I didn’t say that the name Morgan had never, ever been used as a first name for a girl.
I looked at that Web site that aahala linked to and looked at the popularity of “Morgan” as a girl’s name over the past few decades (not the hugest statistical sample, but big enough to sketch a rough picture). In the 1970s, it placed 899, far below such beloved favorites as Waleska at 870 and Laquita at 855. In the 1980s, Morgan jumped all the way up to 119. In the 1990s, it was sitting pretty at 32.
Did Morgan increase in popularity because parents around the nation experienced a titanic new interest in Arthurian legend? I don’t think so. More likely it’s because of the recent trend of turning names which are commonly encountered as last names – Hunter, Tyler, Morgan, etc. – and making them first names.
Not that I’m going to be mad if the girl turns out to be a Morgan.
I immediately thought of this bimbo that used to run out on baseball fields and try to kiss the pitcher. She was semi-famous or infamous around the time of THE BIG RED MACHINE. She had huge boobs*. I tried doing a google and found some sites that wouldn’t load that mentioned her. So Morgan = yes: Morgana = no.
When I posted last, I did not mean to suggest that Morgan and Morgiana were different forms of the same name. I only thought that if minklowat’s sister liked the sound of “Morgan” she might opt instead for a similar-sounding name that signified a heroine instead of a villainess.
(And I hope that scholars are not too hard on the early English translator who made Marjanah into Morgiana. Classic Arabic was written without vowels (or very few), and ambiguities had to be resolved by context–obviously a difficult task with a proper name.)
However, I repaired to my bookshelf, and, oddly, in his notes to the ARABIAN NIGHTS, Sir Richard Burton DOES try to link Morgiana’s name with Morgan Le Fay’s!
(Square brackets and all ellipses mine; curved brackets Burton’s:)
“[Marjanah means] ‘Coral,’ coral branch, a favourite name for a slave-girl . . . It is the older [form of ] ‘Morgiana.’ . . . Richardson . . . seems to me justified in finding the Pari (fairy) Marjan of heroic Persian history reflected in the Fairy Morgain who carried off King Arthur after the battle of Camelon.”
I dunno. Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Still, it just goes to show that You Never Can Tell.
Sigh!
I think many parents wish to pick a special name, if they don’t select one already in their family. But only a few wish to pick something really goofy like “Moon Unit”.
A rather recent development is those special spellings.
Before the internet, few parents knew the names everybody else was picking at a given time, so we choose a name thinking it is just right, then when T-Ball rolls around, we discover half the team has the same name as our kid.
I have discomfort with Marjana - it looks far too much like Marijuana.
I have a thing for names that are also words and therefore somewhat descriptive; Joy and Grace are my favorites. Alas, neither of those really fit with Ivanna…I really do like Morgan, except for the fact that there will eighteen more in her grade alone, no matter where she goes to school. So that gets a big NO.
This being said from a twenty-year-old Sarah…just think of how many Sarahs in their twenties that you know. We number in the millions, I’m sure.
SmugTheJoiner, as much as I do like the idea of Morgiana as a heroine versus Morgan as a villianess, I do have to consider Jomo Mojo’s point that “Some early translator of the Nights screwed with the spelling and came up with ‘Morgiana’ which always gets mispronounced (because it’s misspelled).” If the translator couldn’t quite get the spelling of the name right thereby leading to an innumerable mispronunciation of Morgiana, how would the majority of the people she will eventually encounter be expected to do the same? I’ve heard stories of frustration by those unfortunates out there who have had to repeatedly supply the correct spelling and pronunciation of their name to someone only to have to go through the same tedious process again and again ad nauseam each time their name is requested. I would not want to subject my niece to this for the rest of her life…I’m sure that gets old very quickly.
Since the consensus seems to go in the direction of Morgan, I’ll report these findings to my sister. I’m sure it will help her feel more confident that her daughter will have a name that not only sounds nice but also has the meaning of “born from the sea”…well…even though she will be an Aries or possibly a Taurus. Oh well.
As far as the name Morgan being trendy, according to the Social Security Administration it’s the 29th most popular name for the year 2002 which doesn’t top the list so hopefully she’ll be okay in that department.
And, for those of you interested, her last initial is L making her initials MIL…not too bad.
A little late, I know… but my older sister’s name is Morgan. She got it before it was trendy (she’s 22). It was my mother’s middle name and the middle name of two of my mom’s sisters (my grandmother just kind of ran out of middle names after the first daughter, I guess. But the lucky first daughter got “Ethel Lynn”, so… yeah, she goes by Lynn.)
Overly-popular names annoy me. I was also a Tara before it was popular. I was the only Tara in my class, but about 3 grades behind me there were suddenly bunches of them. I can always fall back on Antares, though, if I want to be unique, since Tara’s technically just a nickname. My little brother is Clayton. Think we’ll see a surge in the use of THAT name soon? I doubt it.
Anyways, my sister, being a heinous bitch, has kind of soured the name Morgan for me, but if you like it, I think it does sound good with Ivanna. Congratulations to your sister!
Susanann - She’s always just Morgan. No one in the family calls her anything else, none of her friends call her anything else as far as I know. I don’t think this is out of any preference like she’s asked them to or anything… I just don’t think it ever occured to anyone to call her anything BUT Morgan. I know it never occured to me. The name isn’t long and unwieldy enough to really need to be shortened, and any shortened forms (Morg, Morgy, whatever), just sound really dumb. So yes, people always call her by the full “Morgan”.
It’s not that “Morgan” itself is so popular. It’s that there are scads of babies being born right now with two syllable gender-neutral last-name-as-first-name names. There may be only one Morgan in her class, but there will be Kendalls, Rileys, Tylers, Taylors, and Hunters.
That said, I don’t think Morgan is a bad name at all. Even though it is a last-name-as-first name, it does have plenty of precedent as a first name.
I like Alexandra better, but that would give her the initials AIL!
But, they’re all trendy right now. My out-laws have between them 5 childrens - 4 girls and a boy - all under the age of 4. Their names are Emma, Alexandra, Kendall, Morgan and Clayton. :rolleyes:
–benanuel, who IRL is one of the 15 billion Jennifers born in the 1970s
