❛ THE LONGEST DAY ❜ — May ‘62

   Nick had been up since dawn. He’d woken up and immediately slipped out of bed groggily sans his and Faye’s usual Saturday morning romp to get ready for a day he was only to be a bystander in. His wife, to his surprise, had gotten up before him, already busy in the bathroom when he walked in to take a piss, getting presentable for people coming to make her look presentable. Nick didn’t question it. He did have his own bathroom but hers was closer. An hour later he was in their conversation pit, shaved, showered, and sitting alone and away from all the action, already bored as he browsed the Los Angeles Times for something interesting to read, his second espresso on a small table at his side.   She’d put in this request for him to take part weeks ago, for moral support, and so he had no room to complain. According to Faye, this wouldn’t be like her normal one or two-day photoshoots. Cosmopolitan magazine wanted Hollywood’s enduring blonde bombshell to be professionally captured all over Los Angeles, starting here in their home. That had taken some convincing for Nick on Faye’s part. For obvious reasons, he preferred their privacy. She’d worn him down eventually with a Nicky here and an attentive fuck there. By the end of it, which might take several weeks, they’d have hundreds of photographs of her at home, at various beaches, at hotspots all around Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, and even a last day up at the Hollywood sign. Nick assumed he’d be required to support her at most, if not all of these locations.   He was bracing himself for all.   Their daughter Mia was on the floor in front of Faye, a witness to this big day, brushing their golden retriever Rudy’s snout, mimicking what was being done to her mother with one of the extra brushes the stylist had sweetly handed her. Rudy, like Faye, was always game for attention and sat there happily and let her, his tail thumping on the floor. A few months shy of three, Mia was already Faye in miniature. Same face, same blue eyes, even the same facial expressions, which sometimes caught Nick off guard. But, unfortunately to some, she had Nick’s same dark hair, a fact his dirty-blonde wife had been pointing out and lamenting since she was born. At this point, Nick was convinced she’d continue do so for the rest of their lives.   Matteo, their infant son, was out with their nanny who was running errands for the house. Unlike with Mia, Faye hoped their son did take after his father in the looks department.   “Watch his eyes, baby,” Nick said in a soft tone his daughter recognized as only for her, turning her head quickly to look at him and nodding obediently.   “Okay, Daddy,” she said before going back to brushing.   George Bartlett, Cosmopolitan’s chosen photographer and his wife’s long-time collaborator was at the far end of one of their couches fiddling with his equipment, with camera pieces and lenses spread out all over the carpet. The wardrobe stylist whose name Nick had already forgotten was turned towards another couch, spreading and straightening out of the all the clothing choices they’d brought with them. Neither man seemed in much of a hurry. And Nick knew how long it could take for his wife to get ready. For photoshoots, especially. Letting out as quiet a sigh as he could, Nick stared solemnly for a moment, shut the main section of the newspaper louder than he’d intended, tossed it aside, and reached for Sports.   It was going to be a long day.

just ordered the loz comics zine prototype 😁😁

shadowhunters rewatch 2023:

