Tuesday 11 December 2012

Barshabba Who?

When there is a popular film, actor or singer there seems to be a strange compulsion by some parents to name their children after them and it has always been popular to name children after Saints or Biblical characters especially in Catholicism where a name must be in the Bible somewhere for the child to be baptised.
Probably the most popular scene in the Bible is the nativity scene and for such a large event, there are relatively few characters but which of them is best remembered two millennia on when parents come to choose a name?
The American White Pages is the perfect tool to find out.
The mum and the step-dad are easily the most remembered with Mary having 2,919,488 namesakes in America and Joseph 1,655,948 and then Jesus who has 203,279 people named after him.
Surprisingly there are only 47 Gods in America which must annoy him considering the whole thing was his bright idea and there are more people taking the name of the 3 wise men then his, Gaspar, 6,232, Balthasar, 103 and Melchior 1,295. I'm not sure which one came on a scooter, blowing his hooter though.
Even the Angel he sent is many more times popular than him with 109,099 calling themselves after Gabriel and to wind up the big guy even more, the bad boy of the scene, Herod, has 2,415 keeping his name alive.
The final characters in the Nativity Scene are the shepherds, who i am advised, were washing their socks by night all seated on the grass when an angel of the Lord came down, but who remembers them?
Jose has 886,458 with the same handle, Asher 12,679, Zebulun 238, Justus 6,499, Nicodemus 2,208 and Shepherd Joseph can scrap it out with Jesus's step-dad over which of them is the more popular.
That just leaves one character (two if you count the innkeeper but apparently nobody bothered to ask his name) in the whole of the Nativity scene that nobody out of the 311,591,917 Americans wants to be named after, poor old Barshabba.
Even a Google search reveals nothing about him so Barshabba remains the Biblical version of the ginger one out of Girls Aloud or that one from Destiny's Child who wasn't Beyoncé or Kelly Rowland.
Poor guy,  he may as well have just carried on washing his socks because he was there at the biggest moment in Christianity and nobody remembers him. Gutted as the kids say.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

ive never met a barshabba. there were these 2 kids in Lubbock name orangejello (a-ron-zha-low) and lemonjello (la-mon-zha-low)... not kidding.

q

Anonymous said...

their parents only knew how to do a few things. drink, smoke pot, make babies were among them...

q