Frankly, I Do Give A Damn ... About my name.

While looking over the latest trends in baby names (Vampires, Werewolves, and the gals who love them seem to be the emerging themes) I stumbled across this little tidbit from Parentingweekly.com:

"Like Hank, [the name] Frank has a dated feel to it. He is either an honest, upstanding hero of a musty old novel, or a guy in a tank top cooking hot dogs at the backyard barbecue."

            Somehow this statement seemed racist, but I have to accept that people named Frank do not make up a race, so I had to drop that thread.  I have never barbecued a hot dog.  (They made me sick as a kid, so I have never liked them.  Sorry, America.)  And the only time I ever wore a tank top was back in the ‘90’s when the whole bowling shirt and cargo pant craze was happening.  It occurred to me that this statement was made by somebody who didn’t know a Frank so had only the Hardy Boys and The Sopranos to supplement his understanding of people named Frank.  So, I may help the Frank cause by giving a little information on a few famous Franks. 

            Now, there are a great many athletes named Frank, but the stereotype surrounding the sports world might lead us right back to Barbeque Frank, so I will omit these Franks, though I am proud that some of us don’t throw like sissies. 

           We had a couple of Franks win the Nobel Peace Prize.  In 1929, Frank Billings Kellogg won it for peace for his work on a treaty that proposed countries take up "the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy."  In 1960, Frank MacFarlane Burnet won it for his work in Medicine.  And in 2004, Frank Wilczek won it for his work as a physicist in the field of Asymptotic Freedom. (I don’t even know what this means, but it sounded super impressive, so I included him.) 

We had a couple of Franks for President: Franklin Pierce and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Pierce was famous for being one of the worst presidents in history.  (Of course he predated other administrations …) But it was okay, because the other Franklin, Mr. FDR gave this country a New Deal. 

I’ve always been drawn to the arts and literature as a whole, and it thrills me to say that some of the best Franks come to us from creative fields:



Frank Sinatra was crooning to mothers, grandmothers, and probably great grandmothers in ways that had them all sighing for “Old Blue Eyes.”  And if it weren’t for Frank Zappa’s music, we might all have eaten the yellow snow. 

Frank Lloyd Write was an architect who used his amazing vision to shape the world around us. 

And this might not have even happened …

 … had L. Frank Baum never took us down his Yellow Brick Road with a Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, a little black dog, and a brave little girl.  Of course,  L. Frank Baum wasn’t the only writer who took us to far off and exotic worlds.  Frank Herbert gave us “Dune” and has set the bar for the Science Fiction genre ever since. 

Frank Herbert's works even inspired George Lucas when he created his Star Wars Trilogy.  You didn’t think it was a coincidence that Luke was from a Desert Planet, did you?  And one of my favorite Star Wars Characters might never have made it to the Big Screen had it not been for another famous Frank: Frank Oz. 

And I owe one of the greatest loves of my life to Frank Oz as well:



So you see, the world has been and will forever be greatly enhanced by the Franks who populate it.  I struggle to do my part and keep up with all these guys.  But who knows, maybe someday some little unheard of blogger will record my name down with these other guys as the Frank who took a stand against blatant Name Discrimination.