Random Mennonite names

 Posted by on 25 February 2010  Modern Life
Feb 252010
 

Maybe you love Mennonites and want to name your first-born child after one.

Or maybe you’re writing a book set in a Mennonite community and need some characters.

Or perhaps, like me, you grew up in southern Manitoba, and Mennonite names make you feel at home.

Well, huzzah! There’s a website just for you: ShoutMennoniteNames.com:

From their “about” page, which they helpfully call “What?”

The site came about in February of 2009 when my boyfriend (who lives in Winnipeg), told me about a game that some of his friends had devised, in which players take turns shouting plausible-sounding Mennonite names at one another. I can only assume that they came up with this in February of another year, when the Winter Crazies were at their peak.

…

But let us back up for a minute. First of all, you should know, dear reader, that there are a whole lot of Mennonites in Manitoba. Also, Mennonites tend to be fairly predictable in their naming customs.

The site was created by Steven Cochrane, and it sounds like it’s about a year old. Happy First Anniversary, Mennonite site!

(via PaperAndGlue.net)

Grant Hamilton

  • Matt Goerzen

    Curiously, I find this Mennonite site rather annoying. Mennonites are not one people or a nation. It’s a religion, a Christian cult formed from the ideas of Menno Simons (who was Dutch). There are apparently more dark-skinned Mennonites in South and Central America than the Mennonites of European descent that fill out the rest of North America. I’m willing to bet the south and central Americans don’t answer to surnames such as Friesen or Sawatsky.

    And counterpoint: assuming that all Neufelds and Thiessens (and Goerzens by the by) are Mennonite is like assuming Grant Hamilton is either protestant or Catholic, based on the origin of his name:

    http://www.mcmahonsofmonaghan.org/surnames.html

    How wrong of us, especially when we all know Hamilton’s secretly part of the Creativity Movement (which was also started, oddly enough, by a man named Klassen (wait, isn’t that a Mennonite name?). It’s number 9 on this handy-dandy list.

    http://listverse.com/2009/09/10/10-extremely-weird-religions/

    Personally, I subscribe to the Prince Philip Movement (number 3).

    • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

      Dammit — “Creativity Movement” actually sounded pretty cool, until I read about it.

      And yeah, this is definitely a southern-Manitoba-Mennonite thing. Interesting point about my Protestant/Catholic thing, though, as you have just identified the major stressor in my parents’ entire marriage (she from Protestant stock, he from Catholic — but apparently two wrongs do make a right, as I turned out mildly atheist, or at least agnostic. Wait, does “agnostic” mean “I don’t care”?)