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Crescent Dragonwagon: Don't Wear It Out

Posted by Adam Kuban, April 9, 2008 at 3:45 PM

"Is her name really Crescent Dragonwagon? Has anyone at SE addressed this?"

That's Serious Eater LiveToEat, asking about the author of The Cornbread Gospels. Thanks for asking, LTT, Because, no, I hadn't addressed this at all, even though it's one of the first things that endeared the book to me. I was as curious as you, Googled her, and found this. Long story short: It was the '60s and she and her husband at the time made up entirely new names for themselves. The long story, after the jump.

At sixteen, I got married for the first time. My then-husband-to-be and I thought that the woman should not take the man's last name, so we decided to choose a new last name. As I recall, somewhere in there we looked at one of those 'One Thousand Names for the Baby' books, and discovered that our old first names had meanings we did not agree with (it was the late sixties, we did not agree with much)....

His old first name, Mark, meant "the warrior"; we were anti-war. My old first name, Ellen, meant "the Queen"; we were anti-authoritarian. He came up with the new first names for us, Crispin, for him, meaning "the curly-headed one"; Crescent for me, meaning "the growing" (once erroneously reported in a newspaper interview as meaning "the growth"!).

The wedding drew nearer. We still hadn't come up with a new last name. One day, after trying and discarding several possibilities, I said, "Maybe we're taking ourselves too seriously, maybe we should pick something completely frivolous." He said, "Like what?" I said, "Oh, um, uh, like Dragonwagon."

Thus we became Crescent and Crispin Dragonwagon.

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