Ancestry Magazine

No wonder Aunt Snake didn’t know what to call her big sister.

Our grandfather “Pappy” was notorious for labeling family members with a nickname. Some were cute and funny and some, well, were neither.

Sometime before 1986, my cousin David (a.k.a. Goliath) and I had the opportunity to sit down with Pappy and chat about these names and some other things. This was when I first heard of Squidge. The name dates back to 1918 when my newly wedded grandfather was stationed overseas, and my grandmother, Mimi, was state side, pregnant with my mother, Frances. Since there was no way for them to know the gender of the unborn child, they simply called it “Squidge.”

In 2005 my dad and I were going through old photo albums that had been hidden away for years. One of the albums belonged to Mimi and Pappy. I remember turning the page and, bang, there it was, a picture of Mom taken in June 1919. That was pretty cool in itself but the label “Squidge” made it even better. Dad knew it was a picture of Mom; I had to educate him on Squidge.

On the next page was a picture of Mom’s great-grandfather with a 7-month-old baby named Marjorie. I thought I knew most of the family members, but there was no Marjorie, although Marjorie sure looked familiar. When I asked my dad, he told me, “Oh yeah. They used to call your mother ‘Marjorie’ for a while.”

What? I’m in my mid-50s when I discover my mother, Frances/Squidge, had yet another name? And I found out that they didn’t change her name right away—the family appeared in the 1920 federal census with my mom listed as 2-year-old Marjorie.

We continued through the photo album, going a few more pages before I founnd another photo of my mother. This time Marjorie was crossed out and replaced with Frances. Ahh, peace in my universe.

But not for long—an older note on the photo states “Phyllis Chapman; 6 weeks old.” Phyllis? They also called her Phyllis? What was with these people?

Snake, Squidge’s younger sister (and my favorite aunt), explains the name changes like this: she believes her parents never dreamed their firstborn would be anything but a boy and therefore hadn’t given any thought to a girl’s name.

Now I understand why Aunt Snake was confused about what to call her big sister. And since Snake couldn’t pronounce Franny, my mother was from then on known by yet again another name: Wanny.