alec & jace in 1.12 vs izzy and clary in 2.08

Only one happening – there is no other word for it – ever slowed the long procession of girls to our den of iniquity: it was ‘The Thing’, and it was George Harrison’s fault. One night, after some excessive drinking along with the rest of us, he was sick on the floor at the side of his bed. This was nothing terribly unusual after a skinful; it was typical of us all. What was different was that next morning he left the mess for the cleaning lady to deal with. She protested that it was not part of her daily duties and it could stay where it was. The trouble was, George decided it wasn’t his duty either and she stormed off in the direction of Herr Weissleder in a Teutonic rage. It wasn’t the first time she had complained about the untidy Beatles, whose sweaty socks, discarded clothing, bottles and other items usually littered the place. This fresh contribution from George was the last straw. In an effort to placate the old lady, Weissleder despatched Horst Fascher to our quarters with an order to George to remove the offending vomit himself. But George became really shirty. It wasn’t his job, it could stay where it was for all he cared, even though he had to climb over it to get into bed. None of this was really typical of George. He rarely involved himself in any sort of argument and was always much quieter than the rest of us in those formative days and, because he was the youngest Beatle, we all tended to look on him as the baby. We never let him forget, for instance, that he had been kicked out of Germany for being too young and taunted him with such gibes as “Still in nappies, weren’t you?” Even some of the fans treated him as a baby. German girls would shout Liebschen Kind! (lovely child) at him and he wouldn’t mind at all. He always wore a sly grin and had a twinkle in his eyes, perhaps because many of the birds wanted to mother him, which he let them do. Not that he was any kind of ‘softie’, despite his stature (only Stu had been smaller). He would have a go in a rumpus. And he had a streak of obstinacy which came to the fore now, as he categorically refused to clear up the mess at his bedside. So the pile of vomit remained. And it began to grow, and grow, mushrooming and taking on a life of its own. Cigarettes were crushed in it, bits of food fed to it, until it assumed the look of a hedgehog; we christened it The Thing. When members of other groups visited us in the flat they took to giving it the occasional drink. Its fame spread and people wanted to come and see it. For a time food and drink seemed to beautify The Thing and it blossomed like a miniature flower garden. It measured something like six inches in diameter. But its beauty was short-lived, and it began to grow hideous. “I’m frightened to sleep,” George remarked one night, “in case it eats me”. The Thing began to pong as well, but it was George’s baby and somehow we had grown to love it as a pet, despite its wretched origins. After its fame spread Horst arrived one morning to inspect it. He thought it was a disgusting sight: he was right, of course. He left, returning with a shovel; the end, we knew, was nigh. “Hey! Don’t do that! That’s our pet,” we chorused. Horst was not the sort of man to be put off by mere cries of affection for the squalid Thing. He scooped it up on his shovel and led the way with it out on to the Grosse Freiheit while we followed behind him, solemnly chanting the Dead March. The beloved Thing was given a swift burial in a street bin and, only after it had gone to its eternal reward did the cleaner reappear to try to make the flat look fit for human habitation once more. And in the end, it had been something of a minor victory for George: someone else had had to do the dirty work after all.

Beatle! The Pete Best Story, Pete Best and Patrick Doncaster (1985)

screenshot redraw with perrin 🌟 finally started her side quest today!

if youre wondering about my hair, its based on my pla character!

i hate that i do think it'll be cute to have so many more flowers on eevee 3.0 bc hand-sewing 72 appliqués is gonna be a huge pain 😭

why would a god need math

Miss May I: Season 3 Part 62

Vivian: Alright, I’ll be back to pick you up tonight. 

Isabella: Thank you Vivi!

Isabella: What should we do first? Everything looks so fun!

Richie: I’m dying to play some foosball. 

Kirsten: I only have a couple of hours so we should go right to bowling!

Isabella: Sounds good to me!

Markus: I guess since everyone else is paired up we should be on a team together? 

Julian: Yeah, whatever. 

Previous | Beginning | Next

Season 1 | Season 2

heartstopper is so funny bc homophobia is like a core component of the plot but it simultaneously doesn't exist & everybody is gay. also transphobia is not real in this fantasy version of the uk

its actually nuts how missing a single vaccination has shaped my entire fucking life. like not only would I not be deaf if I had gotten it on time but I probs wouldn't have adhd either 🫣

Initial operation of USS New Jersey (BB-62) at Kansong, Korea.

