I collect weird Quaker names (it’s a long story). And while Preservèd Fish is probably the best, there are a lot of close contenders.
See, Quaker women sometimes used their maiden names for their sons’ first names. This led to a bunch of unusual first names, like Warner or Sharpless or Dillwyn. But the absolute winner of this category has to be CoffinPitts, whose mother I imagine had to be a member of the well-known Coffin family.
But that’s not all!
Quakers (like some other Protestant groups) sometimes used virtues as first names for their children, often girls, which gives us the amazing names Freedom, Remembrance, & Restore Lippincott (brothers),Thankful Thayer, increase Woodward, Content Hussey, Experience Field, and Experience Burt Merrick,which I can’t help reading as a command.
Anyway, without further ado, here is a selection of my best Authentic 18th-to-19th-Century Quaker Names, all belonging to real people who actually lived
Tabatha Turnpenny
Deborah Darby
Milcah Martha Moore
Pennock Passmore
Rowena Ruble
Hepsa Hathoway Howland
Leander Lippincott
Valrosa V. Vail
Benajah Butcher
Hipparchia Hinchman
Abigail Physick
Marmaduke Cooper Cope
Fanny Marsh
William Hood Dunwoody Zook
Sharpless Townsend Zook
Mehitable Jenkins
Mildred Ratcliff
Dorcas Starbuck
Grizzell Kite
Othniel Alsop
Huldah Wickersham
Kersey Grave
Pusey Grave
Jerusha Conant
Lysander Hard
Booth Tarkington
Jemimah G. Schotwell
Zilpha H. Spooner
Ledra Heazlit
Zimri Gaunt
Adonijah Peacock
Adonijah Peacock Jr.
Adonijah Peacock III (yes, they kept this one up for at least 3 generations)
Theodocia Vinicomb
Amariah Ballinger
Featherston Sadler
Melchezed Peacock
Fanny Canby
Mungo Bewley
Morris Morris, Jr. (I find it fascinating that an 18th-century man went through life named Morris Morris and decided that his son needed that experience too)
Many, many years ago (it was Hallowe'en 1989, for the curious, the year before Good Omens was published) Terry Pratchett and I were sharing a room at the World Fantasy Convention in Seattle, to keep the costs down, because we were both young authors, and taking ourselves to America and conventions were expensive. It was a wonderful convention. I remember a huge Seattle second-hand bookstore in which I found a dozen or so green-bound Storisende Edition James Branch Cabell books, each signed so neatly by the author that the bookshop people assured me that the signatures were printed, and really ten dollars a book was the correct price.
I could afford books. Good Omens had just been sold to UK publishers and then to US publishers for more money than Terry or I had ever received for anything. (Terry had been incredibly worried about this, certain that receiving a healthy advance would mean the end of his career. When his career didn’t end, Terry suggested to his agent that perhaps he ought to be getting that kind of advance for every book from now on, and his life changed, and he stopped having to share a hotel room to save money. But I digress.) Advance reading copies of Good Omens had not yet gone out, but a few editors had read it (ones who had bid for it but failed to buy it) and they all seemed very excited about it, and thrilled for us.
On the Saturday evening Terry left the bar quite early and headed off to bed. I stayed up talking to people and having a marvelous time, hung in there until the small hours of the morning when they closed the hotel bar and all the people went away, and then headed up to the hotel room room.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and tiptoed in the dark across the room to where my bed was located.
I’d just reached the bed when, from the far side of the room, a voice said, “What time of the night do you call this then? Your mother and I have been worried sick about you.”
Terry was wide awake. Jet lag had taken its toll.
And I was wide awake too. So we lay in our respective beds and having nothing else to do, we plotted the sequel to Good Omens. It was a good one, too. We fully intended to write it, whenever we next had three or four months free. Only I went to live in America and Terry stayed in the UK, and after Good Omens was published Sandman became SANDMAN and Discworld became DISCWORLD™ and there wasn’t ever a good time.
But we never forgot it.
It’s been thirty-one years since Good Omens was published, which means it’s thirty-two years since Terry Pratchett and I lay in our respective beds in a Seattle hotel room at a World Fantasy Convention, and plotted the sequel. (I got to use bits of the sequel in the TV series version of Good Omens – that’s where our angels came from.)
Terry and I, in Cardiff in 2010, on the night we decided that Good Omens should become a television series.
Terry was clear on what he wanted from Good Omens on the telly. He wanted the story told, and if that worked, he wanted the rest of the story told.
So in September 2017 I sat down in St James’ Park, beside the director, Douglas Mackinnon, on a chair with my name on it, as Showrunner of Good Omens. The chair slowly and elegantly lowered itself to the ground underneath me and fell apart, and I thought, that’s not really a good omen. Fortunately, under Douglas’s leadership, that chair was the only thing that collapsed.
