Thread: Weird names
View Single Post
Old 06-23-2010, 12:18 PM   #67
Pie
Gone and done
 
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 4,808
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gravdigr View Post
FWIW: I've read that the name Wendy is recorded nowhere in history before the story about Peter Pan.
Nope.

Quote:
J. M. Barrie did not invent the name Wendy for his 1904 play Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (the book form of the story, Peter and Wendy, was published in 1911). He did popularize it, though.
[...]
But we have absolute proof that there were earlier Wendys, thanks to the just-released 1880 U.S. Census and the 1881 British Census (available here). These documents show that the name Wendy, while not common, was indeed used in both the U.S. and Great Britain throughout the 1800s. I had no trouble finding twenty females with the first name Wendy in the United States, the earliest being Wendy Gram of Ohio (born in 1828). If you include such spelling variations as Windy, Wendi, Wenda, and Wandy the number triples.
__________________
per·son \ˈpər-sən\ (noun) - an ephemeral collection of small, irrational decisions
The fun thing about evolution (and science in general) is that it happens whether you believe in it or not.
Pie is offline   Reply With Quote