Date: May 23, 1951

NARA: 76020

i feel so stupid every time i take a test in this stupid fucking class.

does anyone wanna swing $248 my way so I can pay this bill aha

hi, guys, i hit 1,000+ likes & 62 jellipuff enthusiasts! (i spent too long trying to say something other than followers cause i feel like being a lil silly.)

thank you all so much hehe! (..◜ᴗ◝..) i'm glad my fics are something ppl can enjoy because being a fic writer can be lowkey anxiety-inducing for me. but then i see ppls reactions, etc and it makes me giggle while also wanting to write more things! sending love back to you all!! 🩵

80 skateboard club : Initiation skate le 1er mai 2024 au 80100 skatepark d'Abbeville

Source instagram du @80skateboardclub Le 1 Mai, le 80 Skateboard Club vous propose un stage spécial initiation à la pratique du skateboard ! Ce stage est destiné à tous ceux qui souhaitent découvrir les joies du skateboard en sécurité.Que vous ayez envie de vous lancer en skateboard ou que vous soyez simplement curieux, cet événement est fait pour vous ! 😉 Ça se passe au @80100skatepark à…

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A Guide to Historically Accurate Regency-Era Names

I recently received a message from a historical romance writer asking if I knew any good resources for finding historically accurate Regency-era names for their characters.

Not knowing any off the top of my head, I dug around online a bit and found there really isn’t much out there. The vast majority of search results were Buzzfeed-style listicles which range from accurate-adjacent to really, really, really bad.

I did find a few blog posts with fairly decent name lists, but noticed that even these have very little indication as to each name’s relative popularity as those statistical breakdowns really don't exist.

I began writing up a response with this information, but then I (being a research addict who was currently snowed in after a blizzard) thought hey - if there aren’t any good resources out there why not make one myself?

As I lacked any compiled data to work from, I had to do my own data wrangling on this project. Due to this fact, I limited the scope to what I thought would be the most useful for writers who focus on this era, namely - people of a marriageable age living in the wealthiest areas of London.

So with this in mind - I went through period records and compiled the names of 25,000 couples who were married in the City of Westminster (which includes Mayfair, St. James and Hyde Park) between 1804 to 1821.

So let’s see what all that data tells us…

To begin - I think it’s hard for us in the modern world with our wide and varied abundance of first names to conceive of just how POPULAR popular names of the past were.

If you were to take a modern sample of 25-year-old (born in 1998) American women, the most common name would be Emily with 1.35% of the total population. If you were to add the next four most popular names (Hannah, Samantha, Sarah and Ashley) these top five names would bring you to 5.5% of the total population. (source: Social Security Administration)

If you were to do the same survey in Regency London - the most common name would be Mary with 19.2% of the population. Add the next four most popular names (Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane) and with just 5 names you would have covered 62% of all women.

To hit 62% of the population in the modern survey it would take the top 400 names.

The top five Regency men’s names (John, William, Thomas, James and George) have nearly identical statistics as the women’s names.

I struggled for the better part of a week with how to present my findings, as a big list in alphabetical order really fails to get across the popularity factor and also isn’t the most tumblr-compatible format. And then my YouTube homepage recommended a random video of someone ranking all the books they’d read last year - and so I present…

The Regency Name Popularity Tier List

The Tiers

S+ - 10% of the population or greater. There is no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. 52% of the population had one of these 7 names.

S - 2-10%. There is still no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. Names in this percentage range in the past have included Mary and William in the 1880s and Jennifer in the late 1970s (topped out at 4%).

A - 1-2%. The top five modern names usually fall in this range. Kids with these names would probably include their last initial in class to avoid confusion. (1998 examples: Emily, Sarah, Ashley, Michael, Christopher, Brandon.)

B - .3-1%. Very common names. Would fall in the top 50 modern names. You would most likely know at least 1 person with these names. (1998 examples: Jessica, Megan, Allison, Justin, Ryan, Eric)

C - .17-.3%. Common names. Would fall in the modern top 100. You would probably know someone with these names, or at least know of them. (1998 examples: Chloe, Grace, Vanessa, Sean, Spencer, Seth)

D - .06-.17%. Less common names. In the modern top 250. You may not personally know someone with these names, but you’re aware of them. (1998 examples: Faith, Cassidy, Summer, Griffin, Dustin, Colby)

E - .02-.06%. Uncommon names. You’re aware these are names, but they are not common. Unusual enough they may be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Calista, Skye, Precious, Fabian, Justice, Lorenzo)

F - .01-.02%. Rare names. You may have heard of these names, but you probably don’t know anyone with one. Extremely unusual, and would likely be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Emerald, Lourdes, Serenity, Dario, Tavian, Adonis)

G - Very rare names. There are only a handful of people with these names in the entire country. You’ve never met anyone with this name.

