taste_is_sweet | It's a Good, Solid Name

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It's a Good, Solid Name

Meet John: biblical, dependable, easy to pronounce and one of the most popular American names for the last 100 years. Name of kings, princes, presidents, philosophers and my brother-in-law, it conjures up thoughts of loyalty and steadfastness, simplicity and quiet strength. John will always pull kitties out of wells and get his gun and come marching home (hurrah!) and hold the line.

I'm sure it's for those reasons that John is also a name given to a hilariously astonishing number of fictional characters (There was even a John Doe TV series, but I'm not sure that counts). What I find especially interesting is that John is so often used as a first name for the lead character, when the fact its such a common name would imply that the author couldn't think of anything more interesting. Though I suppose that also works in the name's favor, since you could also argue that a John will be instantly more familiar with the audience than, say, an Anthony or Rodney.

A couple of weeks ago,

brumeier and I spent a good half-hour coming up with as many fictional Johns as we could. We eventually branched into Jack as well, because Jack used to be a nickname for John.

Here, with a very few more recent additions, were what we came up with off the top of our heads:

(All the links go to Wikipedia, because that was easiest and there are a hell of a lot of links.)

John Sheppard (Stargate: Atlantis)
John Kennex (Almost Human)
John Diggle (Arrow)
John Garrett (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)
John Dunne (Magnificent Seven)
John Connor (Terminator Franchise)
John Chricton (Farscape)
Johann Schmidt (Captain America Franchise)
John Constantine (Hellblazer Comic)
John Carter (John Carter of Mars Franchise)
John Snow (A Song of Ice and Fire Series/Game of Thrones)
John Winchester (Supernatural)
John Locke (Lost)
John Watson (Sherlock Holmes)
Little John (Robin Hood)
Johnny Blaze (Ghost Rider Franchise)
Johnny Storm (Fantastic Four Franchise)
Johnny Mnemonic (Johnny Mnemonic)

Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean Franchise)
Jack Harkness (Torchwood)
Jack O'Neill (Stargate: SG-1)
Jack Carter (Eureka)
Jack (Jack the Giant Slayer/Killer and many, many other versions)
Jaq-Jaq (Disney's Cinderella)
Jack (Oblivion)
Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China)
Jack Shephard (Lost)
Jack Power (Power Pack Comic)

Crazy, right? And that's just off the top of our heads. I'm sure you guys know even more Johns and Jacks we haven't thought of, and that's not including the countless Johns and Jacks who appear in fairy tales and nursery rhymes.

I also find it hilarious how SyFy named two characters Jack and two characters John in four different series, and that Lost had a John and a Jack (and a James!). I also love how Jack's last name was 'Shephard', likely for the same reason as John Sheppard on SGA. They roll trippingly off the tongue, do those J names.

So, did we miss any Johns or Jacks, O Best-Beloveds? Any other names that you see on fictional characters all the time? (James seems pretty popular too, as does Peter and Steve.) Any non-American ones? I'd love to hear 'em.

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I find it funny that my fandom guys all have more unusual names given the preponderance of Johns... except for "John Reese" and that's not his real name, we haven't been told his real name... yet.

Of course he'd choose 'John' as a fake name. Love it. :)

Honestly, there are some fandoms that amaze me because they don't have a John, Jack or James in them. Teen Wolf and Merlin come to mind.

Actually, I think 'John' really is his first name, it was shown on some papers in an episode if I recall correctly. It's just the last name that's fake :)

LOL. Well, all right then. ;)

Ha! The list! ::grins::

Maybe John is so popular for heroes because it's both easy to say and easily relatable - everyone knows a John. I myself have a dad named John and an Uncle named John. Our school nurse is Johnny. And of course, now I have Little John sitting on my shelf next to Little Rodney (they may or may not be holding hands).

You forgot:

John McClane (Die Hard Franchise)
Johnny Bravo (Johnny Bravo)
Johnny Test (Johnny Test)
John Shephard (Mass Effect video game series)
J'onn J'onzz aka Martian Manhunter (DC Comics)
John Clayton (Tarzan series)

Awesome additions! Why do I never remember John McClane? And what is it with the Shepherds? Seriously. Why not Berger, at least? Or Herder, even?

I don't know why you have a John McClane mental block. Don't be hatin' on John McClane! He totally kicks ass. ::grins::

BTW, Mass Effect is a game that takes place in space. Just sayin'. John...in...Space! ::uses best Muppet announcer voice::

And I just remembered there were two Johns on The Waltons. John and John-Boy.

