Re: A perfect day for introducing myself

> Date:         Fri, 4 Feb 2000 12:38:36 -0500
> From: Paul Bennett <paulnkathy@...>
> Kim is a perfectly valid, if rare, UK male forename, AFAICT. My local TV
> station had a male news anchor called (ISTR) Kim Riley, and nobody batted
> an eyelid at it.  There are certainly others, but I can't bring any other
> examples imediately to mind.  Might it be (Old) Celtic in origin?  I don't
> have my name-etymology book to hand.
Kim is also a quite popular boy's name in Denmark since World War II,
and the reason is well known:

In one of the first groups of resistance fighters that was caught and
shot by the Germans in Denmark, there was a young man of 19 or so
named Kim. After his letters to his mother from prison were published,
thousands of boys were christened the same, because it was so
frightfully romantic.

Before that, Kim seems to have been a very rare name in Denmark. The
young man in question was called so after the protagonist of Rudyard
Kipling's novel of the same name, which his mother liked very much ---
because it was so frightfully romantic.

And in that novel, Kim was supposedly a short form for Kimball, which
seems to be a Scots Christian name. So the Celtic connection is there.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)