One of my blog friends, who was brought up as a Mormon, says that it's not uncommon for Mormon girls to be called Thursday. The explanation he gives is that a disproportionate number of Mormons in Utah are called Smith, Rasmussen, Sorenson or Young, and so they tend to go in for rather unusual first names to make up for the shortage of surnames.

Has anyone else come across this interesting piece of information?



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

No, but it doesn't surprise me - one of my ancestors was the Smith who helped to found it, and they called their eldest sons after their paternal grandfather in each succeeding generation - with that kind of tedium in the naming tradition, it's not surprising they diverged dramatically from the norm!

Just found a Utah baby naming side which says lots of Mormons are called Thurza or Thirza - probably the same name (?) The most popular girls name seems to be Madison.



Post Edited (07-16-03 17:10)

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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

Google knows nought of any Thursdays with those surnames.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Presumably Thursday's only a mormon name before lunchtime, then it becomes an aftermoony name. Or am I missing the point again? :-)

I don't know about Thursday as a name, but it seems that many Mormons do try to find unique names for their children...although, with all those kids,they're gonna have to start making stuff up here pretty soon!

I know of what I speak...I grew up in a community heavily populated with Mormons. My class alone was bout 45% Mormon and their church was located directly next door. 9-12 Children in a family was not uncommon, but actually closer to the norm. And one family had a very high incidence of twin births. They had 3 different sets of twins, and two sets were identicals. They had 14 kids all together. How most of those kids ended up with 'normal' names, I don't know!

Thinking about it now, my friends Shari and Kari (yes one of those sets of twins!) had a cousin named Thriza (pronounced Three-zah). So there you go!

So you could say Three-zah crowd then, AAC?

apparently!

Thirza is actually an old Jewish name. Ben-Hur's sister was called that, but it's pronounced 'Tear-za'.