Who are you? How do you anchor yourself? What’s in, as they say, a name? It’s something to ponder and explore in this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
Name
There’s Something About A Person Named Tex
Tex is an incredibly popular nickname. It is so fitting for some… that it pushes their given first name entirely out of use. I thought it would be interesting to look at a few famous folks known mostly as just Tex.
Tex Ritter is probably the most famous person named Tex. I doubt more than one in hundred Texans could tell you that Tex Ritter’s first name was Woodward. Full name: Woodward Maurice Ritter. More people likely know that he was the father of actor John Ritter of “Three’s Company” fame.
The elder Ritter was an incredibly popular recording artist, television and movie star from the 1930s to the 1960s. Here’s his most famous song: “You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often.”
Everyone knows that you’re untrue,
Honey you and me are through,
You two timed me one time too often,
I’m so tired of your abuse,
Guess I’d better turn you loose,
You two timed me one time too often.
Then there’s another famous recording star, Tex Williams But he wasn’t really from Texas. He was born Sollie Paul Williams, in Ramsey, Illinois. He just got the Tex nickname because early in his career he played Western Swing in California, a musical genre that had a lot of Texas fans there at the time, and so he was given the nickname to connect him to his audience, and it stuck. His most famous song was “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette),” which you may remember from the 2006 film: “Thank You for Smoking.”
Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette
Puff puff puff
And if you smoke yourself to death
Tell St Peter at the Golden Gate
That you hate to make him wait
But you just gotta have another cigarette
Tex Brashear, born in Kerrville, Texas, is a voice actor, narrator and movie trailer announcer with a deep bass voice. You’ve probably never seen him, but you’ve likely heard him. Known as the man of a thousand voices, he’s won 102 Addy awards. Here’s a promo he recorded for NBC for Lethal Weapon:
https://soundcloud.com/tex-brashear (first one, NBC – 33-40?)
According to the babynamescience website, Tex is a unique modern baby name for boys. Only 1 in 335-thousand babies were given that name in recent years. And it’s even rarer for girls, which brings us to our last entry here – a famous woman who was nicknamed – not Tex, but Texas. Texas Guinan. She was a well-known actress and vaudeville singer, comedian, and speakeasy performer during prohibition.
The life story she told about herself was that she was named Texas the day she was born in Waco in 1884. Not true. She was named Mary – not Texas – but she built her entire show-business persona around the Texas claim, and it served her well.
She left us some memorable quotes. As hostess of speakeasies for the rich and famous she would often welcome customers from her place on stage, with this line: “Hello suckers! Come on in and leave your wallet on the bar.” And her most famous line: “A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.”
There are hundreds more. There’s Tex Schramm, the first President of the Dallas Cowboys. Randall “Tex” Cobb, the Bridge City-born boxer, actor. Tex Avery, the cartoonist and Warner Brothers animator who was born in Taylor. It’s a long list. Younger generations are picking it up, too. We have Tex Sands, the outube star. And the youngest, on-the-way-to-fame-“Tex”, is voice actor Tex Hammond, 14, known for the two animated series, The Loud House and Vampirina.
I say name your babies Tex, boys or girls. It’s a rare given name and seems to lead to great things.
What’s In A Name? For These Famous Texans, Everything.
By W. F. Strong
Could there be a better name for the world’s faster runner than Usain Bolt? It’s a dead solid perfect aptronym, which is the formal word for a name that appropriately fits one’s occupation, sometimes humorously. A neurological scholar in England was knighted and became, I kid you not, Lord Brain. The president of Barclays Bank used to be Rich Ricci. What else could he have done but become a banker? The same may be said for George Francis Train, a major player in building the eastern portion of the transcontinental railroad across the United States. Barbara Boxer didn’t go into boxing literally, but as the long-serving former California senator, she was in the full contact sport of politics.
I thought I’d look at aptronyms of Texas – people from Texas who have names that are, or were, particularly apt for them. My friend Judge Ken Wise has an ideal name for a judge. He uses his name, too, aptronomously, for his podcast, “Wise about Texas.” In East Texas we used to have a federal judge whose name was William Wayne Justice. He really was all about justice, too. He forced East Texas to integrate their schools and ordered that children of undocumented parents could go to public schools.
There are those who study, seriously, the connection between names and destiny. Researchers Brett Pelham and Carvallo Mauricio found that men named Cal and Tex, born outside of Texas and California, had better than 50/50 odds that they’d move to their namesake states in their lifetime. Cals would go to California and those named Tex would mosey on over to the Lone Star State. They also found that the name Dennis is disproportionately represented in the field of Dentistry. Dennis the Dentist.
There are also inaptronyms. They are ironic rather than descriptive names. For instance, we used to have a state treasurer in Texas named Jesse James. We put a famous train robber in charge of the money. John Tower was not physically towering, but he was a towering force in politics, both influential and powerful in the U.S. Senate. So his name works both ways.
Here’s a few more fun Texas aptronyms:
Barbara Staff was great at building staffs for Republican political campaigns.
John Sharp, the politically astute former comptroller, is now Texas A&M University chancellor.
The last name of Tito of Tito’s Vodka fame is Beveridge.
Richard King built a ranch empire that was, and remains, one of the biggest ranches in the world. Great name for the man and the ranch.
Ken Starr has certainly seemed to be a star in many political events of the last few decades, with the Clinton impeachment being his biggest starring role.
Finally, I have to go back a long way to tell you about Robert Neighbors, a man who was the primary Indian agent in Texas back in the 1850s. It was his impossible task of attempting to forge peace between the white settlers and the Comanche. He was one of the few people, at the time, other than Sam Houston, who spoke a Native American language fluently. He used that skill to talk with Comanches in their lodges and teepees and build trust for the treaties he negotiated with the settlers.
Sadly, Neighbors was shot in the back and killed by Edward Cornett because he thought Neighbors was too friendly with the Comanche. Despite the fact that there were three eyewitnesses to the crime, Edward was never tried for the murder. It helps to have your brother-in-law on the grand jury.
Texas Standard: February 1, 2018
It could be more penny-pinching ahead for Texas lawmakers and the state budget. We’ll get the economic outlook from the Texas controller. Plus one year after President Trump announced an executive order restricting travel from some Muslim-majority countries. Now Texas immigrants from those countries still face uncertainty. We’ll have the story. And taking the pulse of US-Mexico relations as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads south of the border. Also kids these days are exposed to a lot of technology from a very young age. What we should consider when it comes to childcare tech. Plus remembering the Space Shuttle Columbia and its crew 15 years after it disintegrated in the skies over east Texas. Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard: