Norma

The name was popularized by librettist Felice Romani for Vincenzo Bellini's 1831 opera Norma, likely derived from the Latin noun for a carpenter's square or rule. American registration began in the late nineteenth century as touring theatrical companies introduced the production across the country. Within four decades, the name had left the stage behind and settled into steady domestic circulation.

The name reads today as a pressed cotton apron and an orderly set of kitchen drawers. A Norma tends to be pictured beside a wall-mounted rotary telephone and a tin recipe box organized strictly by course. With the average living bearer now sixty-nine years old, it belongs squarely to the generation that grew up with mechanical television dials. Nobody has ever had to ask how it is spelled.