power, and I totally believed it. And it was like I was in the same position of protecting a country, which was the Nutopia. Which they did not like. It was a kind of conceptual country that I was protecting. I thought the parallel was interesting. There were many monstrous things that were said about me.’
Her notoriety is ascribed to her being not only a woman, but an Asian woman (not long after Pearl Harbor and Korea and during the war in Vietnam) and, worst of all, an avant-garde artist who’d snagged one of the most blindly revered men in the world.
‘I was trying their patience, without wanting to. I understand now and I think that it’s interesting that all of us together had to go through that to come to a kind of awareness of each other. Now when people meet an Asian woman, I don’t think they automatically think of Madame Butterfly or geisha.’ She laughs brightly. ‘And the attitude to women is changing, which is not my doing, but I was part of it.’
All of which is probably right, though the conspiratorial closeness which unsettled the Beatles in the studio probably also made others uncomfortable. Not that it’s anyone else’s business, but it seemed to come mostly from John and could look a little desperate.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘he was extremely insecure in that way. I think he didn’t want to leave me alone – that’s one thing. But also, we were in love, like teenagers. We wanted to be together. And I think that, in his mind, probably, he knew the others were not happy about it. But in his usual way, he was saying, “Forget it! Too bad!” Their relations had been strained anyway after his “We’re bigger than Jesus” remark. And he felt guilty, but also he was angry. But the anger was repressed anger, because he couldn’t blame anybody else! But there was also the feeling of being caged in by the band at that point.’
When she talks about him like this, you feel Lennon’s presence at the other end of the table, still alive for her and smiling affectionately back, and I become aware that few people are forced to continually rake over the death of a close partner the way that she is.
Two days later, we’re shoeless in the ‘white room’ and Yoko is sternly instructing me that she doesn’t want to talk about the recent split from antique dealer Sam Havadtoy, her partner of many years, which strikes me as amusing because I didn’t know about such a split until she mentioned it – though I had intended to ask how anyone can sustain romantic ties with her when the relationship with Lennon is still so present. Anyway, now she asks me not to mention that, or the fact that she’d explained her attraction to John in terms of his sexiness. It’s early and she’s tired, because Sean and his young and notably more gorgeous than him girlfriend left for home in LA today and they stayed up late, chatting.
We talk more about John and spend some time on the Fluxus years, much of which is interesting, but all of which I’ve heard before, then come to the war on terrorism. After I’d left the other day, her PA had called to say that, contrary to what Ono told me, her most recent artwork was not the spectacular piece currently receiving rave review in Yokahama; an old Nazi box car such as Jews were transported in, with mounted machine guns and a powerful searchlight streaming to the heavens through a hole in the top and myriad bullet holes, as recorded ambient noise swarms around it. Rather, it consisted of two things I would find down by Times Square, which turned out to be a pair of billboards containing stark black lower-case type over a pure white background, quoting portions of the lyrics to ‘Imagine’. Surrounded by all the corporate logos and screaming neon lights, they’re effective, and we’re on to the subject of the war on terrorism. Ono feels that she’s been there before and learnt a thing or two.
‘Some people may feel that it’s necessary to strike back, and when someone is striking out you don’t go and stand in front of them and try to stop them. I’m saying, “We don’t fight for peace, we have to be peaceful.” Which is different. In the 60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know? So I thought, not this time, it’s too complicated a situation. We cannot enjoy the machoism of fighting for peace. I felt that I wanted John’s fans to know that. You can stand for peace, but not fight for it.
‘There were some factions of flower children who felt – rightly -extremely angered by injustice and so they wanted to wake up the politicians, bomb the White House, whatever. And John and I were saying, you can’t do that, that’s not how we do it. They would say the result is the most important thing. But no, the result is important, but so are the means. So I think our side felt that John and Yoko were too tame and optimistic. And felt that was Yoko’s fault.’ She laughs. ‘But kids were hurt. John was kind of angered that innocent kids were led to demonstrate because the leaders told them too, et cetera. So this time we don’t fight for peace. And if the truth be told, the people who are fighting today, probably think that they are fighting for peace, too. Probably we are all imagining the same thing in the end, but we have different ideas of how to get there.’
And our time is up and I go away feeling strangely deflated. It’s lovely to think that we might all want the same thing, or even imagine the same thing in the end, but we don’t. I don’t want the same thing as George Bush, or the president of Exxon or the people who make the bombs being dropped on Afghanistan right now. Pretending that we do, flowerchild-style, looks to me like another way of avoiding inconvenient truths, part of a legacy of self-delusion that Ono’s generation left to mine; just one more way of getting people to shut up and stop asking questions. Which, you frequently get the feeling, is what Ono wants more than anything else.
Later, on the phone, I finally get a chance to ask whether she still feels that John was killed ‘by the world’. ‘Yes,’ she states flatly. But what do you mean by that? ‘I think I mean what I said.’ But the world didn’t kill John literally. Aren’t you part of the world? ‘I don’t think I have anything to add,’ she concludes sharply.
So I ask whether her 60s ideals have survived the decades intact, or been tempered by time? ‘Look,’ she says, ‘we’re growing up together, the human race. And we’ve discovered a lot of things that we didn’t know. We’re finding our way. Instead of thinking about doomsday all the time, think about how beautiful the world is. We’re all together and together we’re getting wiser.’
Another lovely thought. The irony is that she sounds kind of angry as she says it.
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