Tag Archives: Beyond Jennifer & Jason

Famous Name: Jason

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Famous Names

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A federal election was held on September 7, and we have had a change of government. Votes are still being counted, so the election isn’t over, and we may have some names from it when the process is complete.

However, in a much more frivolous political poll held in August, Cleo magazine rated the male politicians on their sex appeal, and decided that Labor MP Jason Clare, described as the “Rob Lowe of Australian politics”, was the winner. I can’t help thinking if a men’s magazine had rated female politicians like this it would be considered very wrong.

Jason Clare represents the seat of Blaxland in western Sydney, which he won in 2007, and until recently was the Federal Home Affairs Minister. Jason grew up in the western suburbs, made dux of his class, and completed a law degree while pursuing an interest in politics. While Labor lost the election with a significant swing against it, Jason managed to increase his hold over the electorate by 6%.

To show that he is not vain about his appearance, Jason modestly joked that his wife’s preference in the Cleo poll was for the runner-up, Stephen Smith. Hello ladies – he’s a smart, handsome law graduate and his wife doesn’t appreciate him! (is the message I think we’re meant to be receiving there).

Jason is from the Greek name Iason, derived from the Greek for “to heal”. Iaso was the Greek goddess of recuperation from illness, so you could see Jason as a masculine form of her name. Although Jason is often translated as “healer” or even “physician”, to me the meaning of the name is more about the body’s natural ability to heal itself.

The name is best known from the mythological prince of Thessaly, who led a hand-picked crew of heroes on the good ship Argo, in quest of the Golden Fleece, with the aid of the goddess Hera. Jason and the Argonauts had a series of adventures, in which they didn’t behave very nobly for much of the time, then arrived in Colchis, which today is in Georgia, on the Black Sea.

The Golden Fleece was owned by King Aeetes, and to obtain it, the king gave Jason three tasks which seemed impossible to perform. Hera arranged for Aeetes’ daughter Medea to fall in love with Jason, and as she was a great sorceress, she was able to use her knowledge of magic to help him succeed, after he promised her that they would get married.

Jason and Medea then fled with the Fleece and sailed away on the Argo, because King Aeetes knew that Jason could only have completed the tasks by cheating, and wanted his property back. He pursued them until Medea came up with the horrible plan to kill her own brother and throw him into the sea, piece by piece, to distract her father.

Medea’s interest in dismembering family members continued when she and Jason returned to Greece, and she arranged for his Uncle Pelias to get chopped up into soup. Pelias had tried to drown Jason as a baby, then sent him off on the dangerous Golden Fleece quest hoping he’d die, so she had her reasons. With her penchant for murdering relatives, you’d think that Jason would have been blissfully happy with Medea, but instead he betrayed her love by becoming engaged to another woman.

When Medea tried to point out that all Jason’s luck in life was because of her, and he was being very ungrateful, he replied, “Babe, you’re the one who got lucky when the gods made you fall in love with me”. Medea wasn’t the type to take this treatment lying down, and she promptly burned her rival to death before murdering the children she and Jason had had together. Although Jason was ungallant, Medea’s tendency to see her own flesh and blood as collateral damage is disturbing.

Because Jason had broken his vow to love Medea forever, the goddess Hera abandoned him, and he wound up lonely and miserable. He was killed when the Argo, now old and rotting, broke and fell on top of him while he was asleep – a suitably ironic finish.

A king of Thessaly named Jason was a contemporary of Alexander the Great‘s father. A successful and ambitious general, it is thought that he must have been at least one of the inspirations of the great Alexander himself. It seems very likely he was named after the Thessalian hero.

There is a Jason in the New Testament, one of the Seventy Disciples of Christ, who ran a “safe house” for Christians in Thessalonica, and was once arrested for it. Saint Paul appointed him bishop of Tarsus, and he is known as Saint Jason. Unusually for an early Christian saint, Jason lived to a ripe old age. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that Hellenised Jews used the name Jason to replace Yeshua (Joshua or Jesus), and this may apply to Saint Jason too.