H - Virtually non-existent. Names that theoretically could have existed in the Regency period (their original source pre-dates the early 19th century) but I found fewer than five (and often no) period examples of them being used in Regency England. (Example names taken from romance novels and online Regency name lists.)

Just to once again reinforce how POPULAR popular names were before we get to the tier lists - statistically, in a ballroom of 100 people in Regency London: 80 would have names from tiers S+/S. An additional 15 people would have names from tiers A/B and C. 4 of the remaining 5 would have names from D/E. Only one would have a name from below tier E.

Women's Names

S+ Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah      

S - Jane, Mary Ann+, Hannah, Susannah, Margaret, Catherine, Martha, Charlotte, Maria

A - Frances, Harriet, Sophia, Eleanor, Rebecca

B - Alice, Amelia, Bridget~, Caroline, Eliza, Esther, Isabella, Louisa, Lucy, Lydia, Phoebe, Rachel, Susan

C - Ellen, Fanny*, Grace, Henrietta, Hester, Jemima, Matilda, Priscilla

D - Abigail, Agnes, Amy, Augusta, Barbara, Betsy*, Betty*, Cecilia, Christiana, Clarissa, Deborah, Diana, Dinah, Dorothy, Emily, Emma, Georgiana, Helen, Janet^, Joanna, Johanna, Judith, Julia, Kezia, Kitty*, Letitia, Nancy*, Ruth, Winifred>

E - Arabella, Celia, Charity, Clara, Cordelia, Dorcas, Eve, Georgina, Honor, Honora, Jennet^, Jessie*^, Joan, Joyce, Juliana, Juliet, Lavinia, Leah, Margery, Marian, Marianne, Marie, Mercy, Miriam, Naomi, Patience, Penelope, Philadelphia, Phillis, Prudence, Rhoda, Rosanna, Rose, Rosetta, Rosina, Sabina, Selina, Sylvia, Theodosia, Theresa

F - (selected) Alicia, Bethia, Euphemia, Frederica, Helena, Leonora, Mariana, Millicent, Mirah, Olivia, Philippa, Rosamund, Sybella, Tabitha, Temperance, Theophila, Thomasin, Tryphena, Ursula, Virtue, Wilhelmina

G - (selected) Adelaide, Alethia, Angelina, Cassandra, Cherry, Constance, Delilah, Dorinda, Drusilla, Eva, Happy, Jessica, Josephine, Laura, Minerva, Octavia, Parthenia, Theodora, Violet, Zipporah

H - Alberta, Alexandra, Amber, Ashley, Calliope, Calpurnia, Chloe, Cressida, Cynthia, Daisy, Daphne, Elaine, Eloise, Estella, Lilian, Lilias, Francesca, Gabriella, Genevieve, Gwendoline, Hermione, Hyacinth, Inez, Iris, Kathleen, Madeline, Maude, Melody, Portia, Seabright, Seraphina, Sienna, Verity

Men's Names

S+ John, William, Thomas

S - James, George, Joseph, Richard, Robert, Charles, Henry, Edward, Samuel

A - Benjamin, (Mother’s/Grandmother’s maiden name used as first name)#

B - Alexander^, Andrew, Daniel, David>, Edmund, Francis, Frederick, Isaac, Matthew, Michael, Patrick~, Peter, Philip, Stephen, Timothy

C - Abraham, Anthony, Christopher, Hugh>, Jeremiah, Jonathan, Nathaniel, Walter

D - Adam, Arthur, Bartholomew, Cornelius, Dennis, Evan>, Jacob, Job, Josiah, Joshua, Lawrence, Lewis, Luke, Mark, Martin, Moses, Nicholas, Owen>, Paul, Ralph, Simon

