Safe at Home 5: Something Happened in Arndtland and It's Finger Lickin' Good!

[Howl]

I think Lizzie would have to work with some off-white trainer shorts first. 

[SolomonFundy]

Petition for "Trainer Shorts" to be a post count or thread title. Or both. It's too good.

[Four is Enough]

15 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

So, when Cathy does cross the rainbow bridge, will Lizzie inherit the white shorts?

That is a totes creepy and totes probable  scenario.

[JermajestyDuggar]

Wizzie has her own white shorts. She’s been photographed wearing them in the past. Maybe she got a pair for her 18th birthday a few years ago. 

Edited September 6, 2020 by JermajestyDuggar

[Giraffe]

How?!? How?!!! This family mystifies me more than any other family I follow here. I’m waiting for the day they come out with a current family photo where all if the “boys*” are married with children and Rick and Cathy have been trolling us for years. 
 

*All except Luke who’s waiting to give @nelliebelle1197 a rose. 

[JenniferJuniper]

I was just thinking, Paul must be working on his "It's the day before my 40th birthday song" to be performed in his parents' bedroom in a few days.

How many stuffed animals will have roles in his performance? And of those, how many will be penguins? 

[FundMe]

I'm new to this family. can anyone explain the hyphenated and repeated names?  

[Giraffe]

2 hours ago, FundMe said:

I'm new to this family. can anyone explain the hyphenated and repeated names?  

No. No one can explain anything about this family. It’s part of their mystique. 
 

To answer your question though, I don’t know about the naming. They have 14 or so kids who are 40 down to 18 or so and none of them are married and every single one of them still lives in their childhood home. There’s a rumor that some of the older “boys” are moving into a house next door but I don’t know if that’s ever been confirmed. A couple of us have posited that at least a few of them have to have secret lives.

[JermajestyDuggar]

3 hours ago, FundMe said:

I'm new to this family. can anyone explain the hyphenated and repeated names?  

Some have said it’s their catholic background that has influenced their naming style. I’m not catholic so I can’t say if it’s common to name like them in catholic circles. But they reuse lots of names and each child gets 3 names and a last name.

[SolomonFundy]

12 hours ago, FundMe said:

I'm new to this family. can anyone explain the hyphenated and repeated names?  

Prepare to be EXTREMELY bored. I'm currently avoiding two tasks, so this got long.

I'm not sure if this is an explanation (nothing about the Arndts is explainable... they just ARE), but it's some general observations about the names and their possible intentions behind usage. The Arndt children's naming schemes are one indication that Cathy and Rick didn't begin their married life with the intention of having so many children. The elaborate triple-name, hyphenated biblically flavored theme was enough of a stumbling block to work around, but then you have to consider that they never once used a name that sounded out of place in standard middle-class white American vernacular.  In other words, there aren't any Balthazars or Hezekiahs in the mix, despite the fact they felt the need to repeat names pretty early on. By the time their fourth kid came along, they'd already repeated a name (Luke's hyphen name "Joseph" is also his eldest brother's middle name), then doubled down on the fifth kid by not only recycling two names for him, but actually reusing a name from the kid immediately preceding. 

Things get even stranger when you compare instances of repetition/recycling. They went through deliberate patterns with their naming. The first three boys received original names with no recycling. Boys 4-6 were given completely unique first names that had never been used in any prior child's name, but most have recycled hyphen and middle names.  Boy 7 breaks this pattern with a name that is an immediate recycle from #6 (Philip), which possibly occurred to them after the fact as slightly shabby, because the next five children (8-12) have once again received completely original first names, with four (Seth, Nathan, Mary, and Caleb) also getting original/unused hyphen names, and Jacob receiving recycled names only from among the oldest siblings (meaning they aren't immediate or close-in-age recycles). Mary's gender obviously makes her an easy person to include in the "original names" list, but since the child immediately following her was also given 2/3 unique names, it does suggest that any child at her place in the birth order would have received a fresh name. 

Then, the wheels just fall completely off the bus. The final two children (#13 and #14) not only have recycled names from near siblings, but ALL of their 3 names are reused. To make it even worse, both boys were given names that had already been used twice already. The names Peter, John, David, and Paul appear 3 times each in the family of 14 kids. It's so weird that they just stopped trying with these two. At the very least, they could have recycled a name that had only been used once before, like Stephen or Thomas.

