Dispatch # 1: Cade, Cheyenne, Portia, Alexia, Meconium, Brody

Cade   [kād] (Gaelic) 


 
1) Something round and lumpy.  


2) Anthroponymists posit a popular etymologico-cultural connection to Reuben Kincaid, the daffy agent in early seventies sitcom The Partridge Family.


Similar content-free names include Caden, Caiden, Cayden, Kade, Kaden


Cheyenne  [shahy-en, -an] (Dakota)

1) A Native American tribe


2) Derived from the Dakota tongue, meaning ‘to speak incoherently'.


3) Another example of the mystifying habit of naming babies after geographical locations, in this case Wyoming’s capital city, which coincidentally is an anagram of Wyomingian Dick Cheney – a state of affairs likely to vex the numerous hippies and pinkos who have so named their beaded and tousled progeny.


Portia  [pawr-shuh, -shee-uh] (Latin)

1) A character from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice who disguised herself as a male lawyer.  


2) Apparently derived from the Latin porcus, or pig.


3) More recently, seen by homonymists in certain parts of the USA as an alternate spelling for Porsche, the fensy shmensy Saxon sports car.


Alexia [uh-lek-see-uh] (Greek)


1) A neurological malady marked by an inability to understand written or printed language, usually resulting from a brain lesion or a congenital defect.


2) Alternately Alexus, frequently thought to be a Japanese luxury automobile.


Meconium [mi-koh-nee-uhm] (Latin Vulgate)

1) Newborn's inaugural fecal excretion - a potent cocktail of bile mucus and epithelial cells.

2) Derived from Maconius, a Roman usurper of the mid third century CE. 


3) A child so named in NYC in 2008.

4) Maconium is a now-dissolved Sacramento CA garage band (see logo above).

Brody [broh-dee] (Gaelic) (also Brodie) 


1) Muddy ditch.


2) Failure or flop. 

3) Slang for suicidal leap or severe skid – definitions recalling Steve Brodie, who claimed to have survived a leap off the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886.


4) A certain uncharming small-organed squealing midget known to the editors, an elementary school pupil who was a passenger onboard a Manhattan school bus for several years during the latter part of the 1970s.