Come back, if you will, to the five- and-dime

Can you keep track? I can’t.

Every once in a while, they change the names of all the department stores and supermarkets, for some reason. There must be an office somewhere that does this stuff. Department stores, supermarkets and Shirley MacLaine -- it’s impossible to keep up with who they are from one day to the next.

In the latest name-spasms, the Robinsons-May stores in South Coast Plaza and Fashion Island -- which used to be called Robinson’s but I guess that wasn’t good enough -- are nearing the end of their time on earth.

On January 29, a final blowout door buster we’re-history-clearance-sale will begin at both stores until there is nothing left but racks, shelves and memories. Federated Department Stores, which owns the Macy’s brand, bought May Department Stores, which owns the Robinson’s-May brand. Federated plans to convert most Robinsons-May stores to Macy’s stores, including the one in Fashion Island, except the one in South Coast Plaza will become a Bloomingdale’s, which is also owned by Federated. Simple, no?

If you think that’s complicated, you should see where all these names come from. Pay attention; this is a lot of names.

Things were a little slow in Orange County in 1838, but in Paris that year, a man named Aristide Boucicaut, who was French, opened a store called Bon Marche, which would evolve into the world’s first true department store.

On this side of the pond, a man named Alexander Stewart opened the Marble Palace on Chambers Street in lower Manhattan in 1848, followed by the large and luxurious Cast Iron Palace on Broadway and 9th Street in 1862. The Cast Iron Palace wasn’t just fancy. It was fancy-schmancy, with eight floors and 2,000 employees, and catered to women of means, with an eye toward European clothing and accessories.

The history buffs out there know that Mary Todd Lincoln was the original compulsive shopper -- among other, more serious problems -- and ran up a bill for $27,000 at the Cast Iron Palace in 1865, which her husband Abraham had no ability to pay and with which the press had the proverbial field day.

A few blocks away, on 6th Avenue, a man with the very recognizable name of Rowland Hussey Macy opened a “fancy dry goods” store in 1858. I never know what dry goods means, but that’s what everyone sold in those days. You’d think somebody would want wet goods once in a while. I guess not. Do you know why Macy’s logo is a red star? Because Rowland Macy worked on a whaling ship as a teenager and had a red star tattooed on his hand during one of his early adventures. In 1887, Macy took on two partners named Isidor and Nathan Straus, who moved the store to its present location in Manhattan’s Herald Square in 1902.

The new Macy’s was touted as “the largest store on earth,” with nine stories and 33 elevators. In 1912, Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, made the unfortunate vacation choice of taking a cruise on the brand-new and totally unsinkable RMS Titanic. While both had a chance to board a lifeboat, Isidor refused to go while there were still women and children on board, and Ida refused to leave without him. “We’ve been together too long,” she reportedly said. “Where you go, I go.” In a brief scene in the 1997 film “Titanic,” the Straus’ are the elderly couple holding each other on the bed in their stateroom, waiting for the end.

But not everything happens in New York. Some of it happens in Philadelphia. That’s where a man called John Wanamaker opened the Oak Hall Clothing Bazaar in 1876. Wanamaker was one of the originators of special sales and promotions, and the press called him the “Merchant Prince.”

In 1896, he bought Alexander Stewart’s Cast Iron Palace in New York and in 1903, built a palatial store in Philadelphia with a 12-story atrium and a massive pipe organ. A huge eagle from the St. Louis World’s Fair was mounted on the building and “Meet me under the eagle” became a familiar Philly phrase.

Speaking of familiar phrases, ask anyone you know from Chicago if the name Marshall Field rings a bell. Field opened his first store on Lake Street in Chicago in 1865 with a motto that husbands live by to this day: “Give the Lady What She Wants.” By 1914, Marshall Field’s flagship store on State Street was large and in charge. We also have Marshall Field’s to thank for one of the greatest inventions in the history of inventions -- Frango mints.