That's hilarious, because I was just reading a historical account of a British settler coming to Canada and it contains this passage:
"Strange names are to be found in this free country... I have enjoyed many a hearty laugh over the strange affectations which people here designate
very handsome names... The love of singular names is here carried to a marvellous extent. It was only yesterday that, in passing through one busy village, I stopped in astonishment before a tombstone headed thus: - "Sacred to the memory of
Silence Sharman, the beloved wife of Asa Sharman." Was the young woman deaf and dumb, or did her friends hope by bestowing upon her such an impossible name to still the voice of Nature, and check, by an admonitory appellative, the active spirit that lives in the tongue of woman? Truly, Asa Sharman, if thy wife was silent by name as well as by nature, thou wert a fortunate man!"
-Susanna Moodie,
Roughing It In The Bush
