Wednesday, 7 November 2012

What's In A Name

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "A Historic Event":

Nice that your grandson gave his daughter his mom's name for her middle name

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The baby's mother's name is Mary. 
Her  grandmother's name is  Mary
Mary is her great-grandmother's (moi) second name.Her other great-grandmother's name was Mary. 
To say it's   a family nameseems somewhat redundant.
Mine is the first generation of my family that didn't have Mary for a first name. 
In my mother's generation, family names were repeated in a pattern. 
The first son was named after the maternal grandfather,the second son after the paternal grandfather. 
Daughters were similarly named. 
My oldest  sister's name was Annie. My mother's name was Annie. Her mother's name was Annie.  My mother's oldest sister   was named Kate  Her  father's mother was Kate and maternal grandmother was Jean.
Names kept being repeated. 
My Grandfather's name was Henry. His son was Harry. and his son was Wee Harry; the son  as opposed to the father. 
In a Catholic family the names of saints were  expected to be used.
Eyebrows were raised at "fancy"names  never used before.If not by the family by the parish priest.They always had a lot to say about things.
In my family Mary has appeared in various forms. Evelyn, not so much.
My mother's teen-aged sister Mary was my Godmother. She was allowed to choose my name. I as fourth born and another girl.
Aunt Mary had a  good friend  known as Ivy but her name was Evelyn. 
Mary liked the name and liked her friend, so I was given the name, Evelyn Mary.      

4 comments:

  1. I forget which Pope is was that set about reducing the Saints list? There might have even been a reason for it. But it certainly upset some families that I knew. If a kid was struggling with ' Jerome ' at school and ' Patrick ' was tossed out, all the family calculations seemed lost.

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  2. I am looking at a map that shows which way each state voted, except for Florida which appears to be hanging in space. Wasn't Ryan, Romney's running mate from Wisconsin? That one is dark Blue.

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  3. Is there a topic? If so, I am totally off it. I was remembering when after the last election Councillor Pirri submitted to having his facial hair removed for cancer recognition. My current question is : Can we expect to see Councillor Gallo's face? It is November.

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  4. I like both. But tend to think Evelyn suits you better. I really like the idea of letting a teen select a name. That could be tricky & maybe a bit dangerous. We had two hamsters that the kids named Clarice & Arbuncle.

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