The names in birth order:

Paul-Matthew Joseph
John-Andrew Michael
Mark-David Timothy 
Luke-Joseph Peter 
Jude-Peter Matthew
James-Michael Philip
Philip-Thomas Luke
Seth-Benjamin Mark
Jacob-Timothy John
Nathan-Stephen Paul 
Mary-Elizabeth Anne
Caleb-Nicholas David
Peter-John Benjamin
David-Paul Andrew 

**Fun bonus useless observation: All of the kids have 5 syllable names, with the exception of the two boys that use "Timothy" in their names (they have 6 syllables each), and siblings #11 and #12 (Mary and Caleb), who both have 7 syllable names.

So, why the hyphenated names at all? I'm not sure, but I have a theory. Cathy's family origins are largely Catholic. In western Europe and the US, there has been a tradition among Catholics to give double names (not always, but often hyphenated) to children. Especially sons. Usually, one of the names is a "Saint name", given as a measure of protection and a sign of special devotion on behalf of the child. (Side note: I'm not a Catholic. Most of this is from tangential contact with the information through other avenues of research interest.) The first 7 kids technically have Saint names in the Roman Orthodox tradition, but Seth, Nathan, and Caleb are almost certainly not intended as such. She and Rick have their own take on religion, but I believe they have been some flavor of Protestant for most of their married lives, so even if they started out intending to give their kids super Catholic names, the impulse would have been moot after they were firmly established in a different faith practice. If the names are meant to venerate the Apostles, it's odd that they never threw a "Simon" into the mix (nor a Bartholomew or a Thaddeus for that matter, though those names would have probably been too exciting and wild for the Arndts). They also pointedly never used some of the Apostle names as first names (like Matthew and Andrew), though they included them as hyphen or middle names. This suggests that they eventually, if not always, just used names that they liked that had a biblical connection of some sort.

In summary, the elder Arndts were probably inspired by Cathy's upbringing to use repetitive names that evoked popular saints, though it's equally possible that they were always intended to just reference general biblical Christian figures. Once established by the first few children, they voluntarily maintained the cadence of the naming scheme despite quickly running out of original names, and apparently refusing to use "non-traditional" biblical names. 

[Four is Enough]

Of course, I'm no specialist on Catholic naming, but I am a Catholic... I know of very few people who were named like the Arndts were at birth. Two names, sure. The first and the middle. Saint name, sure, especially for boys who were named for their dads. At confirmation time, we'd choose our special saint's name to add to our own. (not legally, just symbolically) So then we had three names.

My name is Diana (there is no Saint Diana) Jean. (The priest chose to invoke the name of St. Joan of Arc as my baptism went along) At confirmation, I chose the name Agnes. (don't judge. I was like 12) I used my initials (last name too) all together to identify me for a long time... even unto putting them on my car's  license plates in two different states.

[SolomonFundy]

@Four is Enough I don't personally know anyone who double AND hyphen names in the Catholic tradition either. I assume it's a tradition in very specific areas, or was only popular for a window of time in the early part of the 20th century. 

Because of Anne of Green Gables reasons, I've always thought the name Diana was beautiful, and I envy you. I've got a "most popular top 10" 1980s name, and it's fine, but it's no Diana.

[JenniferJuniper]

12 minutes ago, SolomonFundy said:

Because of Anne of Green Gables reasons, I've always thought the name Diana was beautiful, and I envy you. I've got a "most popular top 10" 1980s name, and it's fine, but it's no Diana.

I still think of Anne's lovely, drunken friend Diana when I hear the name.  I almost used it, but it was too close to the death of Princess Diana for my husband's liking. 

I'm not aware of any Catholics who name their kids the way Rick and Cathy did.  I assume with the first few, they imagined the boys would take confirmation names later, which makes it even stranger.  Paul-Mathew Joseph Peter Arndt would have been silly. 

Edited September 8, 2020 by JenniferJuniper
rediculoius missspellings

[Cults-r-us]

We need Arndt-Maxwell courtships stat. The Maxwell girls are used to living in a cult-compound, the Arndt's seem to support education and hobbies, they will get better (altho weird AF) birthdays. The Arndts will get women.  Win-win!

