What's in a name? Ask a Chicagoan

It was sometime back in the 1990s when I first met someone with the name Payton. Payton, from what I remember, was about my age, mid-twenties at the time. She was

a friend of a friend I gabbed with at a North Side party. Payton said she dabbled in 5Ks and was preparing for the upcoming Chicago Marathon but wasn’t a football fan. Despite growing up in the Chicago suburbs, she had never set foot into Soldier Field, except for the very last Grateful Dead show, July 9, 1995 (I was there too).

Yet she acknowledged that her name was at least a nod to the great Walter Payton—her father, she said, was the world’s biggest Chicago Bears fan. The beloved Hall of

Fame running back Walter Payton joined the Bears in 1975, spending his entire 13-year career at Halas Hall. If my new party friend Payton was about my age (I was born

in 1972), then her father must have been a prognosticator. A Chicago Bears Nostradamus.

Anyhow, I met more Paytons, plus some Peytons with an E, almost all of whom were women. Again, going on the age of 20-somethings in the ’90s, it’s likely the Peytons with E got their names from Peyton Place, the 1960s TV soap opera, not future NFL star Peyton Manning, born in 1976.

I always assumed this “last names as first names” was a Midwestern thing. Growing up on the East Coast, it wasn’t until I went away to college that I met a Mackenzie or a Logan, a Harper, a Madison or Quinn. Then again, maybe it wasn’t until 1990s Chicago that I began paying attention to things.

When I met someone named Ernie—not exactly a popular name like Jennifer, John, or ’80s-favorite Ashley—most here claimed name-kinship with Ernie Banks, not the Sesame Street character.

By the 2000s, I met young parents naming sons and daughters Addison, Wrigley and Maddux. Little Jordans were running around my kid’s Gymboree—almost as many Jordans as Aidans. A mortgage broker I met in 2004 had a dog named Prior, like the Cubs pitcher. Then, I met a couple who named their new baby Brixen, which they said was a play on Wrigley Field’s “bricks ’n’ ivy.” No Cades or Cutlers, though.

It’s safe to say that Chicagoans are a creative bunch. Or we just like to show off our sports fandom. Besides, no self-respecting local would ever name their kid Favre.

Andy Frye has written for ESPN Chicago and Rolling Stone. His new book about Chicago, NINETY DAYS IN THE 90s, is out now.