Elmer

The name derives from an English surname based on the Old English given name Æthelmǣr. American parents took to it in the nineteenth century, spurred in part by regard for early military figures like Union officer Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth. By the time federal birth tracking began in 1880, the name had shed its Old World footprint and settled into county seats across the continent.

An Elmer tends to be pictured in heavy twill trousers holding a brass pocket rule. The vowels land with a flat, utilitarian thud, burdened by twentieth-century cartoon hunters and bottles of white school paste. The name peaked during the final year of the First World War and has spent the subsequent century quietly vacating hospital nurseries. It reads today as a person who owns three spare fan belts for machinery sold in 1984.