If the Arndts raid the Maxwell compound and take maidens as their own, it may spice up the Moody story lines. Captured and raveged with the Moodys?

[Audrey2]

Let's add Jana Duggar. There are enough age-appropriate men to go around. It might also be entertaining!

[JermajestyDuggar]

48 minutes ago, Cults-r-us said:

We need Arndt-Maxwell courtships stat. The Maxwell girls are used to living in a cult-compound, the Arndt's seem to support education and hobbies, they will get better (altho weird AF) birthdays. The Arndts will get women.  Win-win!

If the Arndts raid the Maxwell compound and take maidens as their own, it may spice up the Moody story lines. Captured and raveged with the Moodys?

I wish. But Steve would faint dead away at the sight of those tiny white shorts. 

[Howl]

10 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I wish. But Steve would faint dead away at the sight of those tiny white shorts. 

Yes, he would. He's been permanently damaged by one accidental sight of cleavage, so little shorts would send him over the edge. 

 

[JermajestyDuggar]

3 minutes ago, Howl said:

Yes, he would. He's been permanently damaged by one accidental sight of cleavage, so little shorts would send him over the edge. 

 

Cathy also wears low cut shirts. He would definitely see a little cleavage if she bent over.

[Howl]

You have to wonder how much Stevehova is at war with himself for being normal. It's sad, really, how repressed he is and how much generational damage he's causing because of it. His two daughters are household drudges with zero interior life; his wife has struggled with depression with no access to psychiatric care.  Was there ever an implication that she struggled with post-partum depression as well? 

[Black Aliss]

3 hours ago, Howl said:

14 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I wish. But Steve would faint dead away at the sight of those tiny white shorts. 

Yes, he would. He's been permanently damaged by one accidental sight of cleavage, so little shorts would send him over the edge. 

One would think Steve would be ashamed to acknowledge so publicly that he is a total horndog, incapable of keeping his little Steve in check. Instead he tries to normalize his behavior by pretending that every man has the same problem.

[JenniferJuniper]

On 9/8/2020 at 1:24 PM, Black Aliss said:

One would think Steve would be ashamed to acknowledge so publicly that he is a total horndog, incapable of keeping his little Steve in check. Instead he tries to normalize his behavior by pretending that every man has the same problem.

When you think of it, the Arndts are the total opposite. They seem to normalize their own behavior by pretending sexuality doesn't exist. Rick and Cathy excluded, of course.

[Howl]

2 minutes ago, JenniferJuniper said:

Rick and Cathy excluded, of course

This is what's so bizarre, or at least one of the many bizarre aspects of Arndt-dom.   Rick and Cathy have enjoyed a LOT of sexy time, but zip for the boys.  Like, "We've enjoyed having sex and creating this huge family, but all of you wonderful sons?  A life of celibacy!" 

[AmazonGrace]

"Boys and girl, please watch out. If you have sex, you might end up living with a housefull of aging bachelors who will never ever move out. That's why it's a bad idea to have sex."

[Kelsey]

On 9/6/2020 at 1:36 PM, FundMe said:

I'm new to this family. can anyone explain the hyphenated and repeated names?  

Nope. It's part of their "charm." I hope you're into manboys, penguins, and white shorts. If you are going on a deep dive, make sure you register with the rescue ferrets in case you need assistance.

[ignorantobserver]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

This is what's so bizarre, or at least one of the many bizarre aspects of Arndt-dom.   Rick and Cathy have enjoyed a LOT of sexy time, but zip for the boys.  Like, "We've enjoyed having sex and creating this huge family, but all of you wonderful sons?  A life of celibacy!" 

Years ago, I read some books about ultra-fundamentalist Catholics (Opus Dei and similar circles). One journalist (it was long ago, I don't remember the details) mentioned that sometimes, once the youngest child reaches 18, the entire family enters a convent or some other type of consecrated life. Basically, the parents get to make ten children, then proceed to pressure said children into a life of celibacy. I admit that I have never encountered this kind of family in real life, I presume they are rare exceptions, much like the Arndts. But yes, this behaviour seems to exist.