Hail, Columbia!

To all my fellow Americans, Happy Independence Day! Hail Columbia!

But wait...who's Columbia!

The term "Columbia" (obviously a reference to Christopher Columbus) as a poetic term for the what would later become the United States had been used since 1738. But she wasn't personified until the Revolutionary War. Columbia as a quasi-mythical figure was imagined by the African American poet Phillis Wheatley. Ever since then, Columbia has been America's goddess-like figure. Sadly this female personification of America has fallen out of favor with conventional society, but many modern Pagan American have adopted her as the patron goddess of America and religious freedom.

Celestial choir! enthron’d in realms of light,
Columbia’s scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom’s cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
See mother earth her offspring’s fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown!
See the bright beams of heaven’s revolving light
Involved in sorrows and veil of night!

 

The goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,
Olive and laurel bind her golden hair:
Wherever shines this native of the skies,
Unnumber’d charms and recent graces rise.

 

--from "To His Excellency, General Washington" by Phillis Wheatley

I hope you all enjoy a wonderful 4th of July. Here are some American names to celebrate the holiday! I'm off to find some fireworks...

Columbia

Columbus

July

Julian

Jules

Freedom

Liberty

America

Americus

Eagle

State names that could be used (and have been used) for people:

Nevada

Washington

Oregon

Florida

Montana

Dakoda

Vermont

(New) York

Carolina

Georgia

Missouri

Colorado

Iowa

Virginia

Alaska

Alabama

California

Delaware

Indiana

Louisiana

Tennessee

Rhode (Island)

Sprout



My love of names has always been intertwined with my love of reading. So it would make sense to put some book reviews here, particularly if they're interesting in a name-y way.

 

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly by Korean author Sun-Mi Hwang might be the most perfect book ever written. I'm serious. I'm aware that it's a cutesy animal story that barely makes it to 130 pages, but trust me. This book is the best I have ever read.

Let's get to the general premise: Sprout is a egg-laying hen living an unhappy, monotonous life who longs to leave the coop and raise a chick on her own. When she starves herself and refuses to lay eggs for her human captors, they take her out of the coop and leave her to die. She tries to make friends with the animals of the barn, but they reject her. Her only friend is Straggler, a wild duck who can no longer fly.

Time passes. Sprout's dream comes true when she finds an unattended egg in a briar. Straggler dies while protecting her and the egg for reasons she does not understand at the time. When the baby hatches she goes to the barn in hopes of raising her chick there. Instead it comes out that her "chick" is actually a duckling (he's Straggler's baby) and all of the farm animals regard Sprout and her adopted son as disgraceful and unnatural. But Sprout refuses to give up on her dream of being a mother, and she is well aware that this may be her only chance. So she leaves the barn with her baby, who is eventually named Greentop, and takes her chances in the unforgiving wilderness.

It is a very simple story, but the underlying themes are so deep. Sprout encounters so many difficulties and perseveres to become a strong heroine. And yet, she's only a humble chicken. Seriously, I cannot overemphasize how impressed I was by this book.

There are not many names in this book. The outcasts are the only ones with names (I just noticed that!). The passages in which Sprout talks about her name and why she picked it for herself are wonderful:

"Sprout was the best name in the world. A sprout grew into a leaf and embraced the wind and the sun before falling and rotting and turning into mulch for bringing fragrant flowers into bloom. Sprout wanted to do something with her life, just like the sprouts on the acacia tree. That was why she'd named herself after them."

But how would Sprout work on a person?

John Sprout

Sprout Augustine

Edmund Sprout

Sprout Heather

Penelope Sprout  (I almost wrote Pomona, but then I realized...)

The name does remind me of Scout, so perhaps that's why it doesn't sound totally off to me. I like it as a meaningful middle, it has a ring of hope to it. Sprout could work in the first spot, but only for the most daring of people.

This book is an incredibly popular modern classic in South Korea, with an animated film adaptation and dramatic adaptations. The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly should be a classic in America too. There's no reason why it shouldn't be.

A Reintroduction and a New Blog

Merry meet again! Welcome to my new home. I'm still unpacking some boxes, but make yourself comfortable.

Some people might be confused as to why there is a new home at all. Bewitching Names started out as a blog designed to cater to Wiccans. I was making a catalogue for Witchy people so that they could find backstory on whatever moniker they wanted.

Why am I not doing that anymore? I got bored. I got bored of the individual name profile format. It got too restrictive for me. As a result I wasn't thrilled with some of my posts.

My all time favorite name enthusiast blog is Marginamia, even though she has not actually written about names in a very long time. I go through her archives of posts and think, "I've looked through these a thousand times, there's no way I'll find any new inspiration." And yet I always do! So I figured that I should take inspiration from her format. My Pagan-y ways are still going to play a big part here, but I feel the need to branch out from exclusively Pagan names and into more general bohemian/literary/artsy names.

So I hope that you like the new content here. There will still be name profiles on occasion. I am also going to revise and repost most entries from the first blog onto this blog and eventually phase out the old blog entirely.

So welcome to my blog Bewitching Names and Curious Ideas. It will be like the old one only...different.