E - Aaron, Alfred, Allen, Ambrose, Amos, Archibald, Augustin, Augustus, Barnard, Barney, Bernard, Bryan, Caleb, Christian, Clement, Colin, Duncan^, Ebenezer, Edwin, Emanuel, Felix, Gabriel, Gerard, Gilbert, Giles, Griffith, Harry*, Herbert, Humphrey, Israel, Jabez, Jesse, Joel, Jonas, Lancelot, Matthias, Maurice, Miles, Oliver, Rees, Reuben, Roger, Rowland, Solomon, Theophilus, Valentine, Zachariah

F - (selected) Abel, Barnabus, Benedict, Connor, Elijah, Ernest, Gideon, Godfrey, Gregory, Hector, Horace, Horatio, Isaiah, Jasper, Levi, Marmaduke, Noah, Percival, Shadrach, Vincent

G - (selected) Albion, Darius, Christmas, Cleophas, Enoch, Ethelbert, Gavin, Griffin, Hercules, Hugo, Innocent, Justin, Maximilian, Methuselah, Peregrine, Phineas, Roland, Sebastian, Sylvester, Theodore, Titus, Zephaniah

H - Albinus, Americus, Cassian, Dominic, Eric, Milo, Rollo, Trevor, Tristan, Waldo, Xavier

# Men were sometimes given a family surname (most often their mother's or grandmother's maiden name) as their first name - the most famous example of this being Fitzwilliam Darcy. If you were to combine all surname-based first names as a single 'name' this is where the practice would rank.

*Rank as a given name, not a nickname

+If you count Mary Ann as a separate name from Mary - Mary would remain in S+ even without the Mary Anns included

~Primarily used by people of Irish descent

^Primarily used by people of Scottish descent

>Primarily used by people of Welsh descent

I was going to continue on and write about why Regency-era first names were so uniform, discuss historically accurate surnames, nicknames, and include a little guide to finding 'unique' names that are still historically accurate - but this post is already very, very long, so that will have to wait for a later date.

If anyone has any questions/comments/clarifications in the meantime feel free to message me.

Methodology notes: All data is from marriage records covering six parishes in the City of Westminster between 1804 and 1821. The total sample size was 50,950 individuals.

I chose marriage records rather than births/baptisms as I wanted to focus on individuals who were adults during the Regency era rather than newborns. I think many people make the mistake when researching historical names by using baby name data for the year their story takes place rather than 20 to 30 years prior, and I wanted to avoid that. If you are writing a story that takes place in 1930 you don’t want to research the top names for 1930, you need to be looking at 1910 or earlier if you are naming adult characters.

I combined (for my own sanity) names that are pronounced identically but have minor spelling differences: i.e. the data for Catherine also includes Catharines and Katherines, Susannah includes Susannas, Phoebe includes Phebes, etc.

The compound 'Mother's/Grandmother's maiden name used as first name' designation is an educated guesstimate based on what I recognized as known surnames, as I do not hate myself enough to go through 25,000+ individuals and confirm their mother's maiden names. So if the tally includes any individuals who just happened to be named Fitzroy/Hastings/Townsend/etc. because their parents liked the sound of it and not due to any familial relations - my bad.

I did a small comparative survey of 5,000 individuals in several rural communities in Rutland and Staffordshire (chosen because they had the cleanest data I could find and I was lazy) to see if there were any significant differences between urban and rural naming practices and found the results to be very similar. The most noticeable difference I observed was that the S+ tier names were even MORE popular in rural areas than in London. In Rutland between 1810 and 1820 Elizabeths comprised 21.4% of all brides vs. 15.3% in the London survey. All other S+ names also saw increases of between 1% and 6%. I also observed that the rural communities I surveyed saw a small, but noticeable and fairly consistent, increase in the use of names with Biblical origins.

Sources of the records I used for my survey: 

Ancestry.com. England & Wales Marriages, 1538-1988 [database on-line].

Ancestry.com. Westminster, London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1935 [database on-line].