What are we talking about today?

I'll get back to theme days once I find a groove of posting regularly. In the meantime, most of my posts are about some variation of books, bikes, buses, or Broadway. Plus bits about writing, nonprofits, and grief from time to time.

This blog is mostly lighthearted and pretty silly. It's not about the terrible things happening in the world, but please know that I'm not ignoring those things. I just generally don't write about them here.

21 March 2013

Sarah

I'm sure that S-names are not uncommon in this, but I get called "Sarah" a lot, because Sarah and Susan both start with 'S', because they're both fairly common names, same number of syllables, etc., etc. Once I started answering to 'Sarah', I realised that I'd lost the battle.

Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth
Sladen. Taken from us far too soon.
Source.
Sarah
Hebrew word for "princess." Very Biblical. Peaked in 1993 in the US as the 3rd most popular name for girls; currently is #39 in the US. Also currently: #2 in Austria, #4 in Ireland, #6 in Belgium. Sarah even got all the way up to the 613th most popular name for boys in 1899. Sara (no 'h'), on the other hand, is #3 in Italy, #4 in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Slovenia, #5 in Spain, #6 in Croatia, and #8 in Catalonia (but 131st in the US). Clearly, there are plenty of Saras in Europe who can live without the 'h' at the end.

Famous Sarahs: Sarah Michelle Geller, actress; Sarah Dessen, writer; Sarah Hughes, gold medal-winning figure skater; Sarah, Duchess of York; Sarah Bernhardt, actress; Sarah Moore Grimké, women's rights activist; Sara Gilbert, actress; Sarah Brightman, actress/singer; I'm just going to stop there. Feel free to add as many as you'd like (although some were left off the list on purpose because they annoy me).

Fictional Sarahs: Sarah Jane Smith, Doctor Who; Sarah Connor, Terminator series; Sarah Witting, Sarah, Plain and Tall; Sarah Crewe, A Little Princess; Sarah Baker, Cheaper By the Dozen 2003 film... and again, I could keep going for a while.

My Sarahs: I just did a quick check on Facebook and found 11 Sarahs (or Saras) who I'm connected to. Goodness. The nearest and dearest of all my Sarahs is my cousin Sarah, of course. And, I have a character called Sarah, who is sister to my MC Sybil. She's... I'm not sure what to say about her. Perhaps she's the most normal of the family? So far, anyway.

Are you a Sarah? Or a Sara? Or another variation I just didn't think about?

Sources:
Baby Name Wizard
Behind the Name (Sarah)
Behind the Name (Sara)
As said by: At the hour:
Relating to: , , , ,

1 comment:

J E Fritz said...

Yay, I always loved the name histories.

I wonder what ranking it would be if they just considered fictional characters. I'm guessing it would be a lot higher than 39.

21 March, 2013 21:38

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)