Sunny Jim

Prompted by a recent obituary, BH has been reading about the west country childhood of Emma Smith, with Surrey Libraries being able, in short order, to produce three books of her memoirs, starting with that at reference 1.

Along the way there was talk of porridge in the winter and force in the summer. So off to the OED to see what force was, to find more than five pages or fifteen twelve inch columns about the word and its immediate relatives. And under the third noun of the name we get a brief mention of forced gruel. From which we deduced that force was a sort of thin, summer porridge. Possibly related to the third verb, possibly related to the cooking French farci.

But then we thought that maybe the word had been appropriated by a breakfast cereal company. Which turned out to be a happy, if incorrect thought. Bing rapidly turned up Force, a popular breakfast cereal, perhaps a forerunner of Corn Flakes, made by the Force Food Company, of somewhere in the U.S. Made from wheat, so nothing to do with porridge and not much to do with the jumbo flakes of rolled oats, sold by the likes of Neal's Yard. Made even more popular by an advertising campaign involving a character called 'Sunny Jim'. With Wikipedia for the faint hearted and reference 2 for those with more stamina.

Of interest to me as 'Sunny Jim' was a childhood nickname, apparently on account of my happy disposition when very young - so perhaps I was named for a breakfast cereal?

However, reference 4 suggests that the name is or was in wide use in the U.S. for all kinds of people and purposes. So I suppose I shall never know who or what it was I was named for.

Reference 1: The Great Western Beach - Emma Smith - 2008.

Reference 2: https://web.archive.org/web/20080604161845/http://www.salemstate.edu/sextant/volXII_2/SEXT-essay-sunny-jim.htm.

Reference 3: https://www.salemstate.edu/. Presumably the place where they had the famous witches.

Reference 4: https://dp.la/search?q=sunny+jim.