Many family names came into being as a result of an ancestor’s occupation. If you’re a Baker, Barber, Smith, Mason, or Carpenter, maybe a distant relative was a craftsman. But you probably don’t have much interest in that particular career.
There’s one woman, however, who was born with the name Savant who grew up to be the premier savant.
Marilyn vos Savant was born to German immigrants in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was Joseph Mach, her mother Marina vos Savant and she apparently believes that women should keep their premarital surnames for life, with daughters taking their mothers’ names. She write the Ask Marilyn column Parade.
The synchronicity? She’s considered to have the highest I.Q. in the world, with an entry to that affect in the Guiness Book of World Records between 1986-1989. Her I.Q.? 228. A savant is an individual with astonishing mental abilities, a genius.
Fortunately, for Marilyn, her middle name isn’t Idiot.
You guys want name synchronicty. well if life is a test, what's the name of the test they give newborns. If pop got me gambling young and the uncle brought me into a card room when I was 19, "east coast trans plant teenager didn't even know they existed" (uncle never came back). If I where to say I wish I spent much more time in National Parks well check on visitor center's name GNP with the new born test. "synchro guy", nothing but in my life 56 buddy. Heck I even had myself self excluded (because of career change) from the one cardroom in the town at the time, wonder what year I "86" myself.
High IQ doesn't mean much when it comes to common sense, or even uncommon sense. I remember that 65-70% of MENSA (high IQ) members thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq in '03. That wasn't the smartest decision ever made.
Rob
This reminds me; I once met a computer genius whose actual name was Poindexter.
As you know, vos Savant has been around for a long, long time. What's she done, other than solving riddles/puzzles in popular media while being among those who have scored highest on standardized IQ tests? Nothing that I know of.
Genius is in creative production, not in high IQ. (Intelligence is an activity concept.) She might be the originator of the IQ cottage industry. (Oh, that's right, we attribute that to Binet/Simon, Weschler, et al.)
funny – I had gotten in an argument with my husband about MVS because I thought the word was named for her. We ended up hitting the internet to settle the score. What I really like about Marilyn's writings is that she seems to have a social IQ as well… she never seems condescending. She's not out to 'prove' how smart she is.
Good points! We're at the writers' conference, with limited access to the inter.
Surnames are fascinating. My husbands family took their surname from the home they inhabited, in a little village, in the alps. Maybe it got changed at Ellis Island…
Our daughters have often had issues with its connections to a human waste process – Stepec vs. septic…
My surname was Kramer. Often confused with Cramer or Krammer. My childhood name was Mary Kramer – except that was wrong – and it wasn't until legal dealings with my parents estate that I remembered my first name was a dual: Mary Therese, no middle name.
I spent a whole year of my childhood trying desperately to become Therese or Terri.
Having nuns in your life will do interesting things to your name. Sister Mary Therese? Not!
So I chose the name Therese Patrick, as my writer name, because I'm a daddy's girl, and daddy was called – Dick.
I've lived my life under the energy of dicks and septics…
But I have four amazing daughters so maybe I'll figure out how to write a balance between these energies. My girls deserve nothing less than my best, no matter what name I choose.
wow that's absolutely amazing. Both the coincedence and the high IQ. The human brain is fascinating
What would a person with that kind of IQ do with it, do you suppose?
And how do you measure that? We now know that IQ actually includes about 10 different "ingelligences" which are very hard to quantify. The IQ test only tests three. Such qualities such as intuition, althleticism, EQ, etc., are just as important as spacial skiils, but much harder to test. Anyway, just curious in what capacity she excels. I'll have to Google her…
Good sychronicity.
oh, wow!!!
Sorry I haven't sent my info about the turtle dream yet. I have been looking for my notes among all the other notes about dreams from that time but I can't seem to find my notes about that one!
I will e-mail you too…