Being Biblical, Jason was acceptable for use as a Christian name, and can be found in the records from at least the 16th century. The name Jason became very popular in the 1970s, and it looks as if this was due to the original Jason, because the movie Jason and the Argonauts came out in 1963 (it cut out most of the revolting parts). A special effects tour de force, it’s a cult classic, and according to Tom Hanks, the greatest film ever made. It must have made a huge impression.

Jason was already rising in popularity at the time of the film’s release, but soon zoomed up the charts to make the US Top 100 three years later. It was Top 10 in the US for all of the 1970s, which coincides with popular TV series, The Waltons, having a Jason. Even in the late 1980s, when Jason was #27, Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz were urging parents to “go beyond Jennifer and Jason”. Despite their book’s success, Jason has still not left the Top 100 in the United States, so American parents only partially heeded their call.

Jason has charted in Australia since the 1950s, when it was #290 for the decade. By the 1960s it had climbed phenomenally to make the Top 50, at #43 for the decade. It peaked in the 1970s (when Jason Clare was born) at #3, was still #18 in the 1980s, and #35 in the 1990s. Did nobody feel like going beyond Jason? It finally left the Top 100 in the mid-2000s, and is currently #133 and stable – not popular any more, but by no means plummeting into obscurity.

Jason has been a real 1960s success story, and continues to influence popular names for boys, because parents are still attracted to similar names, such as Mason, Jacob, Jayden, Jackson, Jasper and Jordan. In fact, Jason is staging a comeback under the short form Jace – already Top 100 in the United States, and no doubt rising here too.

It turns out we’re not ready to go beyond Jason yet – at least, not very far.

POLL RESULT: Jason received an approval rating of 38%. People saw the name Jason as a “dad name” (30%), and common and boring (20%). However, 12% saw it as a “nice guy” name, and 10% thought it attractive. Nobody thought the name Jason was sexy.

An Interview with Linda Rosenkrantz from Nameberry

25 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by in Blog Reviews

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The baby name world changed forever when Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz penned their seminal work, Beyond Jennifer & Jason, back in the 1980s. Many more books were to follow, and along the way they educated a generation of parents on naming babies, and made it possible to admit to being interested in names – even obsessed with them. Now they have the Nameberry website, which provides a massive amount of information and opinion on names, creates a space for name nerds everywhere to meet up with other devotees, and inspires many a name blogger. Pam and Linda are the fairy godmothers of the baby name community, and you can link with them on Facebook and Twitter too.

Linda has been kind enough to take some time from her busy schedule to be interviewed on names, writing Jennifer & Jason, creating Nameberry, and how their love of names changed all our lives.

What is your name? 

Linda Rosenkrantz aka Linda Ruth Rosenkrantz Finch.

Have you ever changed your name?

This is a story that I’ve told in a Nameberry blog. It’s about how I was give a name at birth, but never called by that name. I was so traumatised when I began kindergarten and was called by that unfamiliar name that my wise mother allowed me to pick a new one for myself at the age of 5 or 6.

When did you first become interested in baby names?

I would say names in general rather than just baby names have always been a passion of mine from a very early age – a shrink might say it dates back to that kindergarten experience. And being a compulsive list-maker, I was constantly making lists of names, including names for fictional characters, names of prospective husbands, and of course, future children.

How did you and Pam meet?

A mutual friend brought her over for dinner to where I was then living, in Greenwich Village [in New York City], and we hit it off immediately – bonding, in part, over our mutual love for and attitudes towards names. Strangely enough, that was one of the few times we lived in the same city – she later moved to England, then the Bay area [of San Francisco], and then New Jersey. I settled in Los Angeles.

What made you decide to write Beyond Jennifer & Jason together, and how did the process of writing and publishing go?

Pam had been frustrated at the fact that there were no good name books around when she was naming her first child, Rory, and I had the idea of writing an article about the subject for Glamour magazine where Pam was an editor. We both realized that this had the makings of a book that would be a perfect project for a collaboration.