So many Johns!

Edited 2014-04-17 22:23 (UTC)

I'd heard of John-Boy, but I thought the show was Ponderosa, and when I couldn't find the character it seemed disingenuous to search for the name (since they were supposed to be off the top of my head, yo).

Obviously, if you're going to shoot a guy into space, they need to be named John. ::firm nod::

Ponderosa had Little Joe. ::grins:

Well, who better to send into space than a John? They're reliable, tough, and aliens have an easier time saying their name. ::nods::

Hee!

Now I want to write a fanfic where John's name is the only ones the locals can pronounce, so he ends up as the default sacrifice or something. ::g::

LOL! Do it!

I think there are so many Johns because writers are wary of picking names that sound fake and John never sounds fake because we all know one.

Of course I'm amusing myself typing this because I've always been a fan of Man from UNCLE where the two leads are called Illya Kuryakin and, wait for it... Napoleon Solo. :D

Of course it's even more amusing when you know that Ian Fleming came up with Napoleon's name, given how hysterically odd most of the names in the James Bond stories are.

Good point about more 'exotic' names sounding fake, though there are loads of very reasonable names out there in any language that aren't John.

I think the name Napoleon is really cool, personally, but it has such a huge historical connotation that it seems impossible to use anymore.

Napoleon Solo. That is awesome. :D

Illya Kuryakin is such a great name! LOL! And so unusual for main characters, you're right.

There's something about J names I think. I'm married to a Joe and have always been fond of the name James.

I like the names Joseph and James, and I love Joshua, but they're so common Dom and I agreed that we didn't want that for Javier.

Of course, we ended up with a J name anyway, but it was the first one we agreed on. And I love calling my boy, 'the Jav'. ::g::

And hey, to a huge number of Texans, his name is pronounced Havier, anyaway. ;)

If Joe hadn't had any input in naming Xander, he'd have either ended up Little Joe or Jamie.

Jav is cool!

I love the name Jamie, but I think these days people would assume it belonged to a girl.

Unfortunate but true.

They were an unusual pair of guys. :D

I have a huge thing for 60s camp anyway and MFU was seriously campy. It also starred the young Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, always a good thing. Here, have a great fanvid where you can see how campy it was. Actually though, the MFU vidders are a fantastic bunch in general:

I remember my mom had MFU novels. She was big fan.

Look how young Ducky is! LOL! This vid gets bonus points for using Masochism Tango, I love that song. ::giggles:: I had a Dr. Demento album years ago and that was one of the songs on it. Good stuff.

Thanks for sharing!

Yep. I'm told there have been NCIS stories written where Ducky is Illya. I don't watch NCIS but I'm told there's an episode where someone asks what Ducky looked like when he was young and someone says "Illya Kuryakin."

Gotta love US telly, where a Russian agent working for an American agency is played by a Scotsman who was raised in England. *g*

I love Tom Lehrer. All of his songs are great. I came so close to getting a mate to vid Apparitions to the Vatican Rag but she changed her mind.

One of my friends wrote a fic where Illya and Ducky were the same person - that was part of his secret past. And yeah, I do believe they mentioned it in an ep early on in the series. Which is awesome. ::grins::

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. Tom had a dark side. LOL!

All of the men in my dad's family have James as their middle name and all of the men in my step-father's family have John as their middle name.

MG came very close to being a James III thanks to his mother but his dad said two of them were enough. *g*

My hubby's middle name is John and so is my brother's. Your family sure likes to carry on naming traditions. LOL!

Hubby wouldn't let me name my boy Joseph because he said it wasn't fair for the kid not to have his own name. No jrs allowed. Funny thing is, before I met my hubby whenever I dreamed I had a baby it was always a boy named Joseph. Spooky!

In England it's extremely rare to name a boy after his father as a Jr, etc. I only knew one in my entire life there and it was considered unusual. What is common though is to get the same middle name as your dad had.

I didn't know that, how interesting! Unfortunately it's all too prevalent right in my own family.

We have Uncle Andy and Little Andy, Big Matt and Little Matt, and my Uncle Jerry will forever be called Junior by my grandparents.

My mom wanted to name my brother after my dad, so we'd have two Johns. He said no way. He wouldn't even agree to Ian, which is a form of John. So my poor bro got stuck with Elisha.

