What I learned this week: fake German princes and lip tattoos in Fiji
Plus, find out why the name Gary was only ever popular for like, 10 years.
Welcome back to the fourth edition of my new little series where I share some random things I learned over the past week (or past couple weeks). Previously I've covered the only escalator in Wyoming and smooth coins, among other topics.
Zsa Zsa Gabor's descendants
After I watched The Phoenician Scheme, where Benicio del Toro plays a character named Zsa-Zsa, I had to look up the name because obviously the only other person I know with that name is Zsa Zsa Gabor. It's a diminutive nickname in Hungary, where Gabor was born. But of course I got distracted on Zsa Zsa's Wikipedia, which is robust. She was married nine times and had one child, Francesca, with Conrad Hilton (making Zsa Zsa Gabor's daughter Paris Hilton's great-aunt).
But all of this is just an aside to the weirdest thing I learned; Zsa Zsa's final husband was a guy named Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, who was born Hans Lichtenberg until he was adopted in his 30s by Princess Marie Auguste of Anhalt in some sort of financial scheme wherein he gave her money and in return, he got to pretend he was a German royal even though he wasn't at all. Frédéric then engaged in the same scheme, as he and Zsa Zsa adopted a bunch of adult men themselves, so when you Google Zsa Zsa Gabor, this is what shows up for her children because I guess they legally were her children.
The saddest part of this all is that when Francesca died a few years before her mother, she was so poor she lived in her car. I enjoyed The Phoenician Scheme well enough but I can't say it was as thrilling as Zsa Zsa Gabor's Wikipedia page.
Fiji has over 300 Islands
Last night I was watching Love Island USA and two people, Austin and Jaden, were talking to each other. Jaden, who is from a town next to the Twilight capital of Forks, Washington, pointed out a helicopter flying above and said she wanted to go on one, because Fiji has over 300 islands. I had no idea! It's actually 330 islands and around 110 of those have permanent residents. It also has over 500 islets!
Austin, a pool boy from Florida, was impressed. The previous conversation between Austin and Jaden involved them discovering that they both had an inner lip tattoo — one said "fuck" and the other's said "baby." Earlier in the episode, Austin took a photo of a small lizard and named it Ernesto, while Jaden wore her high heels into the pool.
Anyway click here to learn the names of all the Fijian islands.
Gary Cooper popularized the name Gary
A few weeks ago I saw a post that said "Crazy that the name Gary isn't short for something. Surely their real name is Garold or something." The same person also posted that the name Gary wasn't popular until the actor Gary Cooper took it as his stage name. Much like the fact that the term "bucket list" didn't really exist until the 2007 movie The Bucket List was released, it doesn't sound true but it is!
He was born Frank Cooper but in the 1930s probably every white man was named Frank Cooper, so he took the name Gary from the town of Gary, Indiana. According to a search on the Social Security Administration website, the name Gary was most popular between 1940 and 1959 when it ranked in the top 20 in popularity of baby names. In 1900 Gary ranked at 934th most popular, and in 2022 it ranked 956th. In 1933, the year after Cooper starred in A Farewell to Arms, the name Gary jumped in popularity from 136th to 80th in popularity. This concludes my official research on Gary Cooper popularizing the name Gary, which has never been popular before or since his lifetime.