August 14, 2007
That Which We Call a Fred/ By Any Other Name Would Be Less Sweet II Posted by Frederick E. Allen at 12:25 PM EST Speaking of Freds, since every other Fred here has already done so, I agree that most children dislike their first name, whatever it is. Why would any kid would want to be a John or Dick, for instance? Those are an open invitation for teasing. When kids teased me, the best they could come up with was Freddy the Freeloader or Fast Freddy. Who knew what those names even meant? I strongly agree with John that having both a commonplace first and last name can lead to trouble. If I were him, I’d be a magnificent-sounding John Steele Gordon too. I always feared I’d be confused with other people if I went simply by Frederick Allen, but I when started my career, at New York magazine, the editor there, Clay S. Felker, decreed that no one but himself could have a middle initial or name. Sure enough there was another Frederick Allen to confuse me with, a journalist for a long time with CNN and the Atlanta Constitution. By the time he wrote a very well received history of Coca-Cola, I was at American Heritage. We ran a short review of it and got a thank-you note from him. To make matters extra confusing, his personal stationery identified him as Frederick Lewis Allen III. But I am the grandson of the historian Frederick Lewis Allen, and this was no relative of mine. I got in touch with him and learned that his Frederick Lewis Allen was a Cincinnati ad man who is remembered for making Odorono into a success. FLA III told me that when he was in college he dated the daughter of a history professor, and her father couldn’t wait to meet him—figuring he was the grandson of my grandfather. He might as well have been. We have become one person, at least in one biographical sketch, accompanying an essay I wrote that has been anthologized for writing students. There it says that the author “has been, since 1990, the managing editor of American Heritage. . . . As a journalist and a political commentator he has worked for CNN and for several Atlanta TV stations. . . . He is also the author of Secret Formula (1994), a history of the Coca-Cola Company.” If the Freds of the world are to unite, they’ve already begun. As for Alexander Burns’s post a few days ago asking the rest of us how we feel about the all-time home run record, I don’t feel very strongly. I’m perfectly happy to recognize Barry Bonds as the leader—especially since Alex Rodriguez recently hit No. 500 at the youngest age of anyone ever. I think we can all comfort ourselves that there’s a chance the record will finally return where it has always belonged, with the New York Yankees.
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