That is spooky! Is Joseph Xander's middle name?

It sure is!

Cooooool.

In my bro-in-law's family, each male generation is either John Daniel or Daniel John. His dad is Daniel, and he's John.

They changed it up for their son, though--he's Jonah Daniel. :)

...Actually, he's not. :( I mis-remembered that from when my sister would make up names for her kids to holler across the playground. Jonah was 'Joseph Daniel Berkowitz'. I need to ask her what his middle name actually is.

Hey sis!

Jonah's middle name is 'Aubrey' after our grandfather, and he's called 'Jonah' to reflect the 'J' of his dad, John.

We had a very short debate about giving him the middle name Daniel, which went like this:

Me: "Should we use Daniel as his middle name?"

John: "No."

Hi! Sorry about that! At least I remembered in time to correct it before you had to remind me. ;)

John McClane and John Reese were the two others I was thinking of. And of course Sheriff Stilinski has been dubbed John by the fannish hive mind (though I've had a story in the back of my mind for yoinks that he goes by Jack).

For Jacks, add Jack Bauer (24), and Jack Skellington for the Tim Burton fans. :-)

The most different name that has repeated on my flist was seeing Arthur everywhere for both Merlin and Inception. These days Steves are Avengers and Hawaii Five-0, and Tonys are Avengers and NCIS.

Maybe it's my SG-1 focus, but I see lots of Sams in media (SG-1, Supernatural, Captain America 2, LOTR, West Wing, Burn Notice, Quantum Leap) and Dannys (SG-1, Teen Wolf, Hawaii Five-0, West Wing, Oceans 11)

Jack Bauer! Damn it--I had him in the original list with Bru, but completely forgot the dude. And I never would've thought of Skellington--thanks. :D

Sam does get bandied around a lot depending on the circles, doesn't it? And yeah, especially with the good Captain and SEAL, Steve seems to have gotten a lot of play lately, too. (Marvel also has Stephen Strange, who was mentioned by name in CA2, which makes me wonder if he'll be part of a different franchise.)

I knew about Danny in H50 and Daniel of SG-1 (of course!), but I didn't know there were that many more. Or Sams either, for that matter, though I did watch QL back in the day. :)

Thank you for your input. Now I'll start noticing Sams, too.

I think Stephen Strange is going to show up in the MCU at some point—it would be cool! Not Namor, though. *shudder* :D

At least Teal'c isn't a name anyone else has taken!

Or Murray, for that matter. ;)

I always thought Namor was cooler than Aquaman, but yeah. Strange would be cool, though.

Oh, everybody's cooler than Aquaman. (Don't tell 6 year old me that.) It's just that Namor's a dick.

LOL

Yeah. I think the only MCU character as dickish as Namor was Northstar, though he probably is a lot nicer now that he's no longer in the closet and getting laid regularly by Colossus.

Good names

My late father was a John l had an uncle John my boss us John as is my manager l have a friend who calls himself Jono

l have an uncle called Jack and a friend called Jack too.

Dont forget the name Jonathon shortened to Jon, l have two friends who do that.

I know a lot of Steves and Stephens family and friends that outnumbers the Johns

Edited 2014-04-18 06:29 (UTC)

That's impressive! I know in person or of quite a few Richards and Roberts, all born in the 1960s. It's interesting how name popularity waxes and wanes--expect for John. ;)

I would have included Jonathan, but since it's root meaning isn't the same as John, it's actually a different name (unlike Jack, which started out life as a nickname for John).

Richard is a family name for me l have two cousins with that name but also my 94 year old grandfather is Richard named after his grandfather and a few other ancestors and his surname is Stevenson so once again more Steves

Crazy. :D

Jack Aubrey, Master and Commander

Cool. Thanks! I haven't seen that movie, but I've heard it's very good.

John Anderton in Minority Report
John Smith in Mr and Mrs Smith
John 'Hanibal' Smith in th A Team
John Smith in Pocahontas
John Kimble in Kindergarten Cop
Is the still a John in the Tomorrow People?
Prince John in Robin Hood
Jonathon Archer in Star Trek Enterprise

Ooh! More names. :D

I always thought that Hannibal was the guy's real first name in the A-Team. Figures it'd be John.

Prince John was a real person, right? I decided not to include him because of that.

And again, much as I loved ST: ENT, Jonathan isn't the same name as John, so I can't include Archer. :)

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It's a Good, Solid Name

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