Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Naming rights

So, some of my D.C. friends who are native New Englanders and I used to joke about the people we knew in common (who we didn't, actually, know in common) because of their New Englandy names. By New Englandy, of course, I mean French Canadian (Thibodeau), Irish (Sully and Doyle) and Italian (Girardi, pronounced Jirahdee).

Here is a phenomenon I don't totally understand: I don't think I knew anyone named "Andy" in D.C. I know, or know of, several up here. What do you think that's about? If you're reading this and named Andy, comment, please, and tell us where you're from.

Those of you who spend a lot of time in the comments might have discerned that I have a lot of people named "Mike" prominently in my life. It's true, and not all of them comment here, either. There are also several Bills. Both Mikes and Bills exist in both places, though.

I only know one boy named Sue, for the record, but she is neither a boy nor named Sue.

4 comments:

Joe said...

You forgot my buddy Smitty who lives up in Gloucester (er, GLAW-stah).
But you're right, no Andys down here.

Anonymous said...

omg, you're RIGHT! Maybe Andy is a Greek name? The Andy I want to school with in NH was Greek, anyway.

NH = Greek pizza, Greek names?

Kristen said...

So, I know an Andy. And he's from Maryland. But we're talking the part of Maryland that is included in the Greater DC Metro area. Does that count? He's a little "off-beat." Maybe we can attribute that to the fact that he is here and he shouldn't be since all other Andy's hail from elsewhere.

vsinha said...

i've got an andy who lives across the street from me. and i, along with kt, must ask if my hood in south riding, va, still counts as the dc area considering it's about 482.7 miles from the city. anyway, this andy grew up in no. va. and is half chinese and half korean. i'm not sure what, if anything, that illuminates. he's my favorite neighbor. again, probably not illuminating anything.