Preserved Fish, did you ever wish More than your name had gone down in history? Oh Preserved, what'd you do to deserve it? To have a name that caused you so much misery?
You went to school with students Named Patience and Prudence But their religious names were not so odd You were preserved from sin, preserved in grace But not preserved from your classmates You must have suffered hard in that schoolyard.
Preserved Fish, did you ever wish That your name didn't bring to mind sardines? Oh Preserved, what'd you do to deserve it? How could your Quaker parents be so mean?
Nowadays we're just as bad We name our kids for the latest fad We didn't learn a single thing from you We've got parents who just can't spell We've got a dumb blonde named for a French hotel What's a poor little kid supposed to do?
Preserved Fish, did you ever wish For a name that didn't sound like pickled herring? Oh Preserved, what'd you do to deserve it? What made your saintly parents so uncaring?
Preserved Fish, did you ever wish For a name that didn't sound like an order of smelts? Oh Preserved, what'd you do to deserve it? Did anyone ever ask you how you felt?
Preserved Fish (1766-1846) was a prominent New York City shipping merchant in the early 1800s. In 1822, he founded the shipping company Fish, Grinnell & Co., which later grew into Grinnell, Minturn & Co., a California clipper ship company. "Preserved" (pronounced with three syllables) was a fairly common Quaker name, meaning "preserved from sin" or "preserved in grace," and the Fish family was prominent in New York politics, producing Hamilton Fish, the secretary of state after whom Hamilton Fish Park in the Lower East Side is named. Preserved Fish is buried in the Marble Cemetery.
Also, Preserved Fish and his family are mentioned in this 1931 letters colum in Time Magazine.