Breaking from Binary Invention for Belva!

For Belva, on the occasion of her birthday.

I had friends who welcomed their daughter, Belva, into the world. Baby names are a weird thing: bound up in family history, aspirational politics, and (increasingly in neo-liberal culture) individual branding. There’s a way to read Belva as a deviation from the terribly popular Bella iteration of Isabella. Bella is off-the-charts popular because of the Twilight series, which makes variants like Belva a useful alternative. It beckons to the other Bellas in her future classrooms while having plausible deniability that her parents were Twilight fans.

But I like Belva for other reasons (that have only a little to do with my fondness for her parents).  Belva peaked in popularity in the 1880s (and by peaked, I mean, it’s highest point was when we started tracking things like baby-name popularity. That this tracking coincides with the height of industrialization, urbanization, and consumer capital shouldn’t come as a surprise. But even at its most popular, Belva seems to have barely broken into the top 400 names. So what does this data tell us, as we contemplate little Belva of the 21^st century? It tells us that her parents have tapped into a recognizable but still rare signifier from the American Victorian Era. And that’s why baby names are awesome.

Belva is a chance to learn something about our past, to indicate (however subconsciously or accidentally) a willingness to connect our future with a previous aesthetic. And Ranciere notes that aesthetics (secondarily, in the aesthetics of the name, I suppose) indicate the conditions of belonging. So to what historical trajectory does Belva belong? The trajectory of Belva AnnLockwood, a proponent of coeducation at a time when that wasn’t the norm. That Belva also got a law degree, though only after being refused entry to one school (she’d be a distraction to the men, apparently) and completing coursework at another. She only received her law degree after she wrote to President Grant to lean on the school to grant the diploma. Not surprisingly, Belva Lockwood went on to use her education and legal experience to petition for equal rights, equal pay, and women’s suffrage. She was the first woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme court (and so Belva’s arrival in the wake of important court decisions has a kind of cosmic synergy…if you’re into that thing). Lockwood managed to secure $5 million for the Cherokee people, because it turned out the U.S. Government owed it. Like many suffragettes of her time, Lockwood was a prohibitionist, which isn’t exactly a policy my friends support (but don’t we all want our children to follow in the footsteps of prohibitionists, for at least a little while?).

I wouldn’t have learned anything about Belva Lockwood, were it not for little Belva of the 21^st century. And here’s to hoping the new Belva has the tenacity and conviction of Belva Lockwood of the 19^th century…because as it happens, Lockwood’s work is clearly not quite finished. But anyway, thanks Belva of the 21st Century. You've been here for 8 hours and already I'm a better person because of you.