What's in a name?

treesitter

Well-known member
Thought some of you may find this humerous or interesting- I work in downtown Cleveland as a Vice Pres. at a museum. Nearly all of the staff and volunteers who work in one of my departments are young and grew up and have lived in the Greater Cleveland area all of thier lives, with little, if any, rural experiences.

The other day, I was telling one of my supervisors a story about the Cub and she asked, at the end of the story, what is the name of my tractor. I know many of you on the forum do have names for your Cub(s), but I haven't given it much thought and I just replied with either "the tractor" or "the Cub".

So now they have taken it upon themselves to come up with name for my Cub. There is a digital pic of it taped to a wipe off board in our office area with about a dozen potential names listed so far. I am waiting for my seasonal staff to return during the holidays, all college students, to see what they have to say. The staff in this department perform science demonstrations for our museum visitors and most have backgrounds in theater/acting/science and are generally very outgoing people. They always seem to have a unique...perspective.

I'll post the list once complete. For the moment, my favorite is "The Detractor" since it does often detract me from things I should be doing.

Since I grew up and lived most of my life in rural western PA, I now find my hunting, fishing, country living stories etc. are either listened to with great interest or, more often, with 'deer in the headlights' expressions. I'm kinda scared of what the name list will have by Christmas.
 
My wife Marilyn is going through the naming process right now for her new Cub. She's told me of some possibilities. I nixed "Red". We'll be interested in seeing the examples your committee comes up with.

We're 65 miles from North Royalton, so they could even have the same name. Wherever the name is called would be out of earshot of one of them. :lol:

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Sure we could share a name. Funny how your wife's Cub looks much like mine, minus the sickle bar, as far as level of restoration, etc.

Andy
 
I call mine "Major" but it is a local thing. There was a local author named Charles Major. His first book, "When Knighthood Was In Flower", was a best seller and many years later made into a movie by Disney. I believe it was his second book that was called "The Bears of Blue River". Great book, sort of a boys adventure book about a boy named Balser Brent and his many adventures in early (about 1820) Shelby County IN involving bears. There is a statue of Balser (fictional charactor) on the public square standing and holding two "cubs" up high in the air. Thus the connection CUB = Major... Oh well, it suited me. :) The statue was originally in front of an old school named the Charles Major School. When it was closed the statue was moved to the square. The old school was converted to senior apartments and still "bears" (pun intended) Charles Major's name. The local high school athletic teams are called the Golden Bears. The jr. high teams were the Cubs. If anyone is curious here is a link to a page that mentions him. I have seen several pages about him but most were just plain wrong and few mentioned close to all of his works. Kind of funny this comes up now, I was doing some other research and was standing on Charles Major's grave just last week.

http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/084461-6226-157.html
 
Named mine for some old Friends ( old enough to be my parents but aren't)and its funny how the tractors are pickup there personalties
Stuart
Dickey
Phillis & Mary
 
:roll:I name mine real quick when I buy them so they don't get mad :shock: and run off up in ohio . :?
 
TreeSitter":11oq0as1 said:
I'll post the list once complete. For the moment, my favorite is "The Detractor" since it does often detract me from things I should be doing.

In that case, maybe you should go with "Distractor", without "The" in front. When you get the next one, it can be "Dattractor".
 
A couple of years ago we had a tractor name discussion on the Farmall ATIS board, it was pretty interesting.

We do not name our tractors. They are refered to as Susie's 706, Mike's 706, the restored German diesel, the unrestored German diesel, the cub High Crop, the Yellow Cub etc.... We never even mention the year of the tractor........Now with the Binder trucks, they all go by model and year.
The 52-L, 54-R, 1958 A-120, 70 flatbed, 29 6 speed.........
I could never keep the names of the cows straight so I am not even going to attempt naming 30 tractors and keeping those names straight. :-)
Mike
 
I've been thinking about this for a while, and this subject is the frosting on the cake: OK, Loboy, I christen thee: Percy (I just went out in the garage and dumped a little coffee on the radiator cap).
 
Mike Schmudlach":3nw378qr said:
I could never keep the names of the cows straight so I am not even going to attempt naming 30 tractors and keeping those names straight. :-)
Mike

Heading off topic, into cow naming:

Back on the farm, most of our cattle were herefords, raised for beef. Few of them got names. The ones with names had all earmed them. "Lightning" and "Bullet" come to mind.

But we also had a very small number of milk cows that were used to raise a few calves. Most of the milkers had been raised as calves purchased from neighboring dairy operations. These cows were each named after the wife of the farmer it was bought from.
 
It don't seem like I keep one long enough to name, ( Bigdog has probably named some of them for me) but I have a Super A my Dad bought new and dubbed Nelly Belle, so thats what I call her. I got my my favorite Cub from Mississippi and called her Miss Cub, but she is somewhere in SC now.
 
I've had my mongrel '47 since 99. I did not think of a good name for her :D for three years. Finally, after I worked on the magneto, it came to me. Now I call her Sparky, because if she ain't sparkin, she ain't alive.
 
May as well get in on this one.

Beverly HillBillies was one of my favourite programs when I was younger -- sort of dates me now don't it :?: :lol:

That is why I call me first one Ellie-Mae, cause I still remember how cute Donna Douglass was! Jethro, well as with the character, he needs some serious work. I am going to call the next one either Granny or Jed, depending on what condition it is in. If it is real rough - Granny it is. :wink: If it is leaking oil it's gonna be called Jed! :roll: :wink:
 
The list at work is growing. I now have a new top pick- Boo Boo. The girl who wrote it said since it is a 'Cub', the first thing she thought of was Boo Boo from Yogi Bear.

Andy
 
Boo Boo, Yogi & Ranger Smith! You got enough names to start a collection! I have Curly, Moe & Larry. Shemp is a parts tractor and I haven't named the 184 lo-boy yet.
 
OK,
I'll jump on too.
My once beloved, but since moved on '44 A was called Buster when I bought it. My '49 (which I told my daughter is her tractor) started off as Lizzy, then Kitten, and more recently Miss Daisy. None of those names really seem to quite fit it's personality, I'm thinking maybe it's male.
Finally the '67 is none other than Frank, named by me after the old guy who loved her for years working around the CN Railway station, that name really fits. I still have my trusty little '63 Simplicity which I never did have a name for, lately he's been Lonely. I gave him a little visit this morning and stole his battery for a transplant into Frank.

One big happy family.
 
I guess I'll take a forray into the OT cow naming too, as the only names our tractors get is the model # (other than the consecutive As, they're the "twins").
We raise black Angus, and all have a registered name, but are often repeated as females are named after the mother and males after the father. So we end up with some nick-names on the special ones. One in particular, we got at an auction, and were never billed for, we checked it out, and were told that she was already paid for,,, she was called "cheap cow" (and was worth exactly what we paid for her). :lol:
Another time we had all our barns full and had one tied behind the rest, my bro-in-law was helping feed the cows, and I noticed that he hadn't fed the one behind. Remember that they're all black, I asked " is that cow black"?
He looked at me like I had 2 heads and said " last time I looked!!"

I said " So that's why you didn't feed her." :lol: (referring to discrimination) Her name was then "black cow". That drew the looks from people when they came to visit. :lol:
 
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