SIX AMERICANS NAMED FOR OTHER AMERICANS
You don’t often meet many named Ronald Reagan Johnson or Gloria Steinem Jones. Today’s naming favors athletes, singers, and as always, ancestors. But there was a time in America when it was cool to name your kid after another famous and patriotic American. Here’s a list of seven famous Americans named for other famous Americans
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie — Woody Guthrie was born during the 1912 campaign of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Why not name him for the future president, his father — a Democratic politician in Oklahoma — reasoned.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald — We know him as F. Scott, but the author of The Great Gatsby sported this full name in honor of his second cousin who had written the Star Spangled Banner.
Walt Whitman Rostow — Not so famous anymore, but LBJ’s National Security advisor preferred W.W. Rostow. Rostow’s father must have been a real leftist because he named another son Eugene Victor Debs Rostow, after the famous Socialist, and a third Ralph Waldo Emerson Rostow.
Cassius Clay — Before he renamed himself Muhammad Ali, the boxer bore the name of his father, who in turn was named for a staunch Kentucky abolitionist, Cassius Marcellus Clay.
Rembrandt Peale — Back in the 1780s, Charles Wilson Peale wanted his sons to be artists like himself. So he named them Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Titian. And all became artists.
William Tecumseh Sherman — The Civil War general credited his father for his native middle name, saying the old man “caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees.”
Finally, women seem to resist this naming style. During the 1990s, Oprah had its day as a baby name. Then came Beyoncé. But both have faded from view. And history still shows no Amelia Earhart Smith, no Gloria Steinem Jones. If you know of any famous women named for famous women, please add them below.