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Comments and insights on the name Mehitabel: | Edit

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Personal experiences with the name Mehitabel: | Edit

I gave my daughter Mehitabel as a middle name, in tribute to a grandmother who adored the Marquis poems and also to the very idea that once upon a time there was such a thing as popular syndicated poetry. I have found that most people do not know the name and struggle to pronounce it. The few who know it from the poems (maybe 10%?) respond with delight. For the record, my grandmother's pronunciation (which I assume was the consensus pronunciation when the poems were popular) is Muh-HIT-a-bull. Syllables pronounced and emphasized like "dirigible."

Nicknames for Mehitabel: | Edit

Bella, Mel, Hettie, Tabby

Meanings and history of the name Mehitabel: | Edit

Means 'God makes happy' in Hebrew.
Pronounced: mi-HIT-eh-bel or mee-HIT-eh-bel

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Mehitabel in song, story & screen: | Edit

- There is one clearly dominant Mehitabel of fiction: Mehitabel the alley cat in Don Marquis's Archie and Mehitabel poems. http://www.donmarquis.com/archy/ These humorous and cynical but warm poems were very popular in newspaper syndication in the 1920s and 30s.

- In a Rudyard Kipling poem, Lovely Mehitabel Lee is married to the narrator's resented rival: http://books.google.com/books?id=3KYg_7bSptcC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=love...

- The 1929 children's novel "Hitty: Her First Hundred Years" is about a wooden doll named Mehitabel, or Hitty, originating in colonial America