Book characters named Jolana
March 9, 2024 4:03 PM Subscribe
Can you find me books with characters named Jolana that were published 1966 or earlier? A friend was told her name came from a book character.
Here's that ngram that mareli is referring to. At the bottom of the page, you can search for the name in books, but there are a lot. Here's a link from 1950 to 1966. It's not very helpful...
posted by hydra77 at 5:06 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]
posted by hydra77 at 5:06 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]
Virginia Sorensen's "The Talking Stick" has a child character named Jolana; this short story was included in Prize Stories of 1948: The O. Henry Awards.
posted by Iris Gambol at 8:31 PM on March 9 [7 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 8:31 PM on March 9 [7 favorites]
Picked through archive.org's collection and I only found two—I see Iris Gambol already has one.
- An O. Henry prize-winning story called "The Talking Stick" by Virginia Sorensen was published in 1948. O. Henry prize stories are collected in a book every year... not hugely visible but if you're reading "serious" fiction it's a fairly big deal.
- A book called "The Deliverance of Sister Cecilia" by William Brinkley uses the name once. This book was widely read enough to have a few Amazon reviews every year from people who remember reading it in the sixties, but Jolana only comes up on one page. (Which doesn't, of course, make it impossible that it caught her mom or dad's fancy—I know a lot of name stories along those lines.)
Might be worth searching for variant names too—Jolanda, Giolana, Jolanna, etc.
posted by Polycarp at 8:47 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]
- An O. Henry prize-winning story called "The Talking Stick" by Virginia Sorensen was published in 1948. O. Henry prize stories are collected in a book every year... not hugely visible but if you're reading "serious" fiction it's a fairly big deal.
- A book called "The Deliverance of Sister Cecilia" by William Brinkley uses the name once. This book was widely read enough to have a few Amazon reviews every year from people who remember reading it in the sixties, but Jolana only comes up on one page. (Which doesn't, of course, make it impossible that it caught her mom or dad's fancy—I know a lot of name stories along those lines.)
Might be worth searching for variant names too—Jolanda, Giolana, Jolanna, etc.
posted by Polycarp at 8:47 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]
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posted by mareli at 4:44 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]