A Loretta by Any Other Name

I just finished reading Adam’s copy of Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (I know, I know, I’m supposed to be reading Dictee, and I am reading it, but it requires time to absorb what I’ve been reading and I’ll try to post about it later today) and I think Andrew Leonard’s critique in Salon perhaps doesn’t take into account what economists really are like when he complains that the book doesn't offer any solutions to the problems it presents. Perhaps that has something to do with economists' belief that morality is the way we want the world to be, and economics is the way the world actually is, which seems to line up with Adam's comments that economists are moral relativists and that people are more likely to cheat after taking an economics course.

But what really interested me in Freakonomics (because it really is ALL about ME) is how incredibly uncommon the name Loretta is. Levitt and Roland G. Fryer Jr. have sifted through mounds and mounds of baby-name data to track what names are most popular, which names are most common among blacks and whites and across a variety of income levels. From reviewing the data at Social Security’s baby names database, I have discovered that Loretta is very, very uncommon now, although it was once of middling popularity. The name seems to have peaked in the 1940s or so, which confirms the feeling I have had all my life that it was sort of an old-lady-ish name. Famous Lorettas include: Loretta Young (actress), Loretta Lynn (country-western singer), Loretta Swit (actress), Loretta Sanchez (congresswoman), and Loretta Claiborne (special Olympics athlete). Loretta is also the name of an Indianapolis rock band. Go figure.

How did I end up with such an unfashionable name? My father wanted to name me after his mother, Wilma Loretta, and my mother agreed because she grew up watching the Loretta Young Show.