in defense of the name John…

(suggested music – anything by Laura Nyro with emphasis on Blackpatch …
“Womanchild on the side street,
flashing in blackpatch.
Lipstick on her reefer,
waiting for a match.”
http://www.lyrics007.com/Laura%20Nyro%20Lyrics/Blackpatch%20Lyrics.html
hey, sometimes the music is just good and not really strongly related to the story…)

First, let’s look at the origins of the name John as it does have a good history (sort of – the sort of comes later).
From Wikipedia :
The name John derives via Latin Iōhannēs and Greek Ἰωάννης from the Hebrew name יוחנן (Yôḥanan, also transliterated Yochanan), a short form of the long name יְהוֹחָנָן Yehochanan, meaning "Yahweh is merciful", or “God is gracious”.
In the 11th Century when France took over England, Jean was imported as lohn…which evetualy became John. From 1550 to 1950 (the year I was born), John was the number one male name in both England and the US. Now it barely makes it to the top 50 names.
And there are some great songs about Johns. My favorites being Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean and Sloop John B. by the Beach Boys.

Now the parts that need defending. Why oh why is a toilet called a ‘John’. Why not a Frank or Henry? Well turns out that the reason is not so bad, sort of. The toilet was invented by Sir John Harington. Harington was a British nobleman and godson of Queen Elizabeth I. So as many inventors do, he named it a ‘John’. Now I can think of better things to name after oneself. However, I guess he was reminded of himself at least a few times a day. He even called the Queen’s toilet a ‘John’ and lived to tell. Now come to think of it, when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb (ignore the controvery over whether he stole the invention), he didn’t call it the ‘Thomas’. No it was the electric light bulb – a name describing it. So maybe Sir john could have just called the toilet ‘a water flushy thing’…
So we also get to blame this John dude for ‘Johnny on the Spot’ which I guess is better than ‘John on the spot’ …named by an apparently unknown construction company.

Then the biggie. A John is a customer of a prostitute. Why or why…The answer is actually simple. Prostitutes were not in the habit of calling a customer by their real name, and since at one point, more than half of all male customers were named John, the chances seemed pretty good that they would be correct. Now, alas, despite the drop in the prevalence of the name, the stigma remains. Why not ‘Mr. Smith’? (Quickly – what is the most common male last name in the world?...times up…why Mr. Lee of course – the Chinese have a slight advantage over most…)

Moving right along, there is ‘Johnny come lately’ which wikipedia gives an example of: “a newcomer, novice, upstart” as in “She might take offense if some ‘Johnny-come-lately’ thinks he can do a better job” So once again a way to bad mouth the name John. How would any of this make anyone feel like having the name John or even admitting to the name ‘John’.
And there are the ‘little Johnny jokes’:
From the net: (as in why does little Johnny become the silly or dumb class clown – sort of a classroom ‘blonde’ if you will.) There is even a page called LittleJohnny jokes.com. It has the title ‘I’m always up to no good’… here’s an example of a little Johnny joke (all of which protray little Johnny as naughty, stupid or both) :

LITTLE SON OF A BITCH

Little Johnny was doing his math homework. He said to himself, "Two plus five, that son of a bitch is seven. Three plus six, that son of a bitch is nine."
His mother heard what he was saying and gasped, "What are you doing?"
The little boy answered, "I'm doing my math homework."
" And this is how your teacher taught you to do it?" the mother asked.
"Yes," he answered.
Infuriated, the called Little Johnny's teacher the next day, "What are you teaching my son in class?"
The teacher replied, "Right now, we are learning addition."
The mother asked, "And are you teaching them to say two plus two, that son of a bitch is four?"
After the teacher stopped laughing, she answered, "What I taught them was, two plus two,the sum of which is four."

Then there is ‘John Doe’ as in the unidentified body was a ‘John Doe’
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060914061825AAGKQMX
In Toronto, if a homeless John Doe freezes to death on the street, he is buried in a cemetery once reserved for hanged murderers (when Canada still had capital punishment).

and then there is John Q. Public: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Q._Public And actually John Q. Public is generally not a bad reference as he is to represent a basically law abiding man.
And continuing along those lines, believe it or not, not all references to John are necessarily negative. For example, the song Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean. Big Bad John was huge, strong miner who saves 20 miners by holding up a timber but is killed when the mine caves in. A loner, a hero. The lyrics are at:
http://www.lyrics007.com/Jimmy%20Dean%20Lyrics/Big%20Bad%20John%20Lyrics.html
Yet where I live there is a bar called Big Bad John’s. It is always crowded and the floor is thick with the shells from the free peanuts. And everyone knows they serve the underaged.

Then there is the very expensive island in US Virgin Islands: St. Johns
http://www.stjohnisland.com/
where the real estate values are very high, even for an island in a great location. Oh, to have quite a few millions extra…
And then there is that great organization St. John’s Ambulance, essentially named after John The Baptist from the Bible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_Baptist
There are likely many more insistences of negative (mostly) uses of the name John which seemed to to have gone from a saint to the toilet. I encouage other Johns (or sympathizers) to write me with others.
Perhaps a ‘Jane’ can write about her name as in ‘Plain Jane’…

by John Boland, copyrighted 2011
dedicated to all the fine other Johns in the world…