We wrote a very short outline of Beyond Jennifer & Jason and brought it to an agent, who thought it was so original – no one had ever looked at names this way, taking in their contemporary social context and categorising them – that he was sure he could sell it. It was bought by St. Martin’s Press, who published all ten of our name books, all edited by the excellent Hope Dellon.

Over the years, we have gone from communicating via thermal faxes to the internet – I’d say we email an average of 25 times a day, plus phone confabs and New York meeting several times a year. Responsibilities have been divided along the lines of our various strengths. But when it comes to working on some large project, we might split the boys and girls, then switch and edit each others’ efforts. It’s been a remarkably congenial, long-term marriage.

How did the success of your first book change your lives? Did you wake up one morning and discover you were now international baby name gurus?

First of all, here’s Pam’s answer to this question:

The first book changed my life in that it allowed me to quit my full-time job as an editor at “Glamour”, work at home as a writer full-time, and spend more time with my children – at that time, my oldest was only three years old. Although “Beyond Jennifer & Jason” was a big hit, we didn’t feel like international baby name gurus. Just writing books, you have so much less relationship with your readers, and it was difficult for us to tell how much influence our work really had. Our books were not published outside the US until the early 2000s, so we certainly didn’t feel like we were having an international impact overnight … or for a really long time.

Yes, it was a gradual process – and, although our books were successful in the UK, it wasn’t until the internet hit that we expanded into international “gurus”. Cumulatively, it has changed my life completely – widening my world in all sorts of ways, providing immense gratification. And it’s also been VERY HARD WORK.

When did you and Pam start the Nameberry website?

We started off with a smaller site, based on our book The Baby Name Bible. (We were fortunate enough to retain the digital rights to all our books – which is a very unusual situation). Nameberry began in 2008; we were excited to expand the word to a larger audience. We had no idea at the time that such a huge community of name lovers would form around the forums and blogs – an incredible group of informed, helpful people – now reaching two million people a month!

Do you have a favourite blog post that you have written for Nameberry?

Hard to come up with one post, but I especially enjoy those that require a lot of research, and feel good when I can come up with a topic that hasn’t been touched on before. (Which gets harder and harder with all the input we’re now getting from our great Berry Juice bloggers.)

There’s been some new developments on the site recently – what else is in the pipeline?

We are working on some new features, but we’re most excited about two new e-books – best girls’ names and best boys’ names.

What are some of your favourite names?

Pam and I did a slideshow of our faves on Nameberry, which includes several names I never tire of – Barnaby, Mirabella, Dinah, Duncan, and Araminta.

What names do you dislike?

Herman and Sherman.

Are there any names you love that don’t seem practical in real life?

That area is definitely narrowing. Some of the multi-syllabic and exotic names that once seemed too heavy for a baby to carry now seem perfectly wearable – like Persephone, Peregrine, Zinnia, Amaryllis and Peridot. The baby-naming climate is so much more “anything goes” than it was when Pam and I started.

What are your favourite names in the US Top 100?

Girls: Amelia, Lydia and Violet. Boys: Josiah, Julian and Lucas.

What are your favourite names in the rest of the US Top 1000?

Girls: Ivy, Maeve, Paloma and Arabella. Boys: Declan, Edison, Finnegan and Jedidiah.

What are your favourite names that have never been in the US 1000?

Verity, Boaz and Barnaby.

What is your child’s name?

Chloe Samantha (the Samantha was for my father, Samuel, who had recently died).

Did you and your husband agree easily on a baby name together?

Since my husband is British, we had some varying perceptions of names, especially boys names – and in fact never did find a boy’s name we both really loved. But when we hit on Chloe, there was instant agreement.

What is something that we may not know about you?

That I’ve written books on subjects ranging from Old Hollywood to collectibles to the history of telegrams to animation art to memoir to fiction. And Pam is a New York Times best-selling writer of fiction and humorous books.

(Photo of Linda and Pam from Nameberry; Linda is on the left)