I know the sororities did this at Duke when I was there. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure the fraternities also announced their new member classes in the Chronicle.

did anyone notice that there are 2 mary morgan "somethings". i mean, what are the odds? 2 mary catherine/katherine's -yes, 2 carolines-yes, but 2 mary morgan whatever?

My daughter said that when she was at MS State, it seemed like half of every pledge class was composed of Mary _(middle names)__. All of them called by both names, of course!

My daughter's husband thinks she should name their first daughter a "Mary plus" name. I'm going to tell her she needs to be really original with that middle name. (Suggestions?)

Your maiden name...that's a very big thing to do here. Mary Hunter, Mary David, Mary Andrews...all kids I know....

Or if you want to be very Old South aristocratic, just use a family name with no Mary or Anna in front...i.e. Brock Andrews, Hayes Klyce, Gaines Brice, etc....

I'm surprised that David would be a maiden name for someone in the old south. All the Davids I know are 20th century immigrants from Eastern Europe or the Middle East.

That's the only way I can figure that some of the local preppy girls got their names because theirs aren't exceedingly pretty: Strom, Hoyt, and Nash, for example.

;) Got to admit that I laughed over that. One daughter has my maiden name as her middle name. It was a made up name after entry at Ellis Island. My daughter cringes every time someone is about to mis pronounce it.

In our neighborhood, Berkowitz Gevirtz, (Berke?), Geller Heller, Goldstein Lefkowitz (Goldie?...Oh, that was done, in the early 20th century)...guess it doesn't work too well in SoCal.

But I love the idea.

I might be missing something, but... what's the point of an optional upperclassman quota - don't they have the option of taking upperclassmen anyway? Seems odd to put an arbitrary number on it... again, I might be not fully understanding something...

If you have upperclass. quota, you can take the upperclassmen without them taking a spot in regular quota (which could be filled by a freshman).

Example: Let's say you go to a school where everyone usually only takes freshmen.

If quota is 90, and you want to take on 5 upperclassmen, you have 85 freshmen and 5 upper. So you aren't going to take them, because they take away from the number of freshmen you'd have.

Now if the same school has an upperclass. quota of 5, you can take quota of 90 freshmen AND your 5 upperclassmen.

Make sense?

Lots come from that experience at Ellis Island...including my maiden name which should have been Breslin but was changed at Ellis. And then you have "dit" names in French - mostly Cajun - which is another issue altogether.

But in SoCal you could have Levy Hurowitz.....

Aaah, okay, makes sense, got it.

Mary Magdalene?

Jinx, buy me a coke (I was about to type that suggestion, tongue in cheek as it were, but as usual your fingers are faster than mine!). And this thread is really going in an interesting direction (thanks ellebud!).