So Many People Named John

Now that I've arrived at J in my alphabetic list of possible duplicates, I've discovered how many people are named John - and how many book titles begin with the name John: John Adams, John Brown, John Donne, John Dos Passos, John F. Kennedy.

Checking various websites, John is still a pretty common name, but other names are pushing John further down the list.

I know a lot of Johns. My father is John, although he always went by his middle name. He actually has a brother who is also named John. My brother is John Jr. One of his daughters named her son John, and she was married to a John. My sister has a son whose middle name is John.

My husband's father was John, and my husband has a grandson named John. There is also a John in my exercise class. John seems to be one of those names that persists. There are elderly men. middle aged men, and young men named John.

It's fun to see how different names ebb and flow. There are some one only associates with older people (Bertha, perhaps). I remember when names like Bethany, Tiffany, and Amber were all the rage. Those Bethanys and Tiffanys and Ambers are now adults and I haven't heard of any babies with those names.

Sometimes people have a name that's not uncommon, but has a different spelling. That's happened for a long time - such as Barbra Streisand. However, I just checked IMDb and learned that she was born Barbara Joan Streisand.

In Introduction to Cataloging and Classification, I just finished the part of Chapter 7 on Identifying Persons. Over the years as a cataloger, I've had to determine if the person who wrote this children's book is the same person who wrote that economics text 10 years ago. Maybe, maybe not. One of the things about RDA that really pleases me is that there is so much more information in Name Authority records. It's much easier to determine if the retired economist is now writing children's books.

And one of the great advantages of the Internet is that it is so much easier to research a topic or person. It took me just a few seconds to find out Barbra Streisand changed the spelling of her name.

What's in a Name?

This week in LIS415 we're tackling Authority Control - specifically Name Authority Control.

The topic is rather auspicious since the Pope stepped down on Thursday and there has been a flurry of email messages on the AUTOCAT discussion list about what's going to happen to the Pope's authority record at the Library of Congress.

Overall the class is going very well. This is the most vocal group of students I have had to date. They ask lots of thoughtful questions and have lots of thoughtful comments.

When I teach this section on Authority Control, I often think about names in general and how they ebb and flow. I sometimes compare the names of the people in the senior exercise class in Hatfield where everyone is older than 55 (and most are older than 65) with the names of the people in LIS415 where most are under 35. In the former, there are two Carols and two Virginias along with a Helen, an Edith, a Frances, an Irene, a Sandy and a Bernice. There are no Susans or Lindas although they were very popular names for the time period.

In the latter there's a Jenn, a Jackie, a Beth and a Leah. This semester there are no Saras or Sarahs, but there often are. Interestingly there's an Amanda in both Senior Exercise and LIS415. Also in LIS415 is an Emma which is another old-fashioned name making a comeback.

So now it's time for me to get ready to travel to So. Hadley and demonstrate LC's Name Authority File to my eager students. I'll leave the final disposition of Benedict XVI's authority record to LC.