The crumbled chair.
So, once Good Omens the TV series had been released by Amazon and the BBC, to global acclaim, many awards and joy, Rob Wilkins (Terry’s representative on Earth) and I had the conversation with the BBC and Amazon about doing some more. And they got very excited. We talked to Michael Sheen and David Tennant about doing some more. They also got very excited. We told them a little about the plot. They got even more excited.
Rob Wilkins and David Tennant on the second day of shooting.
Me and Michael and Ash aged nearly 2.
What it was mostly like shooting Good Omens: peering into screens while something happened round the corner.
I’d been a fan of John Finnemore’s for years, and had had the joy of working with him on a radio show called With Great Pleasure, where I picked passages I loved, had amazing readers read them aloud and talked about them.
L to R: With Great Pleasure. John Finnemore, me all beardy, Nina Sosanya (Sister Mary in Good Omens) Peter Capaldi (he played Islington in the original BBC series of Neverwhere).
I asked John if he’d be willing to work with me on writing the next round of Good Omens, and was overjoyed when he said yes. We have some surprise guest collaborators too. And Douglas Mackinnon is returning to oversee the whole thing with me.
So that’s the plan. We’ve been keeping it secret for a long time (mostly because otherwise my mail and Twitter feeds would have turned into gushing torrents of What Can You Tell Us About It? long ago) but we are now at the point where sets are being built in Scotland (which is where we’re shooting, and more about filming things in Scotland soon), and we can’t really keep it secret any longer.
There are so many questions people have asked about what happened next (and also, what happened before) to our favourite Angel and Demon. Here are, perhaps, some of the answers you’ve been hoping for.
As Good Omens continues, we will be back in Soho, and all through time and space, solving a mystery which starts with one of the angels wandering through a Soho street market with no memory of who they might be, on their way to Aziraphale’s bookshop.
(Although our story actually begins about five minutes before anyone had got around to saying “Let there be Light”.)
Thank you to everyone who made Brainwashing Month such a success! No matter how you got your brain washed this month, you helped me blow that 1000 person goal away! It’s really sparked my creativity going into July, so stay tuned for for more hot ideas!
Also known as “Have you been brainwashed today Day”, “You know you want to be brainwashed today Day”, and also possibly “You’ve been brainwashed to want to be brainwashed today Day”.
People who’ve been brainwashed will have the opportunity to download a digital sticker to commemorate the occasion! It looks like this, minus the giant question mark:
And even better, there might be another one to collect next month! (Just not about brainwashing. Maybe. Almost certainly. Possibly. Probably.)
The LiveStream will be on my YouTube channel at 8pm Eastern . That’s HERE, and sometime after we start a direct link may be posted here and on twitter as well. Please do come and enjoy an hour or so of hypnotic fun!
Edited to add: Here is the path to joining the LiveStream!
1. Join my Discord HERE (make sure you choose a role to become a permanent member.) 2. Watch for the private LiveSteam link that will be shared sometime before 8PM Eastern.
I love bimbofication, slutification, transformation etc. But so many doms on Tumblr have like one image, one end point in mind for like every girl/sub they meet and I just DON’T get that.
Hear me out
Every person and sub have interests, traits, body types and cultures that can make them into their own unique bimbo😁 we gotta lean into that shit and help people become the funnest, most confident, sluttiest versions of themselves.
I want cowgirl bimbos, gamer bimbos who edge well gaming and streaming. Strong farmer himbos who can’t use a phone but are always down to fuck and mow your lawn for you.
Programmer bimbos who are the best at their jobs but can only do it while plugged and sucking a dildo.
Literally imagine a bimbo commune where everyone is dumb, horny and fun but also have their own skills they bring to the table to help keep everyone alive 🥰
The bimbo mechanic girl getting her ass fucked while she waits for the oil to drain from the farmboy’s tractor she is fixing.
Bimbo mommies raising kids, baking and cooking meals.
Hunky buff bimbos who spend all day lifting weights, and heavy things for other bimbos. Protecting everyone from any mean jerks.
Idk like use your imagination, be original, stop being boring 😴
Reblog and add your bimbosona and skills you would bring to the table if it wasn’t mentioned yet 💋
Wow! Look where we are now - 732/1000 brainwashings so far this June. Won’t you help us reach or exceed our goal of 1000?! It’s so easy. All you have to do is: Drop deeply into trance when I give that suggestion. Let those thoughts go, they’re unnecessary. Say Yes to the sound of my voice and the suggestions I give you. Respond even more positively and powerfully to my suggestions every next time. Feel so much better the more deeply into trance you go. Come up healthy, having enjoyed that state of being obediently blank.
