What's in a name?

We get a lot of questions about the name of our group. There is in fact some thought behind it; it's not just a collaboration of awesome letters. One guess for the reason behind the 441 was "Four for one" (thank you Prof. Vanden Bosch!) while others just incorrectly refer to us as Quartet 411. We may be full of information (especially on weddings and Wendy's), however 411 is not our name.

The 441 actually comes from our tuning process. An "A" is 440 MHZ. When the quartet first started back in 2003, one of us had an impressive metronome that also allowed for tuning to different mega hertz. We took to tuning to a 441 A instead of 440 because the ear tends to like things slightly sharper. And also, obviously, because we're rather sharp women. We started to call ourselves 441 as a joke, but the joke stuck! We even once tried to adopt a different name, but alas all efforts failed. We have now embraced that we are, and always will be, Quartet 441: the sharpest quartet in town.

Just for fun...here are the meanings of the rest of our names:

CHRISTINA : From Christiana, the Latin feminine form of Christian. This was the name of an early, possibly legendary, saint who was tormented by her pagan father. It was also borne by a 17th-century Swedish queen and patron the arts who gave up her crown in order to become a Roman Catholic.

MALLORY : From an English surname which meant "unfortunate" in Norman French. It first became common in the 1980s due to the television comedy 'Family Ties', which featured a character by this name.

GABRIELLE (as close to Elle's spelling as I could find!) : French feminine form of Gabriel. This was the real name of French fashion designer Coco Chanel (1883-1971).

Elisabeth : From Ελισαβετ (Elisabet), the Greek form of the Hebrew name ('Elisheva') meaning "my God is an oath" or perhaps "my God is abundance". The Hebrew form appears in the Old Testament where Elisheba is the wife of Aaron, while the Greek form appears in the New Testament where Elizabeth is the mother of John the Baptist. Among Christians, this name was originally more common in Eastern Europe. It was borne in the 12th century by Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, a daughter of King Andrew II who became a Franciscan nun and lived in poverty

Let us summarize. Ctina is a legendary but tormented saint, Mallory is unfortunate and starred on Family Ties, Elle is (kind of?) named after CoCo Chanel, and I am either John the Baptist's mother or destined to be an impoverished nun. I think Elle faired a little better than the rest of us on this one.

But we have hope! Enid means "soul" or "life", Dorothy means "gift of God", Greta is derived from "Pearl", and Lois means "more desirable" or "better". We are much better name choosers than our parents.

I wonder about Herkimer, Holga, Oatmeal, and Shamé?