Nomen Omen? Apparently Not

Last week I drove down I-97 from Baltimore to Annapolis and found that part of it is named “Senator John A. Cade Memorial Highway” after a long-time state legislator. Having seen and enjoyed Henry VI, Part 2 at the Blackfriars Playhouse last spring, I wondered whether his friends called him ‘Jack’. Google suggests that they did (examples here and here [PDF]). Of course, Shakespeare’s Jack Cade was not a Republican, or not a Republican in the contemporary American sense, so the coincidence of names is not as appropriate as it might have been.