A Stickney By Any Other Name

After reading “A Brief Note for Expectant Parents” in our February, 1965, issue—about unusual names given to infants in nineteenth-century Connecticut—Charles R. Schultz, Librarian at Mystic Seaport in that state, sent us the following item from the Charleston, South Carolina, Daily Courier of October 31, 1856:

“We heard of a family in Detroit, whose sons were named One Stickney, Two Stickney, Three Stickney, and whose daughters were named First Stickney, Second Stickney, and so on. The three elder children of another family were named Joseph, And, and Another, and it has been supposed that should they have [had] any more, they might have named them Also, Moreover, Nevertheless, and Notwithstanding. Another family actually named their child Finis, supposing it was their last, but they happened afterward to have a daughter and two sons, whom they called Addenda, Appendix, and Supplement. Another parent set out to perpetuate the names of the Gospels, and named the fifth child Acts. A man in Pennsylvania called his second son James Also, and the third William Likewise.”