Everything becomes Jessica eventually

From punk to problematic and back again

I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you…
–Abraham Simpson

When William Shakespeare needed an exotic-sounding name for The Merchant of Venice, he invented the name "Jessica."¹ You probably don't consider Jessica particularly exotic-sounding. On the contrary, in the 1980s it was the top-ranked name for girls in North America, only to be unseated by Ashley. (You know how Ashleys are.)

This change is partly because repetition breeds affection, but also because of history.

Yesterday's eccentric is today's normie. Hard-to-believe heresies (heliocentricity, germ theory, skinny jeans) settle into modern mundanities. Perhaps this very idea seems obvious and hum-drum but for Pete’s sake: you are witnessing alchemy at work.

Over four-hundred years, generations of mouths chewed a word from one meaning